A now long gone fellow techie, who shall remain nameless (for reasons of national security no less), used to have a saying when his task list for the day was complete. He’d walk into the workshop & declare “Job’s a goodun’….. put the kettle on”. As is often the way with folk it became a bit of a catch phrase that has stuck long after his move onwards & upwards.
I mention this on the back of today’s meeting with the head honcho about the state of my current task list. At the start of this term we agreed on a chunk of 13 jobs that should see me through to Christmas. Now contrary to my family motto “Aim low, achieve less” I let the side down by doing just a tad more than that. Over double in fact, “Job’s a goodun’….. put the kettle on”.
Done & dusted so far have been:
1). Healthy Schools Page
2). 6th Form Online Applications (Still in devlopment)
3). Site Wide Menu Update
4). New Website Design & prospectus Templates for BCO
5). 6th Form Destination Info
6). Pantomime Advert
7). GB Project.
8). Specialist Science Status Pages
9). New Build Web Site Spruce Up10). Prospectus Artwork
11). Skate Project (Continued development)
12). High Speed Photography Club (Website & planning done) Launch 2nd Wk Dec’ 09
13). MFL Blog TrainingAdditional Stuff
14). Drama Dept Overhaul
15). Hearing Support Video subtitles
16). New web cam machine.
17). Blog Directory Re-Design
18). Open Days Adverts & Web Page Updates
19). Year 11 Online Year Book Resource
20). Student ‘Favourite Technology’ Survey
21). Calamity Jane Posters, Logo’s T-Shirt & Program Cover Design
22). Online Policy Docs
23). GCSE Art example galleries
24). Campus Site Plan Maps & Satellite pix
25). New 360 Degree Flash Panoramas
26). STEMNET Hub
27). Nordab Art Blog (M/C)
28). Forest Schools Blog
29). Frog Blog/Twitter Feed
30). Total Overhaul Of Links Sections on website + menu changes
31). ‘Pairs’ Game
32). Continued Student Homepage/Magazine Updates
33). Compiling Technology Workbooks & Technology Web pages overhaul
Of course all this raises a couple of issues I guess, namely….
Am I just too damn efficient or am I not being given enough to do? (I’d dispute the 2nd option VERY strongly)
Am I actually working way too hard & should I just ease off the throttle a bit? or am I just exceedingly good value for money?
Whatever the answer to those conundrums I know I’ve worked flippin’ hard this term expressly to clear a large portion of my desk with the good ship VLE heaving into sight on the horizon. More of THAT very soon.
Just created a ‘Pairs Game’ for one of our Technology teachers who has been trawling the net (to no avail) to find a customisable version that he could use in Tutor periods & Inset days. I’d found one or two free flash/xml based sources a while back over at FFILES for him but nothing that really ‘looked’ the part or that was really easy for staff to adapt so decided to build one myself. The actual idea came to me at about 3.30 the other morning as I did the usual hand to hand fighting with work induced insomnia. A few hours today of Dreamweaver & Photoshop crunching and voila it’s live & online. If anyone is interested in a copy then let me know.
For quite sometime now, well, 2-3 years actually we (the good Mr Williamson & myself) have been quietly beavering away behind the scenes assessing, installing, trialling, testing a whole plethora of VLE’s, MLE’s & Learning Platforms. The intention being to find the right solution for the College, our very own holy grail that would do everything we as an institution wanted it to do. Not what other developers & suppliers told us we needed. From Open source solutions to bespoke builds we’ve covered the lot. Our collective magnifying glasses have scanned every nook & cranny of Moodle, It’s Learning, Kaleidos, Joomla & a whole host of other options to name but a few. A fair few hundred unseen man hours have gone into this quest. It seemed that although there are some cracking options out there we were always left wanting more. Then a couple of months ago I found our golden chalice. It’s a Frog. Frog, who are based in the UK have, over the last few years developed, what is quite simply an AWESOME array of tools under the collective term of a Virtual Learning Environment. The brilliant thing is though, it’s so, SO much more than that. It’s a complete ‘Digital School’ that has the capacity to grow & develop with your institution as you do. Over the past 10 years I’ve become pretty hard to impress with technologies but this literally blew my socks off. The more I see of it in action the more I see a huge plain of potential open up in front of me in the landscape of online provision. It is stunning. Mr W is putting together the case for us to purchase Frog a.s.a.p. I am genuinely excited at the prospect of developing such a resource for the College. Before you ask or even contemplate the thought that they might be paying me to say this. I’m not. Go check out their site for more info, especially the testimonies from schools currently using Frog.
For the first time in quite a while “The futures bright, the futures called frog”.
While reading the excellent web developers & designers blog ‘Blog Reign’ I came across a crackin little Air app called ‘Webkut’. Simply type in the url of your choice & it cleverly creates a full length screen grab of the site. A kind of ‘Print Screen’ on hormones. My kind of cool~tool.
I spent a few hours yesterday trying to find a better solution to interactive 360 degree panoramas than the old QTV approach that we have used previously. Flash was the obvious way forward but most of the free solutions (Don’t forget this is an educational establishment after all & I have no budget) were a tad clunky or out of my limited sphere of Flash knowledge. Almost by accident I stumbled across the rather wonderful you3dview.com a youtube for panorama nuts. All you need to do is upload a panoramic image (I’m currently using the excellent open source ’Hugin‘ app to create mine) & they do the rest! Result!
The above is a hastily knocked together demo but the potential is good, especially with the new buildcompletion getting nearer day by day expect to see more “Biddy-Coll-Pano’s” in the near future.
Well…..it finally happened, after months of talking, thinking, planning, beta testing, tweaking, more talking, more thinking, planning & beta testing, the simple, some might say insignificant matter of the main site menu re-design has finally been resolved and is live & online at last. If your synapses are good enough you might have remembered this post. After all that I have a sneaking suspicion that not many people will notice (That’s actually the plan) what they should find is that stuff is easier to find and visually clearer & cleaner. No negative comments have thudded into the inbox as of yet so it might just have worked.
I have worked at the College for over 11 years, initially as a music dept' techie & then as a resource technician.
A significant amount of time since then has been spent as an I.T Techie then 3 years ago I was promoted to the dizzy heights of "Web Developer & Curriculum Resources Tech". Currently I develop & manage virtually all of the College's web presence, create mountains of stuff in Photoshop & make Skateboards in an after school club. I would like to be an train driver when I grow up.
"Custard! CUSTARD! Are you sure?"
- Winston Churchill
Disclaimer
The views expressed on this blog are strictly those of the author and no other. Devon County Council & Bideford College cannot be held responsible for any comments, statements or views expressed by their employee & resident web dev, Stuart Knowler. Every effort is made to ensure that the information provided on these pages is accurate and up to date, but no legal responsibility is accepted for any errors, omissions or misleading statements. Have a nice, non confrontational day.
