philwaud

Ditto, Im not in a striking union so will be attending.

Surely thats illegal? Or are they literally providing a childminding facility?

I bought a non apple back from Professional iPhone Repairs, iPad Repairs, iPhone Screen Repairs Service , Water Damaged iPhone and iPhone Spare Parts It was £14 with a couple of quid postage. Very easy to fit and you really cant tell it apart. Its just as strong and visually identical. It also comes with philips screws rather than the weird ones that Apple use on later models (they also sell a screwdriver for the proper Apple ones in case you need it.) Very fast service and a company I would definitely use again. They also sell lots of different colours but that didnt appeal! Phil

From the spec... Pass: Candidates will show basic competence in producing webpages containing text and a minimum of five different images, using a basic template they have created themselves. Merir: Candidates will produce webpages with appropriate styles applied for headings and body text, using either a template they have made or css. Distinction: Candidates will produce high quality web pages using css. Thats it, nothing about video, music, sound or animation.

Just re-read your post, in the new spec you must use proper web design software and powerpoint is a no-no. You need to use a web design package such as serif page plus or dreamweaver. Your moderator may very well ask to see the electronic files and may "view source" so they will know precisely how the site is created. Our last two moderations of unit 2 have been done this way.

Ah, well thats very different! There is no requirement for using sound or video for unit 2. User interaction means a rollover effect etc. For a pass, they need one rollover, for a merit they need two plus "a further interactive element" and for a distinction they need to show "limited scripting" In practice, you can use a simple rollover as provided by Dreamweaver etc, and attach a behavior with a "show-hide" action on some page element such as a layer (ad-div) or text etc. For scripting, you can get away with changing some of the text to correct a spelling mistake eg, your javascript says to set some text to "This is some text" and you spell it "This is smoe text" - show the error and change it. It meets the criteria as scripting, even for distinction. In the past, we have used a button saying "Click here" as evidence of user interaction, but we dont do that now. If you use MP3s etc on your pages, you will have issues about codecs, windows media player etc. The only safe way is to use flash to embed it but its massive overkill. Phil

Do you mean the unit 4 Multimedia? Unit 2 is web design and there isnt any requirement to include sound or video. The video issue is a problem, but with a bit of lateral thinking you can get round it! We use M$ Movie Maker to create a simple movie animating a series of images with some basic text. Its a very intuitive application and will run on windows 7 as the windows live version - it doesnt require a login although it does nag you at first. For sound, you can use some of the copyright free MP3s that have been given away on the various music stores - check the licence as some don't include the right to redistribute. |A better way is to use a microphone to record a reading of one of the blocks of text. You didnt mention text! They have to actually show that they have sourced, stored and used some text so we include a screenshot of a quote from some famous person. Hope this makes sense! Feel free to ask anything further - we have an OCR moderator in our ICT team so we get direct access to the chief moderator when we have questions! Phil

Yes, let them all use a gmail account and synchronise their account - automatically syncs bookmarks! No idea what that means to a network though... :-)

I do a similar exercise every year! I usually go for a 24 month contract and take the zero up front cost option. Ive done this with all the iphones, and now Ive just swapped to a Galaxy s2 it was the same deal. Just about every year, I sell my old phone and buy out of the remaining time on my contract. It usually means that Im a few quid in front. O2 give you a bit of a priority as a loyal gold customer and last year was the only one where I had to wait (3 days) for the new iphone4. This year, I could have got 350 quid+ on ebay, but instead I sold it to a colleague for the contract buy out price (245), which I thought was fair because the phone had a small scratch on the screen and she is a close friend. Loving the android BTW, more pleased than I ever was with Apple products.

Iphone: App Store (iOS) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Says 500,000+ apps ...try to find the number of android apps out there and you will see very different answers, but generally a lower figure. The main point is that apple apps are at least moderated whereas any tom dick or harry can string together a few lines of code (often buggy, poorly written code) and launch an android app. For every decent app (apple or droid), there are hundreds of naff ones. Phil

Good point about the apps, but I think you will find that Apple have a LOT more apps than Android! The Apple apps have also gone through some kind of approval process which cuts out a lot of chaff. Personally, my spending on apps over the years since I bought an iphone2 has never been that much, but there is an investment into how much time you spend tweaking screens, positions of apps etc so that it is just right for you. Ive always jailbroken my iphone which allows a bit more freedom with apps such as calendar lockscreen and customised ringtones/SMS tones etc. Android has been a learning curve, but it allows a lot more freedom and is considerably cheaper. Phil

I went for a Samsung s2, very pleased. Easy to root, Samsung even help you. Ive added GoLauncher and Calender lockscreen which make the interface stunning! A bit concerned about battery life - its great when you just use it as a phone but if you use GPS a lot it soon goes. Solution, extra batteries are £3 a pop, bigger 3500mah batteries are only 12 quid! Can you imagine Apple charging that? Phil

Great news anyway, is it php5.3 compatible - I know you asked for testers but Im guessing you have intended it to work? Phil

Good work Marci! Does that mean we are upgrading soon? :-) Phil

I think the law you are looking for is the Freedom of Information Act Your organisation should have a schedule of publication that list all publically available docuemnts, it will also state the retention periods for specific types of data. Students stuff will be until they reach a certain age but if the students are statemented or registered disabled then it may be longer, potentially until the student dies. Other things can be much longer, I seem to remember that we have some that are 100 years! Phil

Certainly Ive enabled guest access on a Google sketchup course http://intranet.horbury.wakefield.sch.uk/moodle/course/view.php?id=170 Hopefully you will be able to see an example of what we do, please let me know if not! Phil Waud VLE coordinator Horbury School

There is no such thing as a free lunch! Moodle is free but the total cost of ownership must include having a tech department that can support it and the training that staff need to embed it in the teaching and learning of your school. The embedding bit goes for any VLE and Moodle is very flexible so its easier than most systems to encourage staff and students to use it. Non free systems usually come with some tech support to integrate it with your network (ie ldap or similar sign on, access to shared areas, users files etc.) Moople doesnt really do anything that cant already be done with Moodle and a few plugins which you can get from the Moodle site. Personally, I would rather do away with the adds etc and have a more standard Moodle set up. Just my opinion, of course! Phil

Cheers Marc, noted!

Moodle is so easy to install that Im surprised that everyone doesnt just do a fresh install of moodle2 to run in parrallel with your existing install. Themes will be a problem, as will any third party modules or blocks as the database layer has changed quite a bit. Edit - scratch that, just tried it on my test server - Moodle 2.0 tells me "Moodle 2 currently doesn't support restoring Moodle 1.x backups. A temporary work around to this is to restore your Moodle 1.x backup onto a Moodle 1.9 site, and then upgrade it to Moodle 2. Once the upgrade is complete you will be able to make new backups which will be restorable on other Moodle 2.0 sites." I like the different layout and the less restrained layout but the extra teaching and learning tools are the real killer. Amongst these are the conditional activities where an enrolled student has to complete an activity successfully before they can attempt the new one - so getting a certain mark on a test before doing the next bit etc. Well worth it, IMHO Phil

Toby, Dont dismiss the log files either - they show a lot of information and are also part of the "standard" moodle install so dont need any server tinkering. Each course has a stats section as does the main course - you will see a link next to the admin name when you login to them. Phil

The Online Users standard moodleblock shows members of a course logged on, and adding this to your home page (site course) shows all users currently online. You could even override the roles on that block so that just staff see the block.

The problem is often not the pole but the way is is connected to the roof/beams/girders. Its usually a single point mounting with just a couple of bolts. On our old site, the whole building used to shake if students ran down the corridor and the projectors would shake no matter how they were connected - in fact a more flimsy mounting let you have some damping which reduced the shake. Have you tried adding some bracing? A length of steel fishing cable from the projector itself up to the ceiling at 45 degrees in all four directions adds a lot of stability and is hardly visible. Phil

Dont think so, it was just a possible issue! Cant really help (?) further, sorry! We have it working and it is brilliant.

Its a PHP setting, the php.ini file on your webserver will have a setting for it. A lot of moodle doesnt need session keys (they are a bit like cookies), but that block does.

Have you got sessions enabled?