Alumni Member
Chris Valentine (Alumni) 
Project Officer
Joining the OU in the Spring of 1992, my initial projects were related to the transcription of course material for print-disabled students. I was a founding member of KMi when it was launched in 1995. I am now a web applications developer using PHP and mySQL, writing custom code or extensions for open source CMS like Drupal or Wordpress.
I am particularly interested in the application of mobile technology to teaching and learning in remote locations. Projects have included a photo and audio blog for L204, a second level Spanish language course which made custom use of Google Maps for location data. I was also part of the award-winning team for ERA - the use of wireless networking technology to make geology field trips accessible to disabled and/or remote students.
I worked on the website that hosts the Open University's immensely popular podcast service http://podcast.open.ac.uk and the OU's webcast hosting system STADIUM. I have been involved in four EU-funded projects related to language teaching and inter-cultural competence.
Outreach projects include collaboration with the Halle Orchestra and the Field Studies Council. I worked on Making The News (a web-based news system being used in schools nation-wide http://mtn.e2bn.net), ROSTRA, CLUTCH, CABER, VDC, MK Schools OnLine and the citischool project (teaching for kids who dropped out of mainstream education in the Milton Keynes area).
I have also created web applications for the OU's Research School including PhDSkills (to track the progress of all PhD students at the OU) and the Research Diary. I both judge and run the online part of the annual research students' poster competition where new PhD students show off their projects (https://researchposters.open.ac.uk)
In 2008 I was a recipient of two OU Teaching Awards, for my role in T189 'Digital photography: creating and sharing better images' (https://www.open.ac.uk/courses/short-courses/tg089) and as part of the ERA team. I received a third Teaching Award in 2014 for my part in webcasting the Student Connections conference. I have since contributed to the OU's new photography course 'Creating a Professional Portfolio' including a Raspberry Pi-powered remote SLR and hosted on FutureLearn.
I now work mostly on Citizen Science projects including iSpot (https://ispotnature.org)
Keys: PHP, SQL, CSS, JavaScript, Ajax, Kubernetes, Docker, photography, webcasting, API, social networks, renewable energy, citizen science, mobile learning
Projects
Technologies
News
Publications
Dodd, M., Döring, M., Valentine, C., Siddharthan, A. and Ansine, J. (2024) Updating Species Dictionaries in the Citizen Science Platform iSpotnature.org with the Help of Its User Community and ChecklistBank, Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 8
Dodd, M., Valentine, C. and Ansine, J. (2023) Exploring taxonomic and geographic spread of iSpot citizen science observations, National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Conference 2023, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh
Ansine, J., Dodd, M., Valentine, C., Rüger, S., Siddharthan, A. and Dadswell, D. (2023) iSpot & AI: Integrating FASTCAT-Cloud and PI@ntNET-API in the Cos4Cloud framework, Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG) Conference 2023, Online
Cooke, J., Wheeler, P., Maseyk, K., Davies, S., Collins, T., Bradshaw, K., Hawkridge, B., Valentine, C. and Morgan, G. (2020) Broadcasting from the field: enabling student-led investigations by distance, Enhancing Fieldwork Learning 2020, Online, United Kingdom
Ramachandran, M., Chowdhury, N., Third, A., Jan, Z., Valentine, C. and Domingue, J. (2020) A Framework for Handling Internet of Things Data with Confidentiality and Blockchain Support, IoT4Safe, in conj. with Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) 2020, Heraklion, Greece
Tech Reports
ERA (Enabling Remote Activity): A KMi designed system to support remote participation by mobility disabled students in geology field trips
Techreport ID: kmi-06-15
Date: 2006
Author(s): Mark Gaved, Lewis McCann, Chris Valentine
