Hi there!
Here's what I've been up to over the past couple of months...
MA Archaeology & Sustainable Development:
This is a new MA which requires 8 or 9 online modules, one of which I have just finished today. It involved scanning approximately 60 articles of varying length (10-100+ pages) which took ages.
CMIT
I'm invigilating the ECDL exams again but alas, no Talking Technology this yerar due to falling student numbers. The culprit is the new student module booking system which means that students book their modules easily online and so don;t come round to CMIT to talk to us!
Distance Learning
Student numbers have dropped here too but I'm still currently tutoring the Beginning Java and Progrmaming with VB.Net modules.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum
Tony at the RAMM has asked for a new website on the recent Beauty exhibition. SHould get underway with this soon
Geevor Infomine
Just about finished the infomine and now ready to move onto the e-leanring site. Oh yes...there's more!
So, lots of balls in the air at the moment. On the fun side, I donned a pink wig and raised money for Breast Cancer Awareness last month and am looking forward to our Christmas party in December.
Until then though...more work!
Bye for now
Ian
Friday, November 21, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
New Academic Year
Oh yes, it's that time again. AFter working on the Geevor project for the last month I've suddenly realised that the new semester is just around the corner...yikes!
So, there's currently 16 modules to update for WebCT and 3 completely new ones to design and load up. Plus, I'm off to Ireland for 10 days at the end of the month.
So, if you don't hear from me for a little while...that's why!
Better get on with it.
Ian
So, there's currently 16 modules to update for WebCT and 3 completely new ones to design and load up. Plus, I'm off to Ireland for 10 days at the end of the month.
So, if you don't hear from me for a little while...that's why!
Better get on with it.
Ian
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Geevor Mine Project
Hi,
It's mid summer now which means that the university workload decreases slightly for a month so there is time to get on with other projects. One of which is the 'Geevor Infomine'! The Geevor mine is a museum down in Cornwall based at an old Tin Mine and they want a web based information system in the museum for the visitors. That's where we come in. I'm currently developing this for a series of touch screen computers, attempting to allow users to quickly find out about objects on display.
Here's the current look:
The boxes move around the screen to get the visitors attention as theyt pass and there are links to increase the text size, show more information and change exhibitions in the museum. It's got the thumbs up so far so we'll se how it goes.
The museum also want a public website with the same information, but a slightly different look since they infomine doesn;t work particularly well in Firefox. However, since it is only to be shown in house, this isn;t a problem.
More soon!
Ian
It's mid summer now which means that the university workload decreases slightly for a month so there is time to get on with other projects. One of which is the 'Geevor Infomine'! The Geevor mine is a museum down in Cornwall based at an old Tin Mine and they want a web based information system in the museum for the visitors. That's where we come in. I'm currently developing this for a series of touch screen computers, attempting to allow users to quickly find out about objects on display.
Here's the current look:
The boxes move around the screen to get the visitors attention as theyt pass and there are links to increase the text size, show more information and change exhibitions in the museum. It's got the thumbs up so far so we'll se how it goes.
The museum also want a public website with the same information, but a slightly different look since they infomine doesn;t work particularly well in Firefox. However, since it is only to be shown in house, this isn;t a problem.
More soon!
Ian
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
OU Update
Hi again,
Just a quick opporuntity o update the blog on what's been happening with the OU lately. I've got a couple of students residing at HMP Shepton Mallet this year which has been a bit of an experience due to the OUs policy that all students receive 6 hours face-to-face tuition. So, twice now I've made the journey up to Shepton and sat down for a couple of hours with my students, who are doing well and on course to pass!
I've also given two 'normal' tutorials and attended an afternoons worth of presentations in Bristol last Saturday on plageurism and student retention which were both very interested. Essentially, plageurism is handled in different ways depening on the level and the studetn and the best way to hols onto students is to ring them up at the start of the year. Too late for that now but I might do a little experiment next time round.
Finally, Barbara, my staff tutor sat in on the tutorial last week and I'm pleased to say was very impressed with my presentation, more so that the interview board the other day ;-)
Bye for now
Ian
Just a quick opporuntity o update the blog on what's been happening with the OU lately. I've got a couple of students residing at HMP Shepton Mallet this year which has been a bit of an experience due to the OUs policy that all students receive 6 hours face-to-face tuition. So, twice now I've made the journey up to Shepton and sat down for a couple of hours with my students, who are doing well and on course to pass!
I've also given two 'normal' tutorials and attended an afternoons worth of presentations in Bristol last Saturday on plageurism and student retention which were both very interested. Essentially, plageurism is handled in different ways depening on the level and the studetn and the best way to hols onto students is to ring them up at the start of the year. Too late for that now but I might do a little experiment next time round.
Finally, Barbara, my staff tutor sat in on the tutorial last week and I'm pleased to say was very impressed with my presentation, more so that the interview board the other day ;-)
Bye for now
Ian
New Job?
Hi,
I went for a new job a couple of weeks ago, it was in the Skills Team which is part of the Education Enhancement department here at the university. It was a bit more money and up at the main campus. I attended the interview porcess and gave a couple of presentations plugging my experience as a web developer. However, I did get the impression after a while that it wasn;t technical know-how they were after, but rather more experience of training and university diplomacy.
SO, I didn't get it, which is all well and good because I was seriously considering turning it down had I been offered the job (honest!). The interview panel seemed to think that investing time and money in advanced e-learning techniques wasn't justifiable where I think that Exeter should be at the forefont of e-learning...it's what students expect nowadays and I wouldn't be content just throwing stuff up onto WebCT so I could tick a box. That's not how I work.
So, the best result for everyone I think. I've always been happy in ELaC at St Lukes and I'll be here for a while yet. We do cutting edge web development here. Why did I ever think the grass was greener?
Ian
I went for a new job a couple of weeks ago, it was in the Skills Team which is part of the Education Enhancement department here at the university. It was a bit more money and up at the main campus. I attended the interview porcess and gave a couple of presentations plugging my experience as a web developer. However, I did get the impression after a while that it wasn;t technical know-how they were after, but rather more experience of training and university diplomacy.
SO, I didn't get it, which is all well and good because I was seriously considering turning it down had I been offered the job (honest!). The interview panel seemed to think that investing time and money in advanced e-learning techniques wasn't justifiable where I think that Exeter should be at the forefont of e-learning...it's what students expect nowadays and I wouldn't be content just throwing stuff up onto WebCT so I could tick a box. That's not how I work.
So, the best result for everyone I think. I've always been happy in ELaC at St Lukes and I'll be here for a while yet. We do cutting edge web development here. Why did I ever think the grass was greener?
Ian
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Electrician Website
Hi again,
Another project I'm working on, this time for a private client, is to produce a website for an electrician. It's still in the draft phase but here is a screenshot as we stand:
This produced an interesting conundrum since the client requested the use of flashing light bulbs in the design but, try as I might, I couldn't work them in. Still, the project is not over yet!
I've used images and fades to present the different services offered by the company as a more modern way rather than relying on textual links. I find that this works particulalry well on a home page, but for the pther pages I'll produce links with smaller images so they don't clutter the pages up or take anything away from the important information.
Hope you like it.
Bye for now.
Ian
Another project I'm working on, this time for a private client, is to produce a website for an electrician. It's still in the draft phase but here is a screenshot as we stand:
This produced an interesting conundrum since the client requested the use of flashing light bulbs in the design but, try as I might, I couldn't work them in. Still, the project is not over yet!
I've used images and fades to present the different services offered by the company as a more modern way rather than relying on textual links. I find that this works particulalry well on a home page, but for the pther pages I'll produce links with smaller images so they don't clutter the pages up or take anything away from the important information.
Hope you like it.
Bye for now.
Ian
Work Update - History of Education Bibliography Website
Hi,
Lately I've been working on the backend user interface and database structure for a new website which categorises articles on the History of Education. A couple of colleagues are looking after the front end (the part that will be publicly available over the net) but my job is to create a set of pages for the data entry. I don't have to enter the data itself (which is good because there are 3000 postcards worth of it).
So, the trick here was to read the specifications and what the clients actually wanted to do with the site and then get the database in the correct format to hold the data so the querying could be done properly and efficiently.
I used PHP and a MySQL database, accessed by SQLYog to develop this and here's what it looks like:
I worked closely with the administrator (who would be entering the data) and the academics in the School of Education who, effectively, are the clients to create a database and web interface that is easy to use and will store all of the data in a format useable by my colleagues here in ELAC who will be running the SQL queries on the data via the websites front end. So you see, a lot of things to think about. This is sometimes the trouble when working as a cog in a larger machine. When a team of developers work on a project it's really important to keep communicating so you don;t end up with a database good for the administrators but poor for the front end or vice versa.
If you're interested, here's the link of the main website:
http://dll.ex.ac.uk/hoebibliography/index.php
Ian
Lately I've been working on the backend user interface and database structure for a new website which categorises articles on the History of Education. A couple of colleagues are looking after the front end (the part that will be publicly available over the net) but my job is to create a set of pages for the data entry. I don't have to enter the data itself (which is good because there are 3000 postcards worth of it).
So, the trick here was to read the specifications and what the clients actually wanted to do with the site and then get the database in the correct format to hold the data so the querying could be done properly and efficiently.
I used PHP and a MySQL database, accessed by SQLYog to develop this and here's what it looks like:
I worked closely with the administrator (who would be entering the data) and the academics in the School of Education who, effectively, are the clients to create a database and web interface that is easy to use and will store all of the data in a format useable by my colleagues here in ELAC who will be running the SQL queries on the data via the websites front end. So you see, a lot of things to think about. This is sometimes the trouble when working as a cog in a larger machine. When a team of developers work on a project it's really important to keep communicating so you don;t end up with a database good for the administrators but poor for the front end or vice versa.
If you're interested, here's the link of the main website:
http://dll.ex.ac.uk/hoebibliography/index.php
Ian
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
New Semester = New Modules
The end of 2007 saw the first semester of the academic year draw to a close. So, I've been frantically marking assignments from the Beginning Java module and the VB.Net module. Again, the start to the year has exploded with the amount of work afoot.
The new semester has seen 3 more distance learning modules begin, Talking Technology: my new face to face module and M257: Putting Java to work, with the OU. ECDL has also begun and then there's the History of Education online bibliography project which involves entering the data from 3000 postcards into a MySQL database and producing a front end worthy of the School of Education. Other institutions have attempted this before but the outcome has always seemed rather basic and amateurish in my opioion. With the new Web 2.0 ideas of user collaboration we are using tagclouds where users can enter there own tags and so build up a tag cloud of there own. You see the site is about journal articles that the heads of school has categorised themselves. But what if the users disagreee with the categorisation? Then they can make there own = Web 2.0.
It's like a wiki really...hurrah, I've finally found a use for one!
I've also got plans to look further into the use of JSP and speech recognition, plus using one of the flat 'tablet' PCs which you can write on. A couple of my colleagues use these and seem to get on with them quite well, especially in meetings when you want to record notes easily and safely.
So, that's what I'm up to at the moment. Back soon.
Ian
The new semester has seen 3 more distance learning modules begin, Talking Technology: my new face to face module and M257: Putting Java to work, with the OU. ECDL has also begun and then there's the History of Education online bibliography project which involves entering the data from 3000 postcards into a MySQL database and producing a front end worthy of the School of Education. Other institutions have attempted this before but the outcome has always seemed rather basic and amateurish in my opioion. With the new Web 2.0 ideas of user collaboration we are using tagclouds where users can enter there own tags and so build up a tag cloud of there own. You see the site is about journal articles that the heads of school has categorised themselves. But what if the users disagreee with the categorisation? Then they can make there own = Web 2.0.
It's like a wiki really...hurrah, I've finally found a use for one!
I've also got plans to look further into the use of JSP and speech recognition, plus using one of the flat 'tablet' PCs which you can write on. A couple of my colleagues use these and seem to get on with them quite well, especially in meetings when you want to record notes easily and safely.
So, that's what I'm up to at the moment. Back soon.
Ian
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