The Classroom of the Future launches Electric December

3rd December 2004

The acclaimed online digital advent calendar electricdecember.org was launched at the Classroom for the Future the CPR Learning Space in Camborne on Wednesday December 1st, with an exciting event that included a live video linkup between primary and secondary students in Cornwall and Bristol.

Young people from schools across Cornwall were the very first to use brand new combined internet and video-conferencing technology at the CPR Learning Space, specially set up for the event by Internet Videocommunications, and really pushing the building’s capabilities.

This was all part of a Creative Partnerships and Watershed collaborative project that partners up young people with creative and multimedia practitioners, artists and musicians to bring ideas and creative processes to digital fruition. 2004’s calendar is the second collaborative year between the two agencies, and the sixth that the Watershed has been running the idea.

Watershed’s Director Dick Penny, in Cornwall specially for the event and there to meet with the children involved, said: “It astounds me and thrills me that every year the ideas, and the sheer brilliance of the young people’s creativity, just gets more and more exciting!”

Based this year on the inspiring theme of ‘transformation’, the unique and highly creative gifts - from games to films, animation to music – really reflect the wealth of talent in the region, and centre on the broader project’s core principles of collaboration, innovation and the creative process. These principles mirror those of Creative Partnerships itself, a government-funded organisation whose aims are to place creativity at the heart of education whilst raising the value of education within the creative industries.

Gifts created by nine exciting partnerships involving 186 young people from Cornwall and Plymouth are being exhibited during December, alongside gifts from Bristol, Bath, Somerset and Gloucester, and covering some diverse, delightful and fun ideas.

During Wednesday’s event, the children not only spoke live to the Bristol children at the Watershed’s Bristol site, but were also able to show them their online gifts using synchronous websites linked at either end in specially-timed presentations and with only minor technical hitches. Staff at the CPR Learning Space said they were “Thrilled that the link had worked so well the first time it had ever been attempted.”

The event was also attended by visiting cultural industries dignitaries with the British Council, during a visit organised by Creative Kernow in conjunction with Creative Partnerships. At an evening reception for the adult contributors Dick Penny said: “The fantastic gifts created for this year’s electric december really allow the young people’s ideas to shine through – and I really do take my hat off to the creative practitioners for their skill and input in facilitating this.”

This project is an exciting one for the young people with their ideas set to reach visitors from over 60 countries worldwide over the coming month and beyond. Teacher Nigel Bispham of Camborne School, attending the daytime event with students, said: “This has been such an brilliant day for everyone, a real inspiration for the children showing their work to their Bristol counterparts, and stunning to see the possibilities of creative and technological links.”

For more information on this innovative and exciting use of videoconferencing in education, please call us on +44 (0)1628 484446.