Safari and KnowledgeNET

well it has been a busy day today,

Safari 3 beta for the mac was released, and so it was for vista and xp (sp2), now I though, great lets update my mac to give it the clean new look, well no, I can't. The reason is I have 10.3.9, I require 10.4.9 to be able to run it. Bummer for having the old OS X running on my system at home.

KnowledgeNET had a steering committee meeting today which I was fortunate enough to attend. I got to use the new FCK editor, a much improved editor on the one before hand, though a few simple things are yet to be cleaned up. The new image gallery works a treat, I will have to show this one off. Just getting to use knowledgeNET for a day was the best part of all, and to be able to ask questions to the people that make it was excellent. I must try to get time off to attend the next meeting, now that sounds a bit like AA.

Somethings that are coming in the pipeline under the title PITCH 3 sound like what we are waiting for, the e-learning, a e-reflection are just another term for blogs, one allow students to answer a posed question, the other is for the student to reflect with the teacher and their peers in open communication (blog). Though this is always the taster and the hook, these wont be made available until later in term 3.

We looked at the caregiver side of things and how reports could be changed from sending to parents three times a year to almost weekly/monthly communication/reporting. Attendance linking in from the SMS, and the caregivers access to information from the SMS in a web environment. To me it looked good, though I am not to sure whether the ORRS should have been included and the assessment data needs a summary page before getting into the nitty gritty of the students assessment work.

It was nice seeing these various tools that have been under development. And being able to discuss what the next 100 hours worth of development time could be used for, the group came up with some excellent ideas that will be interesting. It is what teachers need, surveys/quizzes with added function, the assessment drop box. I know that web 2.0 is upon us and that other vendors are sitting in the wings to be able to show us there ideas, and knowledgeNET know this and are looking at there systems and going well is that what teachers/administrations/parents want. Normally the answer is yes, but it is getting that information through to them, that has been the difficult part. That is why this steering committee has been formed.

Now after this went to new era IT to have a look at microsofts new offering to education, scholaris learning gateway. This is what I call knowledgeNET on steroids. email, portal, sharepoint, sql all in one easy to use package. This is what I had a few years ago with portal and encarta class server, how I miss this application.