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.

Happy Blogging
Stu

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”.

Happy Blogging

Stu

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.

Happy Blogging

Stu

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.

Happy blogging

Stu

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.

Happy blogging
Stu

Thought I should share just a few examples of the graphics work I’ve had to do this month. Print ready quality work seems to be taking up more of my time at the moment, I don’t mind at all but you have to be just as vigilant, if not more so, creating this kind of work & there always seem to be far more revisions than when creating web based content. I’ve had to generate CMYK Tif’s for our local paper & Theatre brochure.  It has to be said that apart from being hard work it can also be lot’s of fun too, especially when you get to create stuff like the Calamity Jane posters. Whip Crack Away!

Happy Blogging
Stu

Happy Blogging
Stu

Live & online from today are the new look drama blog & homepage.
Coinciding with the start of rehearsals for ‘Calamity Jane’ the blog will hopefully allow the cast & crew to regularly update on the progress of the production as well as general developments within the Dept’. With a new head of Dept’, Vicky Stinchcombe, at the helm we are hoping to give an entirely new voice to the dept’ & it’s hard grafting students.
The old homepages have been given a minor facelift (Botox as opposed to major surgery) while the new homepage designs are finished & tested. Future dev’ will include a ’Past productions’ photo gallery area, GCSE performance video clips & a wide range of revision resources.

Happy blogging
Stu

I’ve spent quite a few hours recently compiling some enormous, high definition landscape images (Up to 22,000 pixels wide)
The main idea is to create ‘Landscape Windows’ which can be hung in a teaching space. They can then be used as inspiration or as a visual resource for landscape drawing & painting.
The process is quite simple, just a little time consuming.  Once the source photographs have been downloaded they are compiled in Photoshop &  then divided into A3 sections, printed out & reassembled like a giant jigsaw in the classroom. I’ve also hit upon the idea of accompanying the image with sound recordings taken at the original photo location to aid the atmosphere created by such large images. The next trick is to create a zoomable online version for the College website. More as & when.

Happy Blogging
Stu