Reality Training

Alien Artefact 202

Alien Artefact 202 teaches students real skills that can be used in real life. Students become secret agents and learn how to build a radios, navigate across the countryside, interview people, collect evidence and work with their team to finally solve the case.

The evidence has been created to make the whole thing as realistic as it can be, based on the way real intelligence agencies work. It's hard work and will stretch the thinking of students and demand team work beyond that which they are used to.

This is the activity people write home about!

To find out more please take a look at Alien Artefact 202 on the Science Faction Ltd website.

Personal Development

Micro-Entrepreneuring

A six day course - Micro-Entrepreneuring is the art of very small business. It is the art of starting a business with one person and very little money. Therefore this text is focused on both business and the personal development of the individual, in the direction of becoming a micro-entrepreneur.

Your Direction - To help you establish your goals in various areas of life and to get those goals on paper as an expression of your commitment to them.

Your Time - To help you get the best out of your time. Some basic time management.

Your Mind - We look at ways that being human can actually stop us being effective, the way bad feelings can grow and interfere with living and happiness.

Origination - A look at the creative process, the processes of innovation that will help us to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Society - We look at competition and co-operation and strategies for dealing with situations when we cannot find a co-operative relationship.

Business - We consider some of the basics of starting a business, almost a list of key points to consider, the essential parts of a healthy business, advertising, market research.

Cost £1920 for class of up to 30 students.

Business Training

Creating a Business

A five day course focussed on small businesses that produce products. Here we introduce some basic ideas.

• Innovation or Planning - What are the very first stages of a business.
• Writing a Business Case - What should you consider in deciding if your business idea is worth following up.
• Employing people - How should you find your people and how will you motivate them. How will you keep them together and inspired.
• Project Management - The theory is very different from the practice, what goes wrong and what goes right. What you need to know.
• Maintaining Quality - Quality is essential for export, attention to details, every mistake is a learning opportunity. How to learn from it.

Cost £1600 for class of up to 30 students.

Business Training

Business Production

A five day course focussed on small businesses that produce products. Here we introduce some more advanced ideas.

• Version Control - Version control of systems made of components each also being version controlled, is used in many mission critical systems and can make defect prevention a lot easier.
• Requirements Management - Proper management or requirements is imperitive in order to ensure the customer and provider are clear about what the customer wants.
• Specification - How to write clear specifications for anything to be used by others.
• Decisions - how to properly perform and record collective decision making.
• Assembly - How to handle small mechanical and electronic assembly production runs using casual labour while maintaining quality.

Cost £1600 for class of up to 30 students.

Teaching

The Radio Activity

This photograph depicts a young girl with the radio she built, at the moment when she first picks up a station.

As part of Science Faction Ltd's Radio Activity I build radios with people from 8 to 80 years of age. These are not simple crystal sets that we build, yet we have an almost 100% completion rate. The best moment is the smile you get at the end when a person hears their radio burst into life.

Background

I have tought both adults and children and produced a great deal of educational material for the BBC.

Computer Programming

Feb 88 - Feb 1992 I taught BASIC computer programming evening classes for 3 years for the Inner London Education Authority ILEA to very mixed ability adult students.

Dolphin Computer Camps

June 82 I took a job for the summer at Dolphin Computer Camps a summer camp in Sevenoaks. I built robots and bits and pieces with 10 to 17 year olds and drove them from a Commodor PET via an interface board I designed and built over the weekend. Also bought BBC micro computer (one of the first) and started more serious 6502 assembly programming.