Posting Archive - All the thrilling stuff you might have missed.

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Friday 9th February - 2007 3.24pm
Foot to the floor Pt2

Phew! I still feel like a driver in the 'Wacky races'!!!! I have to say that in all 10 years or so of working at the College I don't think I've ever worked SO hard. However, this isn't going to turn into one of those boring moanathons that afflict other pages in the blogosphere, I hasten to add that the job has probably never been so much fun! It's just I'm totally cream crackered. So, what's been causing all the excitement? Well, settle back and I'll begin.

And away we go, kicking off 2007 with a completely new look and feel to the blog. Answers on a postcard please HERE It's not that I dislike the Blogger vibe that much it's just that I wanted something a little more personal, a little more......well, me i guess. I did trial an open source blog creator tool called 'Thingamablog' and although it brings the hosting aspect closer to home it just wasn't funky enough!

However, if you need to brake free from the norm then have a look it's not half bad & it's free!. You can still view the old blog here, but I've archived all the old posts in the new blog so I guess it all depends on how itchy your left click is!
Another term looms large on the horizon and a barrow load of projects to really sink my teeth into no doubt. Although the temptation to lay dormant over the Crimbo period is immense I just couldn't help but play around with some new bit's & pieces which are sure to be making an appearance on the site soon. Stuff like.... A great little Flash based audio player, the wonderful 'Lightbox' Java script, (See a demo here) XML based Flash scrollers & a nice little dhtml news ticker. (I'll probably deploy that in the revamped newsletter).

Oh yes, the revamped newsletter, you might remember the previous post about that. The idea didn't quite fly in the direction I thought it might but suffice to say it's up and running and the feedback has been really, really good. Check it out here The real trick in the tree saving department would be to get as many people as possible to elect to receive it digitally rather then on paper. That way we can start to make a difference. Happy browsing - Stu

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Thursday, November 30, 2006
Flying by!!

Blimey!
Is it really over a month since the last posting? Better get my developers butt in gear then. Infact that's probably the main reason why I hav'nt posted for ages. My developers butt has been in top gear!
The Climate Lab project is live and online at last (now with forum & interactive quizzes) & had a really interesting meeting with the staff down at the NMA a couple of weeks ago, when we got to show them where we were at. (Man!)

They were totally knocked out by the whole of our 'Big Climate Thing'. Free trip down to Plymouth in the pipeline for all the students who took part, plus the slim chance that we might be able to take 1 or 2 of then to Brussels next year for the Pencil Project Bash! Woo-Hoo! The most interesting thing from my point of view was the striking similarities between our humble production and the one the NMA paid lots of mars bars for! The plan is to develop our input further with a new project looking at the environmental impact of climate change on the island of Lundy. Also we have been talking about hosting a Climate Change Conference next year for all local schools and colleges. Encourage some debate.

Talking of which, next fun project is a pod cast of the debating societies next outing ' Climate Change - Are We All Doomed?'.

Other stuff taking up lots of time has been......
Operation Wallacea.

Next July a group of staff & students get to go to Honduras for 2 weeks helping out with research in the Tropical Cloud Forest as well as on the Coral Reefs. Lucky devils!!!! Anyway they have to raise an absolute shed load of cash to get there. That's where I come in to the picture....... 1). Build them a web site. 2). Get them to write all about the whole thing. (including a blog) 3). Post it live on the net. 4). Get them to sell advertising space on it to fund the mission. They hav'nt quite finished task 2 but we are nearly there so it's live now just as a little incentive to get them into gear. Want to get involved, give them money????

Check out the site for more info.

Admin administrated admin area administration!
Have been slaving away over a hot PC this week migrating all our prospectus files to a different area of the site so they can be updated by the admin staff. Sounds simple in principle but lots of donkey work in practice. (It's a historical problem in all honesty, If ONLY i had known then what I know now!) Suffice to say it took a little longer than I imagined and but I'm about to hand over a chunk of the site for someone else to administer.

Also started my long overdue revamp of the look and feel of the Sixth Form Pages. It's all very provisional at the mo but have a gander HERE.

Content management? Well we decided to use Macromedia Contribute, and although it's early days yet I think it ticks all our boxes. I like the management console, even if it is a little basic.
More on that another time.

On your Radio!
Even been interviewed by local radio and press about the 'Recollections, New School, Climate Lab, Year 6 Info Shop & Wallacea projects. Spent a good morning talking to Katherine Fell from the NDJ, so keep an eye on the local press for details. They seemed keen to help publicise what we (and I) are trying to do here at the College.

What else?
Oh Lummy, errrm. Specialist College Status Year 3 launch do. Write up to follow soon. Helping the Science dept get to grips with thier online homework & assessment software. (Go Mr Day, Go!) Helping Rosie the Catering managerwith her Powerpoint Presentations + Photography of food and food provision at the College. Beware that we a hatching a cunning plan to show photos of all the school meal menus online in the near future.
Having a bit of fun with some .swf slide shows as well, check out The College Website front page and our student logon homepage.
After all that when I get home it's ..........
Trips to the chiropractor to sort my ailing back, Stop Motion Animation, Photos for a christmas exhibition, Mountain boarding and completely stuffing up my shoulder with a pathetic bail and a cat with ADHD !

Happy browsing

posted by Stu @ 1:35 PM

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Thursday, October 12, 2006
This week I have mostly been........

Subtitle: A week in the life of a web developer/designer.

This week I have mostly been....... working on a fascinating History Dept' project on the rise of Hitler in 1930's Germany. A team of year 13's have been collating info about nasty old Adolf and I'm knocking it into a web page for them. Had fun creating an interactive map of Northern Europe (No, honest, I did...) using the old tried and tested 'Show, Hide Layers' function in Dreamweaver, as well as trawling Wikipedia for copyright free images. It's not quite finished yet but have a sneek preview here.

Have also been creating posters/application forms/web pages that advertise another new project, that of getting teams of Year group 'Journalist Developers' together. The basic idea is to allow each team to create a web page for thier year and to cover as wide a range of topics as possible. From form news to game reviews. Film write-up's to CD reviews. Match reports to video clips of the best SK8/BMX tricks. Club info and interform competition results, etc etc etc. A whole load of stuff just about themselves. Anyway...that's the dream.

What else? well.... Presenting a series of talks about the College website & Year 6 info shop to prospective students and thier parents. Really nice to talk to everyone that came, and there all seemed genuinely interested, dare I say fascinated! After all a good proportion of the present content is aimed directly at them. A little bit suprising how few people actually knew we had a web site tho! I actually find that a bit worrying because I'm doing all this stuff but not many people seem to have seen it, let alone know that it existed.

.......A Staff ICT Skills audit!! Yoinks! To help the IT Techies provide some really pertinent IT Training in November we have created an online survey. It's hoped that we can use this to measure overall skill levels as well as target inset. Plus it's paperless, which as you might have read is a becoming a bit of a thing for me. Now I could have indulged in some hyper-nurdery and hand coded a datbase frontend to chuck all the answers into Access, but when you can get hold of a copy of 'My Web Survey' for £11 and let it do all the hard work, then as they are fond of saying round these parts, 'Get on Boy'.

Plus, a whole raft of other bits, pieces, meetings, brainstorms & jolly japes too numerous to mention.

Happy browsing

posted by Stu @ 6:47 PM

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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Online Newsletters

Just ponder this a mo. Each year the College distributes 6 newsletters ( two a term) to parents, pupils & staff. On average it uses 1 sheet of A3 paper per newsletter, that's around 2140 sheets of paper in total per newsletter. Over the course of a single year that amounts to a staggering 12,840 sheets of paper! At 2.5p per copy that works out at £53.50 per newsletter and £321 per annum. What if......what if..... we produced it electronically!. During an individual pupils 5 year stay at the College we could save over 64,000 sheets of paper. That's quite a few trees!!!! (About 1,500 in a rough calculation)
Now, I'm not normally a number crunching nurd or a tree hugging hippy type, but this has all come as quite surprise and makes me determined to make the 'Electronic Newsletter' a reality.
Initially I suspect we would embed it into the website and then build up a database of subscribers so it can be emailed directly to parents in the future.
From a developmental point of view, making it electronic, means that we can include a whole raft of media (Video, Full colour photographs, animations & feedback etc etc) that we've only dreamt of before. We could also publish design ideas and allow the public to vote otheirer favourite format. More food for thought.

College Newsletters HERE
Treetastic Fact HERE

Happy browsing.

Stu

posted by Stu @ 10:14 AM
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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Essential Web Dev Tools

I quite often get asked what software I use in my day to day routine and although as with many other things, it all depends on the job in hand, there are a few 'pieces of kit' that are quite literally invaluable. So here's my list of top 5 apps I could'nt function without.....

1). Photoshop CS - Pretty sad to admit it but there probably has'nt been a single day at work in the last 5 years where I hav'nt fired P'Shop up. It is THE most invaluable tool. From simple web graphics to complex site templates via photo imaging/trickery to colour mangement, I'm deeply endebted to the mega-nurds at Adobe for creating such a beast. I could prattle on for hours but suffice to say 'Often imitated, never bettered'

2). Dreamweaver 8 - Running a pretty close second for intense userbility (Is that a word?) comes Dreamweaver. From V4 onwards it's been the mainstay of all the online content I've created. A wonderfully designed, intuitive piece of software, it swaps hats from bog standard page creator to all singing all dancing, bells and whistles monster with ease.

3). Nav Studio 2005 - Away from the mainstream but none the less a wicked little app is Open Cubes DHTML menu creator. Totally Cross browser compatible, the hierarchical menus are a doddle to configure. Perfect for sites that you know will grow & grow.

4). Flash Slider - Great .swf slide show creator and it's FREE, bonus!. Handy app that creates Flash slide shows from any images, complete with oodles of transistions should you need them.

5). Cool Edit Pro - Bit of an old one now, and more recently known as Adobe Audition, (It was so good they bought the company) but it's still cutting edge in term of functionality. Edit virtually any kind of audio till' the cows come home. Rip, Mix, Record yadda yadda yadda, it does it all. Love it.

Other kit that gets a look in most weeks.....
Atrise Golden Section, Question Writer, Our web survey, Hoo Tech MP3 to SWF convertor, Spybot S & D, Photovista and ULead 3D. Phew.

All the apps have been used at some point to create content for Bideford College Online. Happy browsing.

posted by Stu @ 3:37 PM

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Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Ongoing Projects

Just in case you were wondering.... Here are a couple of sneeky peeks of stuff that is ongoing and nearly ready for lighting the blue touch paper and retiring to a safe distance.

The Big Climate Thing

This is a the result of a couple of days hard work by a team of year 7 & 8's towards the end of last term. In association with the National Marine Aquarium we have created a mini-site that looks at the specifics behind climate change and the impending threat on our local environment. There are some pretty startling conclusions and the team have come up with a variety of solutions that the individual can take part in to really make a difference. There are Flash animations, photos, links, quizzes and some fascinating content. Look out for it when it goes live before the end of 1/2 term.

What else is in the melting pot? Well......

The 'School Of The Future' mini-site

Designed specifically to be a portal for all the news about the exciting project that will change the face of education @ Bideford forever! Apart from the obvious up to date news, it will include: designs & drawings, photo galleries of the project from start to finish, contractors links, web cams, surveys, polls, design fly throughs, history of the College, forums, a showcase for all the new technologies that will be used in the build and ooodles more. Bit of a whopper this one but loads of fun to develop. Live by Christmas.

Also new but live right this moment is our new 'Straw Poll' feature. Check it out from the home page.

Happy browsing

posted by Stu @ 12:30 PM
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
Form Mail Misery

Do you know the saying 'No news is good news'? Well, today I beg to differ!
I noticed yesterday that the website had stopped sending email forms posted from deep within it's bowels.
Infact it's a problem that we've had on 4 or 5 previous occassions. It's easily cured, a simple IIS restart on the webserver, but the problem is you've no way of knowing when its bust until sometime after the event. Well..... usually the IIS fix does the trick but this time round the server threw a paddy and heaved it's .asp functionality out of the cot, covered it's head with a blanket and refused to play ball.
Normally, and I stress normally, I don't do stress when things like this happen, I mean stuff happens, especially when Microsoft are involved. But why now? why today, just when I'd made an appeal for online submissions to the 'Recollections Project'.
I do believe it's called the law of the sod!

Happy browsing

posted by Stu @ 4:12 PM 0 comments
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The Recollections Project

Posted a new page on the site today 'The Recollections project'. The idea being that with the impending launch of the 'New Build' mini-site the majority of the focus will be on future developments. However I am keen to try and create some kind of record of the history and legacy of the College. A large proportion of local residents will have been to the College and before when it was a Grammar & Secondary Modern. So I want to try and archive thier memories, stories and hopefully photographs.

Westcountry TV came to the College this morning and interviewed me about the project and the website. (Loads more scarey than DJ'ing to 2000 people, but hey, thats another story). It should be aired tommorrow. A right video nasty if ever there was one! Oh and look out for a piece in the Journal next week about the whole affair too! In the mean time, look at this scarey lot! If you know who they are, then let me know.

Happy browsing

posted by Stu @ 3:20 PM

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	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 net nurd, 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.
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