Educational Videos and The Prodigy - 16 May, 2008 at 15:58 (+0100)

I had the idea of doing IT Workshops as videos uploaded to the Internet so anyone can access them. I know some already exist, but these ones will be for use in the college on specific topics using the software we have. They will be available for everyone, but I don't know if they'll ever be that popular or anything.

Here's my first one. It shows how to create a Gantt Chart in Excel 2003.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Here comes my Star Award!

Oh yeah, I'm going to see The Prodigy tonight, for free. Thanks Gordon!

[link] [0 comments] 104 words.

Gantt charts - 15 May, 2008 at 16:42 (+0100)

Believe it or not the easiest way I have found to create a Gantt chart in Microsoft Excel is actually by downloading and installing OpenOffice.org creating one in calc, and saving it in Microsoft Excel format.

That's ridiculous! It's a good ad for OpenOffice.org though.

[link] [0 comments] 45 words.

Professional discussion - 15 May, 2008 at 10:49 (+0100)

I've got to go to my course tonight for an entire 15 minutes at 19:25. Unfortunately I'll be turning up at closer to 17:25 to avoid messing Lizz around with dropping me off and picking me up. The reason for such a short class is that I'll be having my professional discussion with Barbara. The topic we'll be discussing is equality and diversity. As I'm sure you know this is pretty much the least interesting topic (for me) on the entire course.

I think I should be able to manage a 15 minute discussion of the topic quite easily. Once that's over and done with I only really have a few things left to do on the course. I've got to hand in proof (signed off by line manager) of my 30+ teaching hours this year, write a 1000 word essay on equality and diversity, and be observed twice in September when classes are easier to change.

I was going to try to cram in the two sessions before the end of term, but it's not really very practical. The students wouldn't appreciate wasting a week on some rubbish topic when all they need to do is finish their portfolios before they can go home for the summer.

I suppose I'll use my time waiting for the course to start by making a start on my essay or something. I'll be glad when all this is done.

[link] [0 comments] 234 words.

Firefox 3 - 13 May, 2008 at 14:02 (+0100)

I've been using betas of Firefox 3 for the last couple of months now. The main thing preventing me from switching to it already has been the lack of Google Browser Sync for the new version. Well, today I discovered a little addon (and more) called Weave hosted by Mozilla. It will probably be able to manage everything Google's offering could in a little while. There will be additional features to come afterwards. This is possible because the project is open source.

when I was looking around on the Weave site I chanced upon another addon called Personas which is pretty much the same as a theme. It's a bit more basic in some senses, most notably the user-end is easier. It's also a lot more interactive in that different parts can be dynamic using HTML, Javascript, SVGs and wonderful technologies like that.

There's a lot of scope for most of the designs to be really tacky, and poorly thought-through, but it'll be worth it for the decent ones that get made with some real thought put in.

[link] [4 comments] 181 words.

Server problems - 13 May, 2008 at 12:00 (+0100)

The server that I host this site on has been having some issues with RAM recently. It's gone down a couple of times in the last few days. Unfortunately my Apache service did not start up, so my site has been down for a while. I've got it going again now, obviously. Some new memory has been arranged for the server and everything should be fine again soon.

[link] [0 comments] 71 words.