You might remember the ‘I’ve seen the future’ post from way back in October last year. Since then things have moved on significantly with our ‘VLE’ project.
You can track the full development of the story via the ‘Frog Blog’ but suffice to say that recently the project has been virtually all consuming. Last month our ‘Frog Box’ finally arrived heralding the start of some pretty intensive design & consultation sessions. Senor Toad (a.k.a Paul Williamson) & I have been working very closely with two sets of ‘Frog Champions’, a student group & a staff one to clarify what we want our frog to be. The beauty of Frog is that it allows us to create a bespoke learning platform that looks & behaves however we determine & however best suits our users be they Students or Staff. Of course this is a fantastic opportunity but also an incredibly difficult one as it has to “everything to all people”. After lot’s of consultation I locked myself away in room with a head full of ideas, a notebook & a pencil & went through the ‘Staring at a blank piece of paper waiting for inspiration to arrive’ experience. I don’t mind admitting it but it took a while! However, I think (And the feedback so far seems to support the hypothesis) that we’ve got it pretty much spot on. Both camps had very strong opinions about what & how  they wanted our Frog to look & behave. Balancing those two approaches felt a little bit like juggling 1/2 dozen eggs while balancing on a beam mounted over a flaming pit surrounded by a moat of piranhas while someone took pot shots at me with a crossbow! In other-words ‘Tricky’.
However I have to say I’m pretty chuffed with the end result. It needs a few minor tweeks but as it stands it’s nearly there. The entire template was created in Photoshop and the finished multilayered document will be sent off to Frog headquarters in Halifax for senior designer ‘Andrew Beckwith’ to work some real magic on it. View a full scale version right here.
Find out more on the Frog Blog

Rapidly charging towards completion is the new look Technology Dept pages. With the move to our new College never far from my mind the face-lift became a necessity due to the current navigation system being based on a Lego map of the current ‘old’ buildings. Come September they will probably just be a pile of rubble so to get ahead of the curve I’ve re-fashioned the Technology department pages with a new Flash based  ’Sub menu’ to make location of their increasing number online resources easier. It should all be online just after 1/2 term.

Once again the College is running a Ski Trip this year with the lucky snow-badgers heading off to the Wagrain region in Austria for a weeks Skiing & Snowboarding. Now in it’s 5th year the ritual trip blog is packed full of more information this year than ever before. As ever the main purpose beyond that of keeping everyone up to date before the trip leaves is of course to post daily reports from the Austrian slopes. In the past parents have found this particularly useful, so as the saying goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Check it out here.

The all new ‘Clubs & Activites Directory’ is now online and is full of information about all the extra curricular activities students can get involved in. From Rugby to Street Dance, Warhammer to Chemistry, Skateboarding to Flight Club it’s all here.

Bideford College Online  Homepage (Above)

Bideford College Online News

Our online news page took a bit of a pounding too. If anyone ever tells me ”No parents ever look at our website” again, I think I’ll just let the numbers do the talking.

After last years snow induced closures we decided to change the way we published ‘Important Closure Information’ & we now have a pre-prepared ‘Emergency Page’ that’s easy to update (By myself or members of SMT) as well as the new WordPress powered ’News Blog’. Both ways enable us to have a pretty quick response time once the decision to close has been made. You can now follow the College on Twitter too, Usually we try to get info online within 5 minutes of the decision being made. 
Our parental audience is obviously out there, hungry for information so it only makes sense to give them what they need.

Was extremely lucky yesterday to have the opportunity to visit Rednock School up in Dursley, Glos’.
Like us they have been the beneficiaries of a brand spanking new BSF one school pathfinder school but they are a little further down the line than we are as they moved in this September. We were there ostensibly for a Frog awareness day, which was of course excellent, with a cracking presentation by Niall Brennan from Arrowvale school (who have just rolled out their install to students just 3 weeks ago). However we also were given the chance to tour the new building in the afternoon.
To say I was impressed would be a massive understatement. WOW! It was jaw droppingly amazing. What impressed was the phenomenal architectural statement which was bold & adventurous but on a very human scale. Externally the library ‘pod’ grabs your attention but the mix of timber & coloured panelling was highly effective too. Overall the immediate impression was of style & a very ‘european’ sophistication. Internally the building was just as engaging with bright, airy spaces & subtle detail but with strong style & purpose. The communal & ‘breakout’ areas were an excellent idea and the teaching spaces appeared very inviting. Of course there have been a few teething problems, which are only to be expected, but the overall impression was fantastic. If our new school is half as good as Rednock it’ll be brilliant.
Enough gushing for one day I think.

Happy Blogging
Stu

Live & in it’s BETA test phase is the new look Bideford Learning Community web site. The old site was looking (& getting) a little tired & with a new driving force at the helm it seemed like an appropriate time to update the whole shebang. Although not directly responsible for the BLC the College is a key player within the organisation & I was approached to give it all a bit of a face lift with the emphasis on making it easy to update & manage. It’ll come as no surprise to note it’s powered by WordPress. (Yet another example if one were needed that it’s so much more than a blogging platform & is a highly configurable CMS in it’s own right.) I’ve also come up with a new logo for the BLC which seems to have gone down very well too. More on this soon I think.
Happy Blogging

Stu

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