News

Rochdale CLC will be holding a five day CLC 'Enterprise CAD-CAM' Summer School between Monday 2 August and Friday 6 August 2010 (second week of the summer break).

Schools are invited to submit a film made by pupils for screening within the 2010 Greater Manchester Schools Film Festival. The screenings will take place at the Odeon Cinema in the Printworks, Manchester on Sunday 13 June 2010

The Film Festival 2010 will include prizes awarded in the following categories:

• Best Primary Film
• Best Secondary Fiction Film
• Best Secondary Factual Film (KS3 only)

Please see Film Festival 2010 for details or contact Melody Smith on 01706 630191.

December 2009 saw Middleton City Learning Centre welcome the whole of Year 8 from Wardle High School over 5 days to learn how to use animation software to create a series of short animated road safety films.

The students had worked on creating a story board back in school and had planned what their message was going to be as well as looking at what would appeal and be relevant to their intended audience. Many of the groups of 2, 3 or 4 students brought along backgrounds and scenery they had created along with character, figures, cars and other props to help tell their story.

St Michael’s Primary School, Alkrington recently visited Middleton City Learning Centre to make use of the state-of-the-art television studio and production faciltities including the 'green-screen' filming technology.

Year 6 students from Little Heaton Primary School visited Middleton City Learning Centre in the autumn term to continue their work on creating a multimedia project 'The Victorians' using Apple's iMovie software.

Four classes from Shawclough Primary came to Middleton CLC during the Autumn term to work on a series of stop-frame animation projects telling the story of 'Boudicca'.

During the autumn term a group of Gifted & Talented IT students from Bamford Primary School attended a series of sessions at Rochdale CLC to develop a D&T project aimed at supporting a school 'poster' and 'signage' theme. The KS 1 and 2 pupils were aged between 5 and 10 years old. During their visits they worked on creating a range of designs using CorelDraw software which were eventually cut and engraved from acrylic which were then installed in their play areas at the school.

Middleton and Rochdale CLCs have recently joined Twitter - a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as 'tweets'. Tweets are text-based posts of limited to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications.

The finals of the 2009 Manchester Film Festival took place yesterday at the Odeon Cinema, Printworks, Manchester. Organised by Oldham City Learning the event showcased a range of work from schools across Greater Manchester.

Bowlee Park Primary School, Rochdale won the 'Documentary' prize while the Secondary School prize went to Crompton House CE School, Oldham for a really excellent animation and Alexandra Park Primary School won the Primary prize.

Tuesday this week saw Year 5 pupils from St. Peter's RC Primary School, Middleton take part in our first CSI event - 'The Case of the Lost Skull'. (Scenario involved CLC staff finding a small animal skull with money and a note outside the CLC entrance - five people claim the items belong to them . . . and so the investigation started).