DIT Digital
Dreamland Poster
The second year we ran the project we took on board Jez Collins' and Paul Long's important work on the power of 'Doing It Together' rather than 'Doing It Yourself'. We changed the title of the project accordingly.
We chose a different approach based on last year's experience and inspired by it. We worked with a specific heritage project Dreamland, Margate, to help us think about the line between academic historical research and heritage, the seeming growth of the vintage market, and to explore working to a 'brief' with the students.
We combined our families' half term holidays to scope out Dreamland
Rebecca Ellis, Director of Events and Programming at Dreamland provided us with three possible areas that they would be interested in
1) Digital Technology in an analogue partk
2) The New Vintage
3) How does a 'cool' profile fit with local families and their needs. How can culture rejuvenate a community?
We arranged a tour of the Turner Gallery, with a particular focus on their outreach and community projects, a talk from Rebbeca Ellis, and Iain Aitch.
Working with Mentors
A key difference for this project was that we had learnt how important the mentors could be for the project. We had two mentors with us in Margate, Louise and Robbie, both of whom had been on the course the previous year. So Louise and Robbie.knew the benefits and challenges of Padlet from their experiences last year. (Although since the trip to Margate Padlet have announced some new developments). We had found Padlet tricky to use on mobiles and Thinglink works well on mobile devices. This was going to be really important on the day. We didn’t have an expensive kit just a couple of laptops brought along by students and whatever mobile phones people already had.
Louise and Robbie did some training with TEL who funded the project. This meant that before the trip they had already been able to identify what apps and tools they thought would work well. We didn’t want to waste too much time with unsuitable tools on the trip.
They explored a number of options., thinking about any privacy issues, and usability on mobile phones,
YouTube https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57407?hl=en-GB
Audioboom u https://audioboom.com/
CamScanner https://www.camscanner.com/
and Flipboard
Anne Hole pointed out all the great additional resources in the TEL blog http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/ including:
http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/2016/02/16/mobileforlearning/
http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/2016/02/03/our-a-z-list-of-app-new-and-improved/
http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/2015/06/23/clever-apps-for-smart-researchers/
http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/tel/2014/09/23/study-smart-5-mobile-apps-for-students/
and the A-Z of apps web page at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tel/learningtechnologies/apps
Developing the projects
Students in groups identified the theme from the brief that they wanted to work on and began to go through the tasks as found in the Toolkit
Students chose to work with Thinglink and Padlet under the advice of the Mentors
In Dreamland
We used the local bus company Lemon Bus for our transport
We arranged three activities for PPB students in Margate. We had a talk on the history of Dreamland from Rebecca Ellis.
Local artist Iain Aitch talked to us about his own work and the politics of cultural memory in Margate. Students had done some preliminary reading on Aitch's work in combination with an extract from Raphael Samuel's Theatres of Memory. We were also given a tour of Turner Contemporary by Schools Officer, Jennifer Scott. This helped us to think about the different models of community engagement used by Turner and by Dreamland.
Our tour of the Turner Contemporary
Ian Aitch had combined oral history with heritage work to produce a Margate Youth Culture Map. This inspired the following year's work on geotagging and googlemaps
Margate Subcultures Map
The map was also available via google maps
Dreamland
This is what we thought we would do.
This was our provisional schedule
Not all activities were planned
Spontaneous Research Methods
Roller Disco - not on original itinerary
We set up a twitter hashtag to capture images and agreed an ethos
Our Dreamland ethods
This is what we did
What we ended up doing
What they Produced
Students then worked in their groups to build, complete and launch their resources which we presented to Rebecca from Dreamlands.
Vintage
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/769574842767769600 What is vintage #Dreamland
Instructions
1. Start at the entrance to get an understanding of what we can learn from thinglink
2. Go to the dreamland sign next to the entrance for what is vintage
3. At the highest point of the rollercoaster for generation
4. The pleasure park sign for presentation on commodification
5. The Dreamland sign at the rear of the park is presentation on Arcades and vintage at Dreamland
Heritage
Step 1 – Download the free app from the App Store or from the website: https://www.thinglink.com/stream
Step 2 – Create a free account! It takes 2 minutes
Step 3 – If using the app on your phone, use the code D4MS4A to join our channel
Step 4 – If using your laptop, enter the address https://www.thinglink.com/channel/769576995393634304 into your browser’s search bar to go to the Dreamland channel
Step 4 – Browse through the interviews and pictures; clicking a picture will take you to additional content including articles and videos!
Step 5 – Make your own ThingLink image and use the hashtag #Dreamland2016 to add your content to the Dreamland search!
What Students Got Out of It
We were able to complete the circuit of students working on and analysing student resources in a number of ways. We incorporated the OERs into later modules, for example, and included the map of Dreamland in the 2016 'gobbet' exercise. (In which students situate, analyse and evaluate short excerpts of primary sources)
Students discussed how they could 'translate' DIT Dreamland into their CVs
Sell PPB on your CV
Informal feedback. The students make a zine all about their experiences on the project.
18 June 2016 11:15
Thank you so much Lucy, you have been the best tutor of all my time at university. Thank you for being so supportive and encouraging, I hope we have made you proud!
I just wanted to thank you for everything you have done for me and the Ppb group over the past year.
You have truly made my time at Sussex quite exceptional. I will be telling perspective history students to take ALL of your courses.
It was the highlight of my degree for sure.
Feedback from MEQs
- Lucy Robinson is an incredible tutor. I really enjoyed the course content but felt it was even more brought to life through Lucy's teaching. She really inspired us as a class, and gave us a lot of confidence to explore the subject.
- Really really enjoyed the module! The content and delivery was interesting and the extra stuff such as the cinema trip and margate were very much appreciated and helped form a post punk community!
Reporting Back and Legacies
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