Daniel Marshall wins prestigious Elektra Award

Posted on by Wendy

Congratulations to recent Cardiff Met graduate Daniel Marshall for winning the rising star award at the prestigious Elektra Awards in London last week.

20140812_154858Daniel worked with CARIAD on his award winning Empathy project – designing for children with autism. The full project can be seen on his website.

Daniel impressed the panel with his enthusiasm, originality and overall commitment to designing for real
people and real world problems! Well done Daniel and best of luck for the future, we hope to work with you again!

Final workshops underway for ProFoundCoding

Posted on by Wendy

Thanks to AnalysisPro and teachers Andrew Walker and Rachel Woodhouse for working with us over the past few months to develop our latest video tagging templates. The project won additional funding from CEWN to create new templates based around concepts of engagement to tag video sessions of children with profound and complex learning and communication difficulties. We will be releasing the template shortly along with instructions on ways to use and interpret the template for teachers in special schools. We will be adding the latest templates and information to our resource and website, ProFoundCoding which we released over the summer.

We spoke about the project at a recent CEWN special showcase event at the University of South Wales, Trefforest where we pitched the next stages to create new employment opportunities in special schools for Performance Analysis. Watch this space 🙂

 

CARIAD invites everybody to SHOWCASE OF SOMABILITY AND RECENT CARIAD PROJECTS at the WMC on the 11th of November

Posted on by Wendy

 

Somability APPS graphic (2)-3This celebratory event will showcase Somability, an accessible software application, created by designers from Cardiff Metropolitan University and Cariad Interactive in partnership with Rhondda Cynon Taf Skills for Independence day care service and Artis Community. The project uses game technologies to capture movement and generate beautiful, graphic imagery. A compelling preview of Somability will be performed by adults with profound and multiple disabilities and their support workers on the Glanfa Stage. This will be followed by an explanation of the project, panel discussion and an opportunity for the audience to join in and explore the software. There will opportunity to see other recent work being undertaken at CARIAD, to meet participants, researchers, organisations, charities and businesses improving people’s lives through the arts.

For more information on Somability and other CARIAD projects see:

www.cariadinteractive.com/somability/ and www.cardiffmet.ac.uk/cariad

CELEBRATION SHOWCASING SOMABILITY AND RECENT CARIAD PROJECTS

WALES MILLENNIUM CENTRE – GLANFA STAGE

11th of November 2014, 13:00 – 15:00

Order of event:

  • 13:00 Introduction, led by Wendy Keay-Bright, with input Rhondda Cynon Taf Skills for Independence
  • 13.20 Short Sharing of Somability with Artis Community
  • 13:40 Introduction to CARIAD centre and CARIAD student projects
  • 13.50 Panel discussion
  • 14:00 Open (mic) free expression with Touch Trust for peers, families, friends and visitors to try Somability
  • 14:20 Short Plenary discussion with RCT, Cariad, Artis Community and Touch Trust
  • 14:30 Networking and chance to view other CARIAD projects

 

The event will be open to the public and in a public space.

Please send all enquires and RSVP to lmclaughlin@cardiffmet.ac.uk

 

New CEWN funding success

Posted on by Wendy

20140430113038.m2ts.Still001Delighted to announce that Leah has been successful in her latest funding bid to work with special need teachers from Exeter House School and AnalysisPro! ProEngagementCoding will be developing new work and templates from our first collaboration with the project ProFoundCoding. The group will be seeking to extend their reach by designing a series of templates and to begin evaluations of the templates in action, a call for some volunteers will be going out soon!

 

Video tagging project a success

Posted on by Wendy

20140430113038.m2ts.Still001Thanks to everybody involved in our recent SIP success, exploring performance analysis tools to help teachers capture and evidence engagement in special needs schools. We have developed two templates for you all to use and test out, as well as some helpful tips and hints for storing and managing your video files. You can find all the details on the brand new project website here.

http://videocodingasd.wordpress.com/. Please take a look around and tell us what you think?!?

Intensive Interaction Template

CARIAD wins two new SIPS (Strategic Insight Programe) awards

Posted on by Wendy

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Congratulations to Leah and Cathy for being awarded another two SIP (Strategic Insight Programme) awards. Cathy will work with the company Stillwalks http://stillwalks.wordpress.com/ to create a series of drawings through video. She will also scope some potentials of using some Stillwalk videos to promote wellbeing by ‘bringing the outside in’.

Leah will be working with AnalysisPro http://www.analysispro.net/, Andrew from Exeter House http://www.exeterhouseschool.co.uk/ and Dawn from St Luke’s http://www.stlukes.herts.sch.uk/ special needs school to scope ways of tagging videos of Intensive Interaction sessions. Thank you very much to Cardiff Met and everybody who helped on our bids!

CARIAD visits Exeter House School to discuss potentials for video tagging

Posted on by Wendy

 
Thank you Andrew from Exeter House School http://www.exeterhouseschool.co.uk/ for hosting such an eventful day yesterday: exploring the possibilities of video tagging to capture Intensive Interaction sessions with young people with learning difficulties. Leah from CARIAD and Jon Moore from Analysis Pro http://www.analysispro.net/ had an eventful first meeting at Salisbury yesterday. We looked at some videos of ‘Intensive Interaction’ with the lovely Dawn all the way from St Luke’s Foundation School, Hertfordshire http://www.stlukes.herts.sch.uk/tv_radio/index.html showing us the amazing work they are doing capturing evidence of their intensive Interactions with young people with learning difficulties. Lee from IT and Rachel another teacher from Exeter House completed our group.

DSC05102We started by discussing some of the problems encountered particularly with evidencing children’s engagement and communication. The focus was on the Intensive Interaction sessions, a widely used model to encourage communication and one that has had incredible results. We also learned about some research into capturing these Intensive Interaction sessions using video, and the strategies and recommendations the teachers have developed. This ranged from the angle of the camera to the size of the frame. We learned that the focus is always on the face in Intensive Interactions and that it has been argued that video can capture nuances and idiosyncratic details within these sessions more effectively than other measurement models.

Then we discussed some of the problems with capturing the sessions. Many many issues were discussed from technical problems (for example not enough room to store HD data on school servers), to aesthetic and communicative features of video (for example a bird’s eye view coupled with a close up, narrative within the clips, and a sense of the environment with less than perfect filming)to much more conceptual and challenging problems (for example subjective interpretations of behaviours, how much detail and history of the child is needed to make a claim for improvement)…and this was just the morning!

Later Jon took the floor and gave a very brief overview of some of the software tools and packages he has been developing in partnerships for his entire career. Originally used for sports analysis we discussed some of the potentials of adapting some of the strategies, tools and software to begin to code and manage some of the video from the Intensive Interactions. To pick out key moments, file information and use it to build up layers of metadata of rich and dynamic visual evidence of the children’s engagement. Looking forward to the next stages!