Information Technology

Barry Mallon, Pre-16 Co-ordinator, Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies
Nigel Akers, IT Diploma Co-ordinator, Nottingham City

Barry Mallon, Pre-16 Co-ordinator, Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies: Hi everyone! Welcome to Confetti. I’m Barry. I am going to be your host today. Right, I’ll show you around then.

Nigel Akers, IT Diploma Co-ordinator, Nottingham City: We’ve come to Confetti today because Business Challenge 2 is working with a local rock band and they need a bit of help to get some presence on the internet and Confetti are going to help us get to grips with some of that. Skills which obviously they’ve not picked up through their normal IT training in their first three years of secondary school.

Barry Mallon: That mixing desk recorded the first two Oasis albums...

Barry Mallon: This is a bit of a pilot project where we’ll be working more closely with them during the course of the next couple of terms, where they are going to be working in conjunction with some of our students. Because Confetti has such strong links with the creative industries, effectively when they are walking through our front door, they’re walking into the industry.

Nigel Akers: We’ve had meetings here to discuss exactly what we want the youngsters to get out of it. Obviously I have listened to what Confetti can offer and they’ve sorted us out this morning with this experience.

Barry Mallon: So the plan is I’ve got us some video footage for us to edit, and to work with, and we’re going to be working on that for half an hour or so while we’ll learn some techniques.

Nigel Akers: What the learners get from this workshop is an experience of industry standard hardware and software. It puts into context what they’re doing. It’s not something they’re doing in the classroom; it’s something that does relate to the real world. They’ve seen the studio where the soundtracks for films that they’ve watched at the cinema... they’ve seen where they’re always put together. So they realise this is not a school situation, this is a real workplace. And you’ve got people who have appeared on those films and made soundtracks for those films teaching them, so it does make it really relevant to them.

It gives them that enthusiasm to approach learning in a slightly different way. And that’s something I can’t create as a teacher, they see me as a teacher, but they come here and see the real workers, and it puts it into context for them – it’s great.

Barry Mallon: I think the main thing really was just for me to get across that there is more to IT than what they realise. There are all these creative possibilities. And of course it is not just a fun thing, it’s a learning experience as well because we were using industry standard software, we’re accessing the network, transferring files across, backing up, exporting files in different formats. So there’s loads and loads and loads of IT, stuff that they might do at school but within a creative context. So they’re learning, they’re reinforcing what they've learnt by practising, but without really knowing because they want to do it because there is a creative outcome at the end of it. So it’s sort of broadening their horizon really, thinking about IT creatively and not just as computers that they’ll find in an office.

Learner: It’s a broader experience. It’s like you're starting something real. And it’s giving you really, like, some helpful key skills.

Barry Mallon: And make it longer... pull it across.

END