Posted by Stuart on May 16, 2012 in
css,
Design,
Developments,
html 
They say, whoever ‘they’ are, that little things please little minds. Well I have digital proof of that. This is the face of the new student landing page when they click on their favorite desktop icon.
The page itself lives on the network, I’m loathed to say ‘intranet’ for some reason or other, with the main idea being to counteract net connectivity downtime.
(The same thought driving the MMS in the previous post)
Interestingly enough the ‘less is more ethic’ has really appealed to lots of our students who like the minimalist black page mainly because the staff one is white! They also seem to like the ‘unclutteredness’ of it. Their word not mine.
However what’s really got me going is what’s under the hood. It’s my first completely centered, table-less design for BCO. I’ve done them before for other private projects but never for any ‘school content.
I’ve commented the code so our smarter I.C.T pupils can see whats going on as CSS layout has started to appear in the curriculum more & more these days.
The main drive of doing it in a Div stylee was to allow for an Olympic Hoops design with mouse over images that would never work within a tabular or sliced structure. Centering all the Div layers was the key to bringing the idea to life.
It’s not rocket surgery I know but for an old, self taught, fart like me it’s a new skill in the right direction.
Live & online today (well last night but that’s neither here nor there) the new & very much improved MMS. It replaces 3 existing forms & their related databases with a single form & single database that should not only speed up the end users experience but also provide the superheroes in our ‘On Call’ admin team with a significantly improved and quicker to manage system.
Completely ‘Frog Powered’ and even available when the College network loses it’s net connectivity the initial responses to MMS have been very favorable.
I’m still on my mission to do away with more of our paper heavy systems and make teachers & admin staff lives a tad easier.
Happy blogging.
S
Posted by Stuart on Apr 30, 2012 in
Design,
Developments 
In early stages of redevelopment but I’m re-skinning the Year 6 Info Board to make it a little bit more web editor/designer friendly! 
Well it’s been running a week now so I thought the time was right to mention our new online detention system. It was decided by SMT some time ago that on return from the Easter break that our long-standing rules regarding uniform & behaviour would be reinforced with a new set up regarding detentions. Initially it was thought that a paper & email system would suffice to manage the lunchtime detention list but it actually proved to be a bit unwieldy. Hence a week ago I received a call asking if there was anyway it could be put online. I have to admit it begs the question why didn’t they ask me from the outset if there was an online solution to the management of the new setup, but hey I’ve only been here 15 years so they can be forgiven for overlooking me. Anyhoo I digress, after a couple of beta builds & testing I had the system up & running within a morning and the feedback has been enormously positive from staff AND students. Built around a PHP backbone the form emails our behaviour team & dumps all the info into a database which can be downloaded at anytime. It’s similar in architecture to some other systems that we use so I knew it would work & work well.
As an aside I’ve been using a very hand free Javascript tool run by ‘Kiss Insights’ which asks site visitors for feedback on their visits. (It’s been interesting to note how many have been looking for info regarding the ‘New’ rules when all they really are is a reinforcement of the old ones.) On the insights front I’m still only scoring a pretty poor 65% hit rate on visitor success but the feedback also shows that people don’t appear to be using the site search functions, or looking at the BIG link graphics, expecting everything to be on the front page! However, I’m working hard on resolving the issues that do arise and it’s been a very handy & enlightening tool.
Happy blogging
S
Posted by Stuart on Apr 17, 2012 in
Design,
Developments,
Kinda Cool,
Web Design Alongside the spring redesign of the main College web site has been the updating & redevelopment of many of our departmental pages. I’m carrying the same design look & feel across to these areas in an attempt to unify the whole mega-beast that is Bideford College Online. Most of the pages have been done in our ‘traditional’ fashion but some, based on departmental needs have been created within frog using a version of the updated template. Initially I was thinking along the lines of doing all the core pages before releasing them but decided against it as it’s such a huge task for one person. Keep looking for more updates as & when. Happy blogging.
S
Hoping to get a test version of this online by the end of this 1/2 term & couldn’t resist a ‘sneak preview’ post as I’m currently working on a Spring Clean facelift for the main sites homepage.
Will post a link once it’s active. The design has got to work on both the current web hosting setup and within Frog as I hope to start migration next term, so the deign process has been a little different with another set of parameters to think of. Let me know what you think.
happy Blogging.
S
As we draw towards the end of another 1/2 term we decided it was time to try and assess the impact, usage, loves, hates, likes & dislikes of our Frog powered Learning Platform.
The survey, built entirely within Frog, should help us get an accurate picture of how things are going and what we need to address in the future.
It’s hoped that all our staff will complete the survey before the end of the month. After a period of number crunching we’ll publish the results here.
A new feature launched this week in our Bidefrog learning platform is the ‘Frog Dock’.
It’s a Mac inspired floating footer menu that links to the most popular external & internal sites for our students.
The beauty of it being that it gives access to content usually available outside of Frog.
The staff version is currently in development and should make it viable for users to access everything they require on a daily basis from within Bidefrog.
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