Mair Education News

Glitzy Film Premiere for Lincs Filmmaker

2011-06-09T14:35:00+00:00

The film premiere organised by Sara and Meena to celebrate the 8 brilliantly creative films that form the Young People’s Guide to Lincolnshire Museums was a huge success attended by young people from all over the county.. The young people wanted to see their work on the big screen so we made it happen and recently launched the films at an Oscars style premier in a retro-cinema. Over 120 people attended including the young people, Director for Economy and Culture at Lincolnshire County Council and Dr Nick Barrett of the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are who had heard about the project.

Lincolnshire Heritage Forum, Lincolnshire County Council, one county covering 2000 square miles, 8 museums, 74 young people and the most severe winter Britain has seen in years! Four months later and the result…

Bitesize Online Interactive Science Games

2011-02-03T18:46:00+00:00

Mair Education are once again working in collaboration with Splinter Design to create, design and build 11 interactive online games for the BBC.
The contract will see Sara work with the Liverpool-based team to write the content and test games for the new science section of the Bitesize area of the BBC’s site. The team is joined by KS1 Co-ordinator Kate Main (of St Nicholas’s Primary School in Beverley). Kate will work with Sara to ensure the content helps the target audience of 5 to 7 year olds have fun while reviewing their knowledge and understanding of science topics.

Bitesize is the BBC’s online learning resource for 5 to 16 year olds, supporting development across classwork, coursework and revision for tests and exams. Its key stage one resource currently focuses on maths and English and is used by some 55% of the UK’s primary school students.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/
www.splinter.co.uk

Read more about Splinter and the project in North West Media News
http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-news/north-west-digital-media/splinter-snaps-up-all-of-bbc%92s-bitesize-science-games-201101139983/

The Splinter Team and Sara get Bitesized!

The Mair Dynasty

2010-08-12T13:58:00+00:00

One sunny day in August, The Mair Education team expanded. Soon to be Communications student, eighteen year old Katy Mair, joined Sara at her York offices. Katy assumed the role of youth advisor, helping Sara with projects including Woolsthorpe Manor e-learning materials and the West Lancs LGBT youth project. Writing summaries aimed at younger audiences, creating content for the Clued up in Hull website and researching key issues in ‘tween’ relationships were challenging tasks which Katy attacked with typical Mair vigour, applying the modern youth’s lingo. Surprisingly, these tasks proved to be a light relief from getting to grips with the high-tech editing system of the Mair Education website. A case of role reversal we think, who said that youth were good with computers?!

Katy said:
“I’ve had such a good time working with Sara at Mair Education. There is never a dull moment here, every project is very interesting and unique, meaning the work differs from one day to the next. Sara is a woman of many talents, not only is she funny, hard working and great to be around, she also makes brilliant sandwiches!!!”

Graphites Resources win award for education outreach provision

2010-07-09T16:37:00+00:00

Sue Coulson, Education Manager for Graphite Resources was recently honoured for the contribution she has made to raising awareness of sustainability and environmental issues in local schools. Sue, who has recently worked closely with Sara to develop the learning programme at Graphite Resources’ Derwenthaugh EcoParc site won the award at the Gateshead Council 2010 Environmental Awards. Sue had this to say about working with Sara:

“Working with Sara has been a refreshing and enjoyable experience. Sara is totally driven and very professional, however you cannot help becoming her friend by the end of the project! Sara took me back to basics when mapping the National Curriculum and really helped me to understand how we can link education into what we are doing on our site here at Derwenthaugh Eco Parc. The programmes she has put together are not only fun to deliver but really help the children understand about the processes we use here. Sara really got to know our business and the good thing is she doesn’t just write the programmes she assists in the early stages to make sure they run smoothly. Sara also introduced us to the excellent Splinter Design who produced videos of our staff for our web site.”

Naseby Battlefield Restricted Sight Project

2010-05-06T13:47:00+00:00

Following the success of Mair Education’s collaboration with Naseby Battlefield Trust (www.naseby.com/) to create the Sound of Battle audio tour, Sara is once again working with the Trust to produce another audio guide. This time, for people with visual impairments.

Creative artists, Watch This Space (www.watch-this-space.org.uk/), will work with Sara and the Trust in using description to capture some important visual elements of the Battlefield tour. As well as focusing on characters featured in the Battle of Naseby, the audio guide will include detail about the features of the seventeenth century landscape to help people with visual impairments understand how the terrain influenced the outcome of the Battle.

The project, funded by Renaissance East Midlands, will be launched in the summer.

Go! TravelWise Primary Resources launch

2010-05-06T12:57:00+00:00

Sara recently joined Rachael Boden, of Splinter Design, at the TravelWise Group/Merseytravel’s Sustaining the Journey to School event to launch the Go! schools resources. Have a look at the website here www.gotravelwise.com/.

Following the success of the Go!TravelWise Secondary Resources, Sara and award winning Liverpool-based design agency Splinter came together again to create resources for primary schools. The Go! TravelWise website, Cd-Rom and printed pack feature loads of brilliant resources for teachers and pupils including the TravelWise kids – Mia, Reese, Suzy and Ash – travel to school stories and lots of creative lesson ideas to help schools embed sustainable travel into their curriculum. The site also includes interactive games (the Karaoke game is a personal favourite!) and an area where teachers can see what other schools are doing to raise awareness of sustainable travel.

A huge thanks to all at Splinter, the TravelWise team and the local authority officers for all of their hard work. Also a big thanks to the teachers, children and young people for their input.

www.cluedupinhull.co.uk wins top Gold award at the national Local Government Association Awards

2009-06-16T10:50:00+00:00

The Clued up in Hull website (www.cluedupinhull.co.uk) won the top honour in the 2009 digital media category, awarded for best enhancing the reputation of the local authority. Mair Education worked with Splinter Design and the children and young people of Hull to research, create the content and design the Clued Up in Hull website.

The website is aimed at two age groups; under and over 12s and provides Hull’s children and young people with trusted online information. Judges at the Local Government Association Awards highlighted “they had really thought about their target audience and what their target audience wanted to hear and how they wanted to hear it.”

With innovative features including ‘Ask Nigel’ where Nigel Richardson, Director of Children and Young People’s Services at Hull City Council, assumes the role of Agony Uncle to the children and young people of Hull, Clued Up has been a great success. Sara continues to work with Hull City Council’s Children and Young People’s Service to develop content for the site, including campaigns such as ‘Clued Up on sexual health’, ‘Clued up on cannabis’ and ‘Clued Up for summer’ – highlighting activities during the school holidays.

2009 will see the second phase of the website developed which will include more interactive elements for young people to enjoy.

Local pupils in the dock

2008-12-04T19:45:00+00:00

As part of a feasibility study for Kirklees Culture & Leisure Services, Sara organised a visit for Year 7 pupils to Dewsbury Town Hall Old Court Room to capture their responses to this formidable and evocative Victorian venue.

The visit was followed by workshops where activities were used to identify requirements for the resources in a fun and stimulating way. The research was part of a study for Kirklees Culture & Leisure Services into opportunities for the development of an area of Dewsbury Town Hall with the aim of increasing the number of young people visiting the Town Hall.

As well as consulting with local young people and teachers, Sara talked to partners, such as Young People Services and the Community Cohesion Team, to investigate how a resource based on the Old Court Room could be used to help develop a shared sense of belonging amongst local young people and support the community cohesion agenda.

Mair Education and Splinter win Merseyside TravelWise contract

2008-12-04T19:42:00+00:00

Following the production of digital resources for secondary schools Mair Education is working with Splinter Design to create primary resources for Merseytravel’s TravelWise partnership.

Merseytravel and Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral Councils form the Local Transport Plan partnership. TravelWise is the partnership’s campaign to help people on Merseyside make smarter travel choices. The aim of the primary digital resources is to establish School Travel Planning as a core curriculum activity in schools across Merseyside.

Sara is pleased to be working with award winning Splinter once again. Splinter are expert at creating engaging and dynamic new media and printed resources that appeal to the user, whilst remaining practical for teachers to use.

Another award for the Naseby Battlefield Project

2008-12-04T19:05:00+00:00

Naseby Battlefield Project (NBP) chairman Richard Putt recently collected the award in the ‘Work with Children and Young People’ class of the 2010 Northamptonshire Heritage Awards. The winning project was the creation of a series of audio downloads to allow battlefield visitors to become ‘ear-witnesses’ to the events of Saturday 14 June 1645, listening in to Fairfax and Cromwell discussing where to deploy the New Model Army, for example.

The ten tracks, entitled The Sound of Battle: Naseby 14 June 1645, are each individually crafted to be relevant to a specific battlefield location.The tracks were scripted, cast and performed by students of Abbeyfield Performing Arts Specialist School, working with the professional sound engineers of The Lodge Recording Studios in Northampton and the historians of the Naseby Battlefield Project.

The narrative sections were spoken by the famed actor, Robert Hardy who gave his services as a donation to the enterprise and worked with the students as a colleague to produce a product of originality and quality. The work as a whole was managed by Sara for The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s Renaissance East Midlands.

Robert Hardy, commented of the project:

‘’I think it’s very good what they’ve done. It’s wonderful that people who come and see the battlefield will find local school pupils telling the story. And I think battlefields are extremely important, particularly Naseby, so it’s wonderful that through this tour, everyone will be able to find out what happened, where it happened and why it happened.’’

Find out more about Naseby Battlefield at www.naseby.com