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Cross Border Digital Creativiy Project 2 – CBDCP2
This new and highly innovative cross border project collaboration between the North Eastern Education Library Board (NEELB) and Monaghan Education Centre has been running for almost three years and provides high-end multimedia training for students in TV, film and music production. CBDCP1 ran for the first two years and was funded by the European Union Interreg IIIA Programme Ireland/Northern Ireland through the Irish Central Border Area Interreg IIIA Partnership (ICBAN).
The second and current phase of this project, CBDCP2, commenced in September 2007 and is funded by the Teacher Education Section of the Department of Education & Science in the south and by NEELB and by the Department of Education in the north. The project has two main objectives in the south; to record best practice in primary classrooms as delivered by advisors (Cuiditheoirí) of the Primary Curriculum Support Service (PCSP); and secondly to provide industry standard training for transition year students who will operate the cameras and work with the professional crew during the “live” recordings. This will also provide aspiring transition year students with an insight into a career as a primary school teacher. The project is also being replicated in NEELB schools in the north with the Curriculum Advisory Support Service (CASS) with one exception. There are no crews of students involved as they will be replaced with robotic cameras!
Four schools from county Monaghan have been selected to participate including Castleblayney College, Our Lady’s Secondary School, Castleblayney, Monaghan Collegiate and St Macartan’s College, Monaghan. Ten transition year students from each participating school are being provided with the opportunity to receive and experience multimedia training on industry standard equipment coupled with industry standard professional training. The project training will initially involve training in film production with a moving image technician and support staff from NEELB at Monaghan Education Centre. Stage two in spring 2008 involves student crews travelling to primary schools to work as crew members on live recordings of the Primary Curriculum Support Service at work with local primary teachers and schools.
All of these live recordings will be directed and coordinated by an onsite outside broadcast vehicle know as the Digital Creativity Truck valued at over €200,000.
“The Truck” was launched on Tuesday the 28th of February 2006 at NEELB in Antrim town and arrived for its first training day at Monaghan Education Centre on March the 27th, 2006. It is essentially an outside broadcast unit similar to those operated by RTE, BBC and UTV, but it is unique as it will be the first of its kind to be run exclusively for Education in the island of Ireland. The truck’s video facilities are based around a Broadcast Pix vision mixer offering 8 widescreen video inputs. This mixer is fed from 6 Sony Z1 camcorders and 2 Sony PD150’s. Audio is centred round an Allen and Heath GL4800 audio mixer. It can cater for up eight cameras and sound equipment when covering an event. Outside broadcasts can be mounted back to schools and to the community including live interviews, news items, concerts, seminars and drama productions.
CBDCP2 provides local students with a unique training experience that will prepare many of them for careers in television, radio, film making and music production and primary teaching. However it also provides students with many key team skills that are an important part of any work experience.
The project is coordinated by Jimmy Mc Geough & Jim Mc Gee (Monaghan Education Centre) and Ray Gilbert & Peter Simpson (NEELB). They also receive the invaluable assistance of Marie Mc Loughlin & Fiona Rushe (PCSP) and Siobháin Mc Killop & Lorna Gardiner (CASS).
You can view streaming video demos of "The Truck" and get more information about the participating schools by visiting the projects page of the ICT Advisor Section