Mission Maker tutorial – Adding Simple Questions (Pt 2)

Or visit the tutorial link

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Stoke on Trent City Learning Centres – 01782 591040

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Updating your website. (Part 1)

Teachers often ask me a number of questions about school websites, and the best way to go about getting one. In this article I’m going to present some information about why Schools might want to make the shift from a static website to a dynamic website

Keeping your website upto date is a task. However, it is an important task that someone should be doing every week, maybe even daily.

Keeping your website updated is a massive task. It’s usually something no one wants to do. However, keeping your audience up to date with all your recent developments is incredibly important if you want to engage with them.

For years now many schools have had a static website, that is to say that someone designed and built it uploaded it to the server and then it just sat there. Every time the school wants an update, some external person has to be phoned to add new photos or stories.

More recently though, database driven (Dynamic) websites that allow teachers the ability to log in and write their own articles, add photos and events have come along. Blogs or weblogs where the whole website management is taken care of by a 3rd party company are also popular and you don’t have to worry about costs or technical issues.

So, which is the best solution? No option is absolutely foolproof unless you have a member of staff who is specifically dedicated to maintaining the website.

What are the pro’s and cons of blogs and Dynamic sites?

If faced with the choice of a static and a dynamic website, the dynamic one would win hands down every time for me. The reason is mostly workload based. With static pages each and every new article written for the page needs a new page creating. It needs naming properly and linking to from all the other pages. A dynamic site on the other hand whilst being more complex and time consuming to put together, creates multiple pages without users needing any knowledge of computer programing. You can add pages easily by simply logging into the site and entering data into a series of text fields. Images and files can be uploaded easily to accompany the articles.

Providing you back up your server regularly, every article ever written fro the website is retrievable for other purposes, making it an excellent repository of your successful work.

Downsides of dynamic websites are that they cost more to develop and you need the full participation of your staff to make them work effectively. A dynamic website that is never updated will lose visitors unvisited and can then become as impotent as a static website that is never updated.

Blogs and dynamic websites are essentially the same thing. However, a blog tends to me more of a diary site, with snippets of useful information as opposed to a full blown corporate website. One of the main benefits of using a blog is the use of RSS feeds. RSS feeds are really just a text file which is updated each time new articles are added to a website. Users can subscribe to a websites content via the RSS feed. Whenever new content is added to the website users can see this via the feed and are often emailed a notification as well. RSS feeds are also great for improving your search engine rankings

The downsides of using blogs are that you are reliant on third party servers. If the server goes down , so does your site and if you use a free blogging service, you cannot complain. There are paid services out there though, but this is where you will need technical help as you will need access to a server to host the site, and some knowledge of programming to get your site up and running.

In Part 2 of this article we will examine some of the popular blogging platforms and how to choose the type of site you want.

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Exciting Science Days blast off!

October Saw Secondary Science advisor Nick Hackett bring his Exciting Science days back to the CLC’s.

Sandon High came in on 2 days to take part in a number of experiments.

Magic Planet
Visualiser
Quizdom Vote Pads
Photostory
Blogging

Pupils evidently enjoy interactive teaching approaches and the quiz was an outright favorite in this respect. Interacting with PCs and carrying out experiments also feature highly.

After adjusting the delivery of the Magic Planet session following the evaluation of the first session it’s popularity improved measurably.

The blogging session, where the students recorded the activities they took part in did encounter some problems again however the students did manage to record their experiments successfully.

Exciting Science Day -blog
ExcITingScience.pdf

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Getting Started with Edublogs – A Teachers Guide

If you have been reading recent posts you will know that we have been looking for a suitable blogging platform so that classes can keep a blog that is moderated by teachers.

Although we liked blogger for its style and features we recognised that not all teachers have the technical know how to set up a blog on their own server. If you dont host your blog on your own server then blogger blogs link to other blogs on the network, some of those may contain material unsuitable for minors.

So we found Edublogs a much safer option. Edublogs however, proved rather tricky to get started with. I have created this tutorial to guide you through the set up process. Although it is a little tricky to get started, once the job is done you will have a brilliant and flourishing blog that provided a safe environment for teacher and students to interact.

Tutorial
You will need Flash Player 9 or higher installed to view this tutorial

Video Tutorial – How to Get started with Edublogs
Video Tutorial – Getting Started with Edublogs

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Some Fun things… You can make at the CLC

If you wondered where all the fun had gone from lessons? Here are a couple of things I made this week in my spare time. Part of the fun of learning is playing.

1. Photobooth slideshow.

This just shows some of the grotesque characters you can create in Photobooth. Not everyone is as ugly as me, but you can use these images to create slideshows or characters for your movies, comics and photostories.

8.01 mb Monster.mov

2. 3D tours

A couple of years ago we employed eyerevolution from London to come and create some 3d virtual tours for us. Now with the aid of some niftylittle tools such as “Pleinpot” and “Cubic Converter” we have joined the tours up, See our cut down version before the main one appears on the website.

7.38 mb connected.mov

If you are interested in using technology to raise attainment in your classroom, or even for a bit of fun, get in touch with us at either Longton or Haywood City Learning Centres.

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Longton High City Learning Centre – Exciting Science Day

Here is the agenda for Todays Exciting Science Day.

Word
Stoke_CLCs_exciting_Science_day.doc

PDF
Stoke_CLCs_exciting_Science_day.pdf
You will need Adobe Acrobat to read this document.

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• You will be able to access all the images you need from the My documents folder.
• Log into your SGFL email. You will have received an invite to join the CLC blog. Accept it.
• You may have to sign up for a google account. If so follow the instructions.
• Once you have accepted the invitation you will be able to log on to the blog and create posts.

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Apple Mac skills increasingly important in I.C.T

Apple Macs are increasingly popular in education now

Here at Longton City Learning Centre, we use Apple Macs extensively for education and training in many areas, and due to Mac OS X’s superiority in comparison to Windows, this looks set to become increasingly common in schools and businesses.

With the Macintosh now the PC of choice for many hard-core technology professionals, and Mac skills an in-demand speciality among IT pros, industry experts say that skills in Apple’s computer technologies are becoming increasingly important in IT.

“The Mac will be coming soon to a company near you, if it hasn’t already,” says Brian Vaughn, executive vice president of Dataprise, a network support and IT solutions provider. “If you’re a hard-core tech, having an OS X computer is the greatest thing in the world.” You not only have a consumer-friendly operating system, he says, but also “a world of open-source software” and all the possibilities offered by Unix.

While multimedia and design specialists have long used Macs, companies are now integrating the systems into their IT set-ups for a range of purposes. That means all sorts of techies should have some Macintosh expertise.

The skills IT professionals require — was evident to Vaughn when one of Dataprise’s clients, with about 100 computer users, made it clear that the company needed to have adequate Macintosh know-how. “Unless you can support our Macintosh enterprise, we’re not going to be able to stay with you guys,” Vaughn says Dataprise was told.

And now, with new Macs running on Intel chips, the Mac is capable of running not only Apple’s OS X and Unix, but also Windows. “This ability to have the best of both worlds on a single machine will result in further inroads of the Macintosh platform into the mainstream business environment — and increase the need for those who support company IT systems to be familiar with it,” Vaughn says.

If you would like information on getting or providing training in these necessary skills, or need help intergrating Macs into your own computer network, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 01782 591040.

Full Article

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Harpfield Animators Get busy

Harpfield School create their stop frame animation

February 28th saw an Animation workshop from Harpfield Primary school. Children and teachers worked alongside CLC staff to produce unique animations in the one day session.
The models were made from paper, foam and pipecleaners. A range of films were produced and distributed to the school.

Teacher Animation Day Wins Hearts and Minds.

animation in the classroom

February 22nd saw Teachers from 7 local schools visit the centre to learn basic Stop Motion Animation skils.

Each group of teachers produced a set of models and sets, which were then filmed and edited using iStopMotion and iMovie.

Jenny Hulme and Phil Gregory delivered the training session which was supported by Adam Churton.

A DVD was created to showcase the finished films and is available from the CLC.

Document share activated

Document share

The City Learning Centre website now allows Staff members to share documents quickly and easily.

Staff need to simply log in and then proceed to upload their shareable documents straight into our document repository on the website.

This should enable the near instant sharing of files if email isn’t available to you.