S.C.

Have you got PHPmyAdmin running on your webserver? A handy little way to debug your query is to echo back your query and copy and paste it into SQL tab of the database table (supportstaff_section1_b) in question. I've solved half a dozen issues like that. I'd also be tempted to echo something from your phpConnection.php page just to make sure that connection is working. Quince

Only just seen this post. Yup that's us. What can I say but "Sorry" and the offer stands if you want a chat. Graham

I'm also a big frog user. We have 3rd party integration into quite a few products but not our library system: eclipse. Happy to help, just reply here or pm me to arrange a phone call / virtual tour. Graham

I put in a TV studio at our place. It's not as straight forward as you've stated. You need a pro-sumer camcorder. Which is a fancy way of saying you need a 3ccd or 3mos camcorder (£500) instead of a basic single chip camera. Camcorders which have this make a big deal of it, so you don't have to scrutinise stats. We also use an edirol lvs400 video switcher (£800) which does live green screen. And rather than pay£1000 per sq metre of tru-matte material, we went to b&q and got Dublin bay 3 mixed up. Add in some low heat halogen lights from Newland Media (£1500) and you're done. If you're in the north east you're welcome to set up a visit to check out our studio. Not that I'm excluding anyone not local Alternatively give Planet PC a call, they specialise in school green screen and sell all in one cases designed around a laptop and the Newtek Tricaster software. I think they start at the £2500 mark. Graham

I find it a bit insulting that OfSted don't speak to VLE or ICT support staff. In 10 yeas I've never once spoken to an inspector. Considering back in 2006 it was announced all schools had to have a VLE ( from 2008 - a requirement which was then scrapped admittedly), yet ours has never been audited. I think it's probably because, in the nicest possible way, inspectors are former teachers who left front line teaching before the latest IT revolution. Still frustrating though not to be thought of as important enough to be inspected. But then as far as I now, the data manager isn't spoken to either. It does show the limited vision of these inspections.

Sounds like Coach's eye might be want you're after. Our PE department love it

I used EuroCables to build all the connections/boxes for our TV studio. They were brilliant. Want to use them again but don't have a project.

If he's prepared to spend the money, we use GrassValley ADVC-55s which input analogue and output firewire. Alongside ScenAlyzer which is video capture with a stop timer, it takes ALL the hassle out of digitising. ADVC55 ~ £150

You say that Flash has ridiculously high resource requirements, but really? I have never (afaik) had a browser crash from Flash, let a PC crash. The argument about it being badly written has always struck me as a little snobbish. Actionscript programming made programming easy and I think there's always been some who look down on it for that reason. Full on Interactive Flash stuff: A dambusters simulator, where students have to input correct speed and height for their plane to see if a bouncing ball hits a dam tracing its descent at the same time (maths and history research project). Or how about a navigation game involving multiple coordinates and a ship at sea (maths again). Or a school based version of Brain Training. Can html5, JavaScript, CSS and DOM replicate these? And do it as quickly and easily as Flash? Because I haven't seen anything near this level of functionality.

I'm no Luddite, I accept that Flash is going, but other than the fact iPads don't run it, I'm not sure why its disappearing. We have Samsung Galaxy Tabs in school and it runs fine on these low power devices. Plus every page I've seen listing examples of what HTML5 can do, only shows off animation. I've yet to see any competition for Flash's interactive stuff. Over the years I've built dozens of quizzes, games, adjustable graphs etc... And no one is talking about how to do that stuff. Does anyone have an example of a quiz built in HTML5? Self marking drag and drop?

Thanks but I get the same issue with your code. I'm starting to think we might have a cross domain scripting issue, which is preventing any of the solutions from working. Hmmmm

Just an update. The widget passed my attempts at testing, but I have had to withdraw after reports from teachers saying it isn't working. Will call IAL in the morning and ask for advice. i think a big part of the problem is the way Frog are building widgets. Widgets made by others in the Widget Store are pages with an FDP brick in them, but the IAL and Kerboodle widgets appear as weird links, which you can't add via the Frog2 editor. Doubly annoying, but at least with regular FDP widgets you can see the code and attempt a fix yourself.

Yeah, i'd already tried that. For some reason the code doesn't render on either our intranet or internet site. Technically, i haven't tried it on Frog yet, but wasn't holding out much hope.

I need a feed widget, ideally just showing the latest post for a single twitter account; for example CLV_Sport or CLV_Art

Has anyone got a currently working Twitter widget in Frog? Each one I've tried from the store doesn't work and my own code stopped working when Twitter updated their security. Again! Our staff seem to love Twitter and almost every department has their own account and they all want their feed on their department home pages. Graham

Have you tried contacting iamlearning? I've always found them to be very helpful. The widget (as far as I know) is built in FDP code, so they might be able to send you the code for you to adapt? Graham

Does secure gateway tie up computers? Or is there a way to use virtual machines? Thinking about external access. If you know the external IP address of the server, could you grant access in a similar way? file://172.15.etc.../ Graham

Using an IF Local User brick, the code above could be made to only appear inside school. Outside school, you could still use an Network Files Brick. Ok, so it's more inconvenient, but the benefits in school are there.

In terms of Iris, all the videos are held on a secure server and there's a blurring output option when sharing the video

Updating to the new widget solved my problem. Many thanks frogwoman

Wondering if you found an answer to this elsewhere? My limited experience with Frog and jQuery is that they are already using a highly customised version of jQuery in Frog. The result is some of the fancier functions of jQuery do not work. I've even tried linked to an uploaded version of the jQuery, but it seems some level of protection overwrites it. Having said that, if you've seen it one another school's page, could you ask them? Was it definitely in Frog, or could it have beein an iframe? I do that all the time to get around the limitations.

I might be wrong but I don't think Frog's RSS feeds can do photos. We've always had to use Frog's Notices system for such things. A phone call to Frog Support will probably answer your question.

Hi, Wondering if anyone else has come across this one. We have a Frog VLE and I Am Learning. I'm trying to use their IAL widget, which users click to be logged straight into IAL. This works fine for admins, but doesn't work for teachers or students. The school computers are on RM CC4, some XP, some Win7, all IE8. The weird thing is the widget is visible, but the mouse pointer doesn't even change to a link. We think it might be a permission setting in IE, having eliminated other variables. Has anyone else had this problem? Bit of history: I built IAL's first SSO widget from Frog, so we have the functionality. My concern is that the new official widget is written in a different way and ours might stop working at some point. Our Network Manager is looking into the issue, but it feels like a needle-in-a-haystack. I'm hoping to save him some time if possible.

As promised, here's the latest email from the ERA: Further to our telephone conversation yesterday I confirm that the BBC has altered its terms and conditions for the I-Player service so that schools can use the service for educational, non-commercial purposes so long as they have an ERA Licence. Recordings made with the You View Box must be in line with the terms and conditions of use on I-Player. So...a quick scan through the terms and conditions on the BBC's website, did not show any mention recording. It does refer to DRM and how users aren't allowed to remove DRM. Fair enough. My reading of it is that schools can record from iPlayer as long as it involves a legitimate method, i.e. without ripping videos to remove DRM. Does anyone concur or disagree? Not that that would be binding, but it would be good for someone to back up my logic.

That reminds me of why we got the Sky+ in the first place. A few years ago, the requests became: "Can you tape X for me". "We don't have a TV aerial, but if you tape it at home, we can capture the tape." "I don't have a VHS recorder, could you tape it at home for me."