Eva Rehorkova and Chris Woods joined the CIPHER team at Bletchley Park as part of their planning for a new collaborative heritage project to be run in their schools next academic year. Eva Rehorkova was representing Gymnázium Jiřího Gutha-Jarkovského, a secondary school based in Prague. Denbigh School, Milton Keynes, was represented by Chris Woods. The aim of the new project is to allow pupils from the two schools to share their cultural perspectives on major historical events. A focus for the collaboration will be Bletchley Park, home of the first programmable computer, and its role as a wartime code breaking centre. As part of the project, children will be supported in investigating their own local heritage, presenting this to pupils of the other school, and discussing interesting associations and contrasts.

This work is being conducted within the CIPHER project. CIPHER is a two and a half year project funded by the European Commission under the theme ‘Heritage for All’ that started in April 2002. By developing dynamic, user-centred applications that serve as focal points for regional communities to interact with their local heritage, the CIPHER project seeks to support children and adults in creating personalised content in order to share their group experiences and history.

Related links:

• Denbigh School – http://www.denbigh.net
• Gymnázium Jiřího Gutha-Jarkovského – http://www.truhla.cz
• KMi’s CIPHER project page – http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/cipher