Kris Popat

Evidence of esteem:

I am regularly invited to speak and present at events concerned with educational technology, and more specifically educational technology in the creative context. Recent activities by invitation include:

Member of the Conference Committee for Peer Review – International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) mobile learning conference, Malta, 05

JISC mobile learning think tank – Birmingham, April 05

Keynote Presentation – Newcastle ICT for Teachers Conference, Nov 04

Special Guest Presentation – ICT to Free Up Creativity Conference, Southampton, Oct 04

Digital Music for Teachers Day – Navcon Conference, New Zealand, Sept 04

Digital Creativity for Teachers – Barnet NAHT Conference, Sept 04

Conference Papers and Presentations:

‘Digital music, dance and drama and its application in the classroom’, Navcon 2k4, Christchurch, New Zealand 2004

‘ICDC, a perspective on the International Certificate in Digital Creativity’, Navcon 2k4, Christchurch, New Zealand 2004

‘m-Learning via the web: The challenge of size’, mLearn Conference 2004, Rome, Italy (co-author: Geoff Stead)

‘Exploring the potential of a game implementation for m-Portal’, mLearn conference 2003, London, UK (co-author: Alice Mitchel)

‘Eurodans with Snugfit: Web-based community software for online choreography’, International Conference for Information and  Communications Technology in Education (ICTE), Badajos, Spain, November 2002 (co-author: Sita Popat).

‘Microportal Development for m-Learning’, BERA Conference, Exeter, UK, September 2002

‘Doing Curriculum the Notschool Way’, Navcon 2002, Christchurch, New Zealand (invited presentation)

‘éTui: A computational toy for reflection Upon learning’, Human-Computer Interaction Conference, New Orleans, 2001 (co-authors: Josep Blat, Dai Griffiths, Claudia Torres, Richard Millwood, Weiya Wang)

‘Trans-Domain Mapping: A Real-time Interactive System for Motion Acquisition and Musical Mapping’, International ComputerMusic Conference, Berlin 2000 (co-authors: Kia Ng, Sita Popat, Bee Ong, Ewan Stefani, David Cooper)

‘Interactive Composition: Sharing the Creative Process via the Internet’, International Computer Music Conference, Berlin 2000 (co-authors: Sita Popat, Kia Ng, Jacqueline Smith-Autard)

Selected compositions/productions:

Composer for Pax Excelsis: Internet Performance at Platfform ’01 Digital Arts Day, BBC Wales, April 2001. (Choreography by Sita Popat.)

Composer for Touchdown2: Videodance work created from footage for TouchDown, selected for presentation at the 5th Annual World Festival of Videodance in Argentina, 2000.

Composer for TouchDown, Performed at the Dance for the Camera Symposium at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, 2000. (Choreography by Jeffrey Gray Miller.)

Editor and software producer for Poems Pictures Music, CD ULTRALAB 1997 - ISBN 0-907262-76-7 (in collaboration with Peter Wilson, Gill Robinson, Antoine Mitchell),

I am currently a Senior Research Fellow at Ultralab, Anglia Polytechnic University. I have worked as a musician, educationalist and technologist for the last fifteen years. My work has lead me to the practical application of technology in education and the arts, as an implementer of technological prototypes, as a researcher and as a principle investigator of research and development projects in the field of educational technology.

See my COS profile here

ULTRALAB, APU Essex

The following is a list of projects I have undertaken of been involved in during my time at Ultralab.

Ultraversity
I am involved on the ultraversity project as the bridge between the technical requirements of the project and the pedagogic. To this effect I work on both sides of the project: as a learning facilitator - tutoring, developing modules and resources and assessing, and also on the technical side developing and implementing the software infrastructure required for this fully online degree.

Anglia Rusking Blended Learning Project
This is a knowledge transfer project taking what we have learned the research undertaken in Ultraversity and passing this on to other departments within Anglia Ruskin. My role is in working with the faculty of Arts Letters and Social Sciences to implement an e-learning version of a foundation degree in Public Services.

JISC SMS Project
I am technical and project manager for this project which has been negotiated and won from JISC. In it we are working in partnership with the University of Wolverhampton to develop/deploy and research the impact of a mobile group-cast system for HE.

Transmission
- 2005 ongoing
I made a successful bid for the funding to Creative Partnerships in Basildon for this project. My role was principle investigator and technical manager. Creative Partnerships have requested a continuation of the project in the academic year 2005-6.

UBlog – 2005 ongoing

This is one of my current development projects.  I am using it as a vehicle to explore how blogging and team-based collaborative environments can be integrated. The software has been used both by Creative Partnerships and Ultralab.

Certificate in Digital Creativity 2003 - 2001
I sought funding, devised and ran this pilot project as principle investigator, developing the initial version of this new award for accrediting creative work made using digital technology.

Eurodans – 2001
This was a project linking 26 dancers in 9 European HE institutions in an online choreography project. The project was funded by the European League of Institutes of the Arts and managed by the University of Leeds. I wrote and maintained the system supporting the online activity.

Snugfit 2001 – ongoing
This is another of my current development projects. Snugfit is a web-based toolkit for creating online community systems.  It was used as the backbone for both the m-Learning and Eurodans projects.

Pax Excelsis 2001
I wrote the music for this telematic perfomance linking dancers from the UK and USA, commissioned by BBC Wales.

Triad – 2001
This was an online dance project involving school children from the UK, Portugal and the USA, funded by the Oracle Corporation.  I was technical advisor for the project.

m-Learning 2001 - 2004

I was technical manager for ULTRALAB’s involvement in this European funded project. The project explored the potential use of mobile technology to deliver literacy and numeracy education for young adults.

Touchdown 2000
I wrote the music for this video-dance collaboration between English and American movement artists.

Etui 1999 – 2001
I designed and developed a simulation environment where aspects of the Etui (an electronic toy for 4-8 year olds) could be explored. The simulation was written in C++. It was funded by the European Commission

Broadband In Education 1999
I project managed ULTRALAB’s involvement in this demonstration to the government.

Spinalot 1997 - 2000

My role in this project was to develop the low-level file access systems.  Spinalot was an early web-based collaborative environment written in Prograph CPX

Tomorrows World Live – 1997
I developed demonstration software for Nortel’s stand at this event.  I also managed Ultralab’s involvement in the project.

Poems, Picture and Music 1997 – CD-ROM

For this I designed and developed the software, produced and edited the CD and project managed the whole process. It showcased the collaborative process for a poet, artist and musician.

Newton Software 1996 – Palmtop Applications

These applications were designed and developed solo. Moot was an application designed to allow the real time capture of socio-metric information. As a user of moot you could create socio-metric diagrams interactively perhaps during a meeting or focus group session.

Schools Online 2 1995/6 – Online Learning Community Software

My role was to create the underlying file management engine and also to undertake debugging of the application at the final stages. The whole application was created using and iconic dataflow language called Prograph CPX.

Schools Online 1994/5 – Online Learning Community
I created a microportal with annotations to music available on the World Wide Web and technical pages advising teachers and children on how to record and save sounds on their personal computers.

Insights for Teachers and Parents 1993 – CD-ROM

I created an electronic/sequenced version of Saint-Saen’s Carnaval Des Animax for the CD’s interactive software.

Previous Employment

• Part-time School Music Teacher at Billericay School in Essex: 1993 – 95
• Freelance Classical Guitarist based in London: 1987 – 91
• Work undertaken during this period

• London Guitar Quartet – played extensively in the UK and in Europe

• Principle guitar teacher at the Spanish Guitar Centre in London
• Peripatetic guitar teacher in the London region
• Composition project work with the Royal Opera House Education Department
• Early music Lute performances