The workshop sessions so far

The Creative Learning workshop sessions have given a number of individuals and organisations the opportunity to explore the use of social networking to either expand their social circles or for many it seems they want to develop better ways to connect with their own communities and even to connect with wider communities.

Grace Han and I (Carl Plant) have gained a fair bit of knowledge and experience through running creative communities such as www.theseants.com and www.bitjam.co.uk and wish to share their knowledge with others.

Here are a few of the topics covered so far:

• How to connect with people
• How to integrate SN into existing static websites with transient communities
• How to design and run more personalised web relationships via SN and sites
• How to bring a parish magazine into social networking.
• How to use SN(Social Network) clients such as Tweetdeck
• How to break into Linkedin for business
• how to gain better paid clients

We also covered more advanced ideas such as:

• How not to be a slave to the networks
• Building in SN to your daily lives
• Using SN clients
• Using Ning ans WordPress
• Mobile tech
• Location aware apps
• Social bookmarking
• RSS Feeds and alerts

We also covered the tricky bits about encouraging people to join in the virtual community of practices/interests, managing and enhancing reputation by engaging even with the most negative of online conversations. Also the cost benefit of online engagement and running an organisation using the free tools even across geographical distances.
We hope this passage of knowledge will trickle out further and inspire others to use the resources freely available to connect with their community.

Live art event this Thursday

This coming Thursday 4th of March, we have confirmed our promotional networking creative event AntsArtJam at the Rigger (ST5 1BT) in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

AntsArtJam is a mini project in cooperation with TheseAnts and bITjAM, belongs to the Creative Learning Network of the Talking Shop project running by Staffordshire University, aiming at providing community groups and individuals in the North Staffordshire with a series of FREE workshops to encourage expression of ideas, thoughts, views and opinions, as well as new ways of leaning and digital inclusion.

We have received many interests for the event, and have some local established artists to perform live drawing/painting on a professional level. At the same time, any visitors are encouraged to try out their creativity with materials provided. This event is aiming at boosting the creativity, learning, communicating and sharing experience and provide people with an opportunity to try out fun creative activities.

The event will also be broadcast live via Twitter and other popular social networks.

Event happens between 9:00PM to midnight with FREE entry.

Mini project-World Community arts day celebration

A live broadcasted mashup of video and audio material produced by 3 Community groups.

The project was run between the bITjAM, Barefoot doctors and a group of young people, with ‘guest’ appearances from a few Staffordshire university Community Arts students.

The images and audio were collected through several sessions and then mashed up via the bITjAM and broadcasted live.

Click here for a recorded version of the video broadcast

1st Workshop Session confirmed

We have confirmed the date, time & venue for our 1st workshop session, please see below for details:

Date & time:

13th Feb. Saturday morning 9:30AM to 12:00PM

Venue:

The Hope Centre (IT Suite) in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent

*[Attendees who need to arrange for child care to be able to attend workshop will be able to claim back the expenses if they keep the receipt/evidences.]*

How to get there?

Please let us know if you would like to attend and register your interest.

If you would like to see more details about the workshop sessions, please click HERE. You will also be able to give us your preferences for the dates for the further workshop sessions to take place.

On a rough note, all the workshop sessions are likely to be held at the same venue (Hope Centre, Hanley) on Saturday mornings, although some Monday and Thursday evening can be arranged,too depends on the attendees availabilities.

If you would like to speak to us or get in touch for more details, please contact us using the following details:

Tel.: 01782 831 911

E-mail:

Clare White (WEA Stoke)

claremariewhite@gmail.com

Grace Han (G-hAn MadE Graphic, Web Design & Illustration)

gracehan.design@googlemail.com

Carl Plant (bITjAM Audio & visual Events)

carlplant@me.com

Or simply leave us a comment below

AntsArtJam Mini Project coming soon

As part of the Creative Learning Network project, here we representing 1 of the Mini Projects –a social creative collaboration session with audience involvement, in coorperation with bITjAM. This mini project aiming at boosting the creativity within the community of Stoke-on-Trent.

Venue: The Rigger, Newcastle-under-Lyme ST5 1BT

Date & time: 4th March Thursday from 9:00PM till after midnight

What’s on?

Setting up stage (including white drawing panels, projection screen, canvases, etc.) for artists/creative individuals to perform/draw/paint/graffiti/create sound/project digital images along side the normal bITjAM event.

Find out more details at our MINI PROJECTS proposed ideas page HERE.

If you are an artist want to register for performing live drawing/painting/graffiti, please get in touch via:

Email: bitjam@me.com |   hello@theseants.com

Or simply leave us a message via the comment box.

Workshop sessions

The dates for booking the workshop sessions are:

February:

13th Saturday monrings 9:30AM to 12:00PM - Session 1;

20th Saturday monrings 9:30AM to 12:00PM – Session 2;

27th Saturday monrings 9:30AM to 12:00PM - Session 1;

March:

6th Saturday monrings 9:30AM to 12:00PM - Session 2;

8th Monday evenings 6:30PM to 8:30PM – Session 1;

15th Monday evenings 6:30PM to 8:30PM – Session 2;

20th Saturday monrings 9:30AM to 12:00PM - Wrap-up Session,useful tips & networking

*[Attendees who need to arrange for child care to be able to attend workshop will be able to claim back the expenses if they keep the receipt/evidences.]*

Venue:

The Hope Centre (IT suite) in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent

Workshop plans and content:
The sessions will be flexible, informal and hopefully fun too!

Session 1:

• House rules
• Introductions / icebreaker – what do you hope to get from the sessions?
• Confidence scales 1-10, 10 being v confident, 1 is not
• Aims for sessions
• Session plan
• Introducing the equipment
• Overview of blurb and creativelearning as examples WP [handout]
• Break into activity

—BREAK—

• What can you do within a social network:

–The dashboard!
–privacy settings
–Upload a photo

• Video
• Posting a comment
• Tagging
• Make friends and networking
• Showcase/discussion -

what have you done?
what issues did it raise?
Was it as hard as you expected?
What would you like to do next?
Anything we missed?

• ‘Learning Extension’ Write down some things you want to do between sessions.
• Evaluate the session

Session 2:

• House rules
• Reflection on last week’s session and inbetween activities
• Demonstrations:

RSS feeds
Monitoring mentions/profile
IP theft + creative commons
Research
Embedding
Social bookmarking
Realtime search
Data.gov.uk etc
Crowdsourcing

• Activity choice: presence development, research of networks and tools, network discussions

Additional sectors and contents would possibly be added when identified demands and discussed.
For people that only attend 1 session of choice, some of these contents will be altered as we go along.
Don’t worry if you can not make both sessions, as all the learning materials (tutorials, hand-outs,etc.) will be free for download on our website.
The aim is that everyone should be able to walk away with more skills and knowledge and have the ability to carry on developing these skills via online methods.
If you haven’t filled in the form for the workshop date and time preference, please do now HERE.

Free workshops – register your interest now

We are now gathering interest for the Talking Shop Creative Network workshops.

These FREE workshops are open to anybody with no prior qualifications or experience needed, but tailored towards people involved in creative activities, whether as a hobby or profession, who are interested in the possibilities of digital technology to network and trade.

A particular purpose is to improve digital connections amongst creative and wider communities in the North Staffordshire area, so feel free to also send this invitation to anyone else you think will be interested and also – possibly more importantly – talk to anyone who is not online but would be interested in finding out more, we can register people if they call 01782 831 911.

Please register your interest at this stage and we will send confirmed dates to choose from as soon as we have an idea of likely groups and convenient locations. There will be 2 workshops per group and they will take place before the end of March.

Introductory howto guide for ning sites

Here’s a quick introductory video on using the Ning social network for the first time.

Creating an online portfolio

Here are a few ideas around creating an eportfolio, there are many options and ways to go about this however we shall look at a few free tools that can provide professional looking portfolios.In this tutorial post we will look at setting up a portfolio to show images such as photographs or drawings, however some of the ideas here will be just as useful to share video work, poetry, audio etc…

Evaluation tools

Here’s a few links to various evaluation tools you may need to measure how your product or website is doing using surveys, questionnaires and tools to measure visitors to your site. Surveymonkey, Wufoo, Glowday, Google forms…