Congratulations
to Dr Jo Bates and Dr Farida Vis of the Information School who have recently
been awarded funding for some of their work.
Jo has been
awarded funding in collaboration with Professor Hamish Cunnigham (Department of
Computer Science) and local artist Bo Meson, for a two day Festival of the Mind
event called ‘Open Data | Open Hardware: Resilient Cultures’.
With the advent
of cheap, easily configurable computing devices (of which the UK's Raspberry Pi
is the most prominent example), and the opening of significant amounts of data
for anyone to use and re-use, the boundary between creative culture and
information engineering is re-opening.
The event,
which will be held on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th September,
will celebrate developments in open hardware, open data and maker culture. It will bring together collaborations between
extraordinary performance, science and engineering practitioners with around a
dozen exhibits plus a regular stage show.
The exhibits
will feature two Information School projects: Farida Vis’ work on open allotment data
and everyday growing cultures; and Jo’s project on the Secret Life of a Weather Datum for which an exhibit on
building your own Raspberry Pi weather station and contributing your data to
the Met Office Weather
Observations Website (WOW) will be developed.
Farida has
received USE Enterprise Curriculum
Development funding which will be used to enhance her module on Research Social
Media by inviting guest speakers and providing student placements. Key
stakeholders from government, policy and the commercial sector will be invited
to present guest talks and ‘pitch sessions’ so that students get a better
understanding of the real world scenarios they might apply their skills
to. This will help them to think more
concretely about the final assignment they submit for the module. It will also allow them to think about how
they might explore this as part of their dissertation projects and wider
studies.
The module will also be enhanced by creating
a number of placements for the strongest and most motivated students. These placements will take place in summer
2014 and will be completed over one to two weeks. The project placements will be with a number
of government departments both in London and in Sheffield as well as wit leading
social media analytics company Face. The
placements provide standalone opportunities for students, though for some they
may fit with their wider studies or dissertation projects.
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