Visiting nowhere

A website which promotes a fictitious tourist beach in Cornwall is receiving thousands of hits after becoming a cult internet joke. The hoax suggests Porthemmet offers warm seas, dolphins and a coral reef. But anyone following directions to the fake paradise is in for a shock - they would end up leaving the county.  The website appears to be encouraging tourists to the non-existent destination of Porthemmet - "the largest beach in the county...designated a Site of Amazing Natural Beauty". In this "unspoilt paradise", police officers never patrol the beach as "the local council decided that they distress elderly locals" and beach parties are often visited by some of Cornwall's most famous musicians.  A sight-seeing ship takes people to a nearby puffin colony and shows off a coral reef.

it reminds me of two other virtual places; Oldton and Methtintdour, and leaves me wondering just how many more are out there...

Hang on a minute

Have teachers, Teaching assistants and all others who work in schools just been praised by no less than the Prime Minister? He was speaking today (Saturday 29th) and is quoted as saying;

"I think we've moved our schools from being below average to being above average. We've now got to make them world class."

I think that is indeed a message of praise for the hard work and effort that school staff have been putting in. I'm going to lie down now - I feel faint.

Access Denied

How reliant is a school on technology? Quite a lot judging by today. At just after 1pm, the school lost connectivity to the Internet. The result of this became apparent quickly;

1. No access to the internet in classes for lessons
2. Users trying to log onto the Active Directory could not log on
3. Users logged onto the AD could not access files / folders / programs
4. The school office was unable to access email / internet / centrally held files

In other words - everything ground to a halt. And we had no control over the solution. It was something that had to be dealt with remotely.

Talking articles

I've added a fantastic new feature to the school website. Odiogo is a feature that brings text to life through speech. Every article (aside from the static pages we have) now has a "listen now" button that actually reads the content of the article in *almost* perfect speech. In addition to each post being audio enabled, Odiogo also creates an RSS feed that can be used in iTunes or Juice to allow you to subscribe to the latest news from the school.

The best thing about this - it's free! Wow!!

A Good Deed Done

I used the tram system today to get into the city centre in order to try (unsuccessfully) and find a book. Usually when I get off the tram heading back to the car I try and give my all-day ticket to another traveller to save them paying. I couldn't see anyone today, and so headed home with it. Which, it turns out, was lucky as I needed it to go back into town later. As I parked for the second time, I noticed another parked car with the back door left open, but no-one around. Doing my good deed for the day, I hit the intercom button at the tram stop and let the control room know, who spun their cameras around to see the vehicle before sending someone to check it.

But I still didn't get to give the ticket away when I had done :-(

Cyberbullying

Schools are being told to stop the rise in cyberbullying by pupils. For children being bullied, gone are the days when they could get home, shut the door and escape. Now it can be 24/7 with text messages, emails, IM, and websites all invading homes to keep the bullying going. DirectGov has a website full of information about cyberbullying, and tips about how to deal with it.

Popular Iguanas

Not often you get to hear about people doing strange things to get themselves an iguana, but this week there were two seperate stories!

Firstly, the woman who tried to smuggle an iguana through Blackpool airport by hiding it in her bra. It was discovered when a police officer noticed something was moving under the woman's dress.

And secondly, a Californian man has been charged with using his false leg to smuggle three endangered iguanas from a nature reserve in Fiji to the United States. Hopefully the leg never went walking off on its own.

One stop 2.0

Wanting to keep up to date with all the new ideas that are coming out for "Web 2.0"?
Try Go2Web20 for the most up to date, and constantly expanding list of the latest brainwaves.

Take Kerpoof for example - an online comic / cartoon movie making website. It's brilliant, and even better, it's free! :-)

No boys allowed

I'm in the process of setting up an afterschool ICT club at the moment. We've had details of Computer Clubs 4 Girls (CC4G) - free to all state schools. I gave out the details to the upper school classes today, and of the 24 Y6 girls who are eligible 24 of them jumped at the chance!

So - looks like I'm about to start a weekly girls only ICT club

Dual Standards

Further to my last post about Wikis, seems I had already successfully embeded the Wiki into the school website. The problem I was faced with was that I was using a school laptop to view it on. The school laptops use Internet Explorer, and as a result I couldn't get the Wiki login to work correctly.
Firefox has no such problems, and so using my home machine I am able to log into the Wiki from the embedded page.
When will Microsoft design their products using company wide accepted standards, instead of their own, unworkable standards?

Free stuff!

Back in May, when I was developing my new school website, I looked at wikis and came across wikispaces.com. They have feature called 100,000 wikis for schools in which they are going to allow 100,000 education related wikis get the full service for free (that means no ads on the wiki pages). They're currently about 1/3 of the way there.

I've signed up the school with a view to using the wiki as a pupil communication tool - the messageboard will be better than using email - and also as a point where any schools we link with can join in with conversations with our pupils.

If only I could now get a version of the wiki to work correctly oncw embedded into the school website, then it would be ready to launch.

Techno Fitness

For a while now the arcades have had the interactive dance games. Jump on the right squares at the right time to make the proper dance moves. And of course the playstation has had a dance mat add-on to make their games more fun.

Well now it's moved over to the classrooms. Dance Revolution is changing PE in some schools. Take a child who hates PE, put the mat in front of them ,along with the rest of the class, a big screen at the front, and suddenly there's competition to be number one on the display. See a video of it action.

Similarly, the Wii (the best new games console in years) has plans for Wii fitness next year - a mat and sensor that can help you with your fitness levels in another fun way, like their Wii sports has done.

We're getting closer that virtual age when there will never be the need to step out of the house for anything...ever...

Animoto Beta

I was sent details of this new website - upload your photographs, add some music (you can use their choice - no copyright issues then) and then the site magically mixes them together to produce a video.

Cosmetic changes

As you can see, I've made some changes to the look of this website. Gone is the list, on the right of the page, of sections that I write articles into. This is now below the banner on every page. Talking of which, I've cleaned up the look of the banner too. I've altered the colours of the site, and redesigned the layout so that no matter what size monitor you're viewing on, the content will display in the middle 800 pixels of the screen.  And finally there's a clever bit of Amazon coding at the bottom of the page. It "reads" the content of the page, and then tries to show relevant products from their website. (Mind you it's struggling with some of the posts as it can't decide what is relevant and what isn't)

MyPoliceSpace

A man was caught vandalising hanging baskets after a video of him in the act was posted on the internet and spotted by an off-duty policeman.

The film of [removed name], tearing down hanging baskets on a walk home in Chatteris, Cambs, was posted by friends on networking website MySpace. The police officer recorded the video, called "Skeggsy destroying Chatteris in Bloom!", and went to see the offender.
[ He ] was issued with an £80 on-the-spot fine for criminal damage.

Cambridgeshire Police Insp Robin Sissons said: "People have to be careful if you are playing around. "Don't forget that the police also watch the internet and sites like MySpace."

Going widescreen

Well, as ICT coordinator it's my job to keep the school running when it comes to using the technology. So my maths group head to the suite for their lesson using the laptops. Only problem is... 28 laptops don't work with 30 children!
So I mention this to the HT, and ask if we can have two more laptops to make sure everyone gets a machine. That's not a problem (brilliant!). The problem is that the machines we have have been superceded by the manufacturer, and the new versions are now widescreen, and I don't want 28 kids on one type of machine, and 2 on another.

But there is a solution - my laptop will become a suite laptop and guess who gets the shiny new widescreen one? Yep - me!! Plus, one other teacher will also have to forgoe there older machine for the other shiny new one.

Who will it be?

Back to that old routine

Well, after a scorching (!??!) summer break, it's back to the day job. These first few weeks are always the killers. If it's not the feeling of exhausting from going from a sedate speed in the summer to all-out-rushing in the space of a day, or the feeling of how different this class is (and the thought "will I ever get them to the standard of last years?"), then it's the battle against the first virus invasion that enters the school with the kids.
So far, I've suffered just from the first and second, but I can see children hacking in class and thinking it's only a matter of time before their bugs strike me down.

Just for the kids

We've been contacted by a new website for children; Webbliworld, telling about what they offer.

WebbliWorld, has recently launched a website for children between the ages of 6-10 years old.

www.WebbliWorld.com is a vibrant, interactive and highly animated virtual world for children, designed and developed in association with Aardman animations. The website is currently running a competition and has games available where you and the children will have the opportunity to win prizes from Puffin Books and WWF.  We felt the competition was a great way to get children involved on both an educational and personal level.

You can also read what the owners, Justine & Camilla have to say about the safety of children online by viewing their blog. They would love your input and any suggestions you may have.

I've taken a look, and if what they say regarding the moderation and filtering is true, it offers a great opportunity for kids. One to keep an eye on!