Monday 11 October 2010

'Prevent Agenda' performance with IWB voting system and projectors

Over the last few weeks I've been helping set up the IWB voting system as part of a theatre production in college.
In our VPA dept a group of students and lecturers have created a performance to look at the Prevent Agenda and radicalisation especially in the North East.  It is a powerful production and you can see a trailer for it at the link below.  The small part that I've helped with is setting up flip charts which project onto the screen at the back of the stage showing a series of questions about the play and it's characters. The play stops at various points and the audience are asked the questions.  The members of the audience have been given an Activexpression voting handset with which they select their answer and vote.  The results are displayed on the stage screen.  The questions are opinions about the play and radicalisation.  We managed to set up 97 handsets (out of 100) to the one hub which ran from a laptop at the back of the theatre.  It worked really well and gave instant feedback which could be discussed as part of the performance.  Also in one scene the actors used laptops on the stage with mini projectors which projected their screens onto a small part of the main screen - it was an interesting effect, a visual representation of a variety of activities simultaneously.  It was fun to help out and valuable from an e-Learning point of view as it showed the use of classroom technology in a non classroom setting.  It has given us ideas of how to use the voting sets with a large audience and how to integrate the results into a bigger picture.
Steel Dragon Theatre Resistance Trailer