User:Celica tom/Ultralab

ULTRALAB (Learning Technology Research Centre)

ULTRALAB was a learning technology research centre originally based at Anglia Polytechnic University (later Anglia Ruskin University) in the United Kingdom. It is historically significant in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning, and prototyped many concepts that still exist (see History of Projects). In 2004, Ultralab had around 90 employees and more than double that figure on it's purely online courses Ultraversity and NotSchool.net

A picture of North Building on the Anglia Central Campus from 2005. Taken in Winter from the car park

Ultralab was originally lead by Professor Stephen Heppell, the 'lab' as it was known was started in 1989 at Anglia's Sawyers Hall Lane Campus in Brentwood, Essex (Then the Chelmer Institute of Higher Education). In 1995, ULTRALAB moved to the Chelmsford Central Campus of APU, where they were housed in the top floor of North Building. During this time, ULTRALAB undertook many significant research projects with partners such as the BBC, Channel 4, The V&A Museum, Oracle, Apple and Tesco. In 2004, Stephen Heppell left Ultralab, in his place, Richard Millwood took up the role of Acting Director and ran the lab for a further two years. ULTRALAB's work was subsumed into the rest of Anglia in December 2006, taking with it around 11 employees, of which, 4 remain working for the University as of May 2015.

ULTRALAB was also a form of early startup incubator, housing the charity Africa Bookcase and new media agency Sodium.

History of Projects

Renaissance Project

An Multimedia CD-ROM program on the Macintosh from 1990. The project was funded by Apple, who gave £500,000 to Stephen Heppell and his early ULTRALAB team to explore how multimedia could be used for teaching.

Learning in the New Millennium

Project that impacted on much to follow - from the incoming Labour government's ICT policy to our vocabulary in projects like Notschool. Project headed up by Carole Chapman. Some original pages still exist on heppell.net

LiNM was an online community of mixed age practice, primary to secondary. It included forums, mentoring, blended learning and a model known as stage not age... see this video summary from around 1998.

Tesco Schoolnet 2000

Tesco SchoolNet 2000 was an online project, in collaboration with supermarket chain Tesco Stores PLC and Intuitive Media. The project created monthly challenges for the children taking part ("Find the most famous person near where you live and ask them about their school days"), and to ensure even access for all, children were able to come into specially installed computer suites in all Tesco supermarkets, to use the equipment there and to take part in the then worlds biggest online project. It was featured in the Guinness World Record Awards.

During the project lifespan around the turn of the millennium, over 520,000 children took part and over 15,000 UK schools registered for the project.

Tesco SchoolNet 2000 no longer exists online, but was initially subsumed into a product called SchoolNet Global by company Intuitive Media in the UK, SchoolNet Global was further transformed into to KidsOKOnline which still exists today, although shares no assets with the original Tesco project. The URL tesco.schoolnet2000.com now redirects to Tesco's homepage due to the project ceasing around 2002.

The partnership of Ultralab and Tesco went on to design the Learning Zone in the Millennium Dome to showcase the work of the children taking part in TSN2K, as the project was often shortened to.

National Educational Computing Archive

Much of the archive was gathered in the years 1990 - 2006 by Prof Stephen Heppell with Richard Millwood and stored at Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford. In its early days it was catalogued by Greta Mladenova and in 2006 Rex Wingate helped to organise the items in store.

After 2006, the archive moved from North Building to its current home in Brentwood, Essex. More recently, since 2011, Doreen Wright, Nick Rushby, Chris Monk and Joy Hooper have been helping catalogue the materials and develop policies.

The archive is available to view online at naec.org.uk

Chestnet.net

The project started back in October, 1996 with funding from the North Thames Deanery. The project aimed was to create an online community of practice linking together relevant hospitals around the region - in particular their thoracic medicine specialists.

eViva

eVIVA was an innovative “blue skies” pilot project at Ultralab which used mobile phones, voice recognition technology and the Internet to support formative and summative assessment. The two-year project ran from 2002 to an end in July 2004. Children completed their e-assessment year with a viva on their mobile phones.

Online Learning Network (OLN)

Running from September 1997-1998 this pilot online learning community was designed for an with educationalists in advance of the University for Industry (UfI) .

SMILE - SME Internet Learning Experience

THE SMILE PROJECT (the SME Internet Learning Experience) was a pilot project developed collaboratively with Anglia Ruskin University's Innovation Unit and funded by EU / ADAPT. It examined how engineers in the automotive (Ford Motor Company) and aerospace (Marshals) industries can integrate online community methodologies into the professional practice of their supply chains 1998-1999.

Notschool.net

A Virtual school for children excluded from school by behaviour or circumstances - for example exclusions, refusals, phobics 1998 - continues Notschool began as a result of a conversation between Professor Stephen Heppell and DfEE permanent Secretary Michael Bichard (now Baron Bichard, KCB), and Secretary of State David Blunkett during a DfES Standards Task Force in 1997. The founding hypothesis was that children excluded from school by behaviour or circumstances could still achieve useful education in a "virtual school" entirely on-line. The project ran successfully from 1998, continuing today (2015). At its peak it had around 1,000 "researchers" (as the students were know) enrolled in any year. Link to the origins and history of Notschool are here: http://heppell.net/notschool/ (but there should be a link to those pages from http://history.notschool.net too - needs fixing) Current Notschool is found here http://www.inclusiontrust.org as part of the Inclusion Trust charity.

Talking Heads

Piloted between January and December 2000, Talking Heads developed online learning communities for approximately 1200 Head Teachers in advance of the National College of School Leaders. The communities were developed by a team of 12 full time remote-working online facilitators.

Virtual Heads

Virtual Heads embedded and extended the online communities blueprint developed via Talking Heads into the NPQH (National Professional Qualification for Headship).

National College of School Leadership Senior Management Communities of Practice

With ULTRALAB's team of 21 full time online facilitators, Online communities of practice were subsequently integrated into all the courses delivered by the National College of School Leadership. The project was fully novated to the NCSL in October 2003.

Ultraversity (degree at ULTRALAB)

Ultraversity was a pioneering online degree, devised by Ultralab and offered as an accredited degree by Anglia Ruskin University.

The original concept has been transformed somewhat into the BA Learning, Technology, Research (its name a link back to its creation in ULTRALAB), which is still offered as an online, work-based degree at Anglia Ruskin University.

eTui

A pink eTui educational toy, created at Ultralab

Ultralab, the University Pompeu Fabra and Apple Computer partnered for a two year project to develop an educational toy to support children's learning. The device aimed to stimulate, through learning activities, meta-level learning awareness, problem solving, creativity and collaboration.

Two research papers were published regarding the project which are still available to read.

A video is available on YouTube showing the eTui moving.

EduQUEST Project

Launched by RADM (NS) Teo Chee Hean, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION & SECOND MINISTER FOR DEFENCE, Singapore on 19 September 2001, at Marsiling Secondary School, Singapore. In practice, the projects within the scheme began in January 2001. The project ran for three years. The project was funded by Apple Computer and led by Prof Stephen Heppell and was based in three Singapore schools: Marsiling Secondary, Canberra Primary and Woodlands Primary The project was initiated by the Ministry of Education. edu.QUEST stood loosely for education Quality & Excellence in Schools. The project explored the impact of new digital technologies, in particular digital image and digital video, on learning. In particular asking students to "write up" their science experiments in digital video, rather than with pen and paper, allowed students significantly younger (10 rather than 14) to successfully complete science tasks from within the curriculum. Minister's launch speech here http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2001/sp19092001.htm

Notable Team Members

Prof Stephen Heppell

Richard Millwood

Sam Deane ( Left to join Sports Interactive, worked on Championship Manager)

Published Papers

Academics at Ultralab were research active and published many papers and online articles.

http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/7062/8/download_id%3D17095%26filename%3D100000-heads-are-better-than-one_Redacted.pdf
Ramondt, L. (2008) Chapter 18: CoPs: the next generation In Kimble, C, Hildreth, P., (eds), Volume 2: Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators, London, Information age publishing, 365-391 pages, ISBN=1593118651 (bookchapter)
• Ramondt, L.S., Shifting Paradigms - Online Learning Communities for Educationalists, Occasional Paper, http://www.inspire.anglia.ac.uk/download.php?view.5, Oct 2007
• Ramondt, L.S., The eMature learner, Commissioned think piece, Becta, 2006
• Chapman C, Ramondt L, Smiley G (2005) Strong Community, Deep Learning: Exploring the Link, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 42 (3), 217- 230 available from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.4130&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Ramondt, L., Exploring e-democracy- interim findings, Microsoft project report, Nov 2004 available from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.4130&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Ramondt L, Chapman C (2004) Shifting Paradigms - online community for school leaders, Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2004, AACE, available http://dl.aace.org/14844, AACE, 3013-3020 pages
• Heppell, S., Ramondt, L., Bradshaw, P, Public Service Broadcasting in the Learning Age: where now for the BBC?, Report, Oct 2004

• Chapman C, Ramondt L, Online Communities - Final Report: Developments in the Communities of Practice and the Programme Communities NCSL, 90, 01 Jan 2003
• Ramondt L, Chapman C, Lessons Learnt - Large sustainable online communities - models for high activity and engagement, private report to Oracle, 30 Jan 2002
• Bradshaw P , Chapman C, Powell S, Ramondt L, T errell I, (Eds), Talking Heads, two year research reflections, Interim report to NCSL, 98, 01 Jan 2002
• Jones S, Lang G, Terrell I, Thompson K, Ramondt L (2001) Establishing On-lline Communities for School Leaders: an interim report, Bera
• Heppell S, Ramondt L (01 Jan 1998) Online learning - implications for the University for Industry: a preliminary case study report, Journal of Education through Partnership, 2 (2 available from http://rubble.heppell.net/papers/online_learning.pdf)

External links

• The Last Ultralab Website
• List of Ultralab Projects c.2002