subject choice

Version 5.a
Add junior functionality, have added a table called subject_jnr

need to add junior export of data as well as change the export scripts not to export junior data just yet.

some extra functionality of exports is required

Wii Interactive Whiteboard

We have it working, the IR's arrived last night and the electonics were hooked up in the pen today.

Connecting the wii remote to the bluetooth is a case of pressing the 1 and 2 button on the remote at the same time to put the remote into discovery mode.

Needed to install .net framework 3.5 to get the wiiwhiteboard software working,

Students have been having fun with it, thoufh we found the whiteboard that we have it too reflective for it to be used like a normal pen, instead we turned the marker around have been using in reverse with great response.

Other issues have been the wii turning itself off after 10 minutes of inactivity.
This requires you to re sync up the bluetooth and restart the wii whiteboard software after it has crashed out.
Also where the wii is placed, at the moment it is on top of the datashow, which is in a difficult place to get.

Maybe using velcro we could make something up that connects to the light fitting that is near the board to be able to hooked it up.

Students have been getting up and using it as I have had google earth running to show them what they can do, they then ask how is this working, the cannot see the other two interactive whiteboards within the school. I say I am using a wii remote they don't believe me, as they cannot see the wii. Thats one of the things I like about this, it makes them think about what they can do with accessories at home, why are they just used with one device, why not many devices.

Will look at creating another pen that we can use in reverse.

3d visual tour

Amazing software that I want to play with, might make a special trip the museum to try some of it out.

Microsoft just released some cool software to mesh photos together. After taking several photos, the array of photos stitched together to recreate the scene.

in three dimensions. It's one of those deals where you have to see it to believe it.  The product is called photosynth and you really need to think out of the box and be created to mesh your pictures together. The site has existing projects to view along with a blog.

This information is from the site:

You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With a nothing more than digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos.

Subject Choice .4a

Year 9 moving onto Year 10

Option lines have bee added to the specific subjects to be in certain areas.

If I want to I can place subjects into option lines and display.

Code for this is in my book.

So it can be done, just need to develop database to take note of the change and carry them through to confirm and finish pages

At the moment this is on the usb drive 2008.4a

Problems getting this developed, because I do my best coding at night, information is not available straight away from people.

Taster courses and pre ncea course information from year 9 to year 10, at the moment they are 10jap and 10jap1, this breaks my schema of varchar(5). Don't believe I should have to change all of this to varchar(6)

Need to add import csv feature for students update. This is causing me a few problems.

Nieuan and kapa are in because they have standards attached. This has been an issue from day one of the development of this.

One of teh issues with year 9 to year 10 has been 

Question: what do we need to export, what information use to be entered in the past.

Every student need to take english, maths, science, pe and social studies, they only need to choose their language, arts technology options. 

This is the only stuff that needs to be exported.

subject choice .3d

Changes to report systems in teacher part to allow for list to be printed in year and house order, and by form class order.

Also looking at being to integrate year 9 into the system, working out how I could work through the 19 subjects some of these students have into the 8 subjects that is currently in the students imported database.

got ahead of myself with the post, should have been .3d

technology integration into the museum

While doing a search on what the museum has to offer in the way of technology, I came across this, it is a blog from the NZ Herald website that has peoples views on technology

http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/your-views/2008/2/11/should-auckland-museum-stay-traditional-or-be-more-like-te-papa/

Wii Interactive Whiteboard

I had emailed to me this morning was a movie of a TED talk.
the guy has developed a wii interactive whitevoard. I had seen something through the internet earlier in the year about this, however I thought, no way, whatever.

Today, i have been down and brought a couple of wii controllers to play with and get going.
You dont need a complete wii, just the controller, yay

The talk that has inspired me is located at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

Johnny's website is located here, this is where you can access information about his wii hacks and what his next developments are.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/

for the specific wii information that I require is available here.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

i have to wai for my electronic supplier to get me in some iR LEDs

Also, there is a forum on tki on teh development of this
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/discuss/showthread.php?t=45&page=2&pp=10

subject choice

version 2.0c
fixing up spelling errors,
entering in last peices of text to help students, though i do need to modify one more part, they don't have to choose in options lines, there are no option lines.
Fix up list of subjects displayed for this year, subject 1 was shown twice, instead of subject 2.

and graphics as well as css updates.

It's Live Day

Today is the day that we go live with google apps, what a shame it started off with a 502 error.
Also subject choice system is live today as well. It is all setup ready to go. Pity i won't be at work on Monday, I have some Professional Development I have to attended to.

xbox 360 lessons

we have been working through the lessons by Rob Miles author of Microsoft® XNA® Game Studio 2.0: Learn Programming Now! and www.verysillygames.com. The students are loving it. Today we played around more with vibrating controllers. This bring me to todays work. We have 20 students in the class, 10 wired controllers, now that I have this class going they are starting to bring their own wireless controllers in and hooking them up. But how, they expect to be able to come in a get them going. They had yet to realise that they need a connection into the USB port on the computer. I am heading down to Dick Smith Electronics tomorrow to get some Wireless Adaptor for windows to be able to connect them up.

But now they are after some more competition, they want to be able to use these in different ways. I have looked through the book and we are looking at the first xbox 360 Gamepad racer. We are even going to dress then up in jockey uniforms.

This is something we want to emulate and put up on our website. Come on it would be something cool and different.

Also I have some students who have picked up on this so quickly, debugging, they can pick apart any program and explain what it is doing, capture the bugs that I put on the screen in an instant. It is fantastic to see students motivated and interested in something that they love.

Once we have worked on importing graphics into our XNA programs we will look at something I found at Brian Scarbeau's blog which was http://blogs.msdn.com/dawate/pages/let-s-make-a-game-with-xna.aspx written by Dan Waters

is this what it is about?

I entered a competition to take a group of students down to the New Zealand Army camp for some rugby training. It was to write 150 words on why rugby is important to them. I asked the sports coordinator if I should enter and he said go ahead. Now I face a trip with 23 students down to Palmerston North to take part in the two days training session. But as normal politics are involved. What students to take, do we take the current team, the ones that deserve to go, and leave the ones that will now turn up because we have this opportunity. the hardest part is that I cannot tell the team yet because we have to sort this out. I see students working hard at training but not on the field... argh. But what do i mean by the title. Education and opportunities, This is a great chance to get the students out of our area and away from the pressures of family and friends and take them down to a whole new environment. It is an opportunity for us to see what these students are made of and what they will take out of this. I can see them reved up and itching to go. How many of them have not been on a plane, someone else in the island. How am I going to sleep tonight, too many things going through my head. I still have the subject system to finish, working through the bluetooth soution and my year 12 and 13 achievement standards projects. What a job.

What is involved in the trip
Day one, Welcome Brief, trg session 1, Lunch, Nutrition Brief, Trg Session 2, Admin, Dinner, Team- Building / Leadership Session
Day two, Recovery / Nutrition Lesson, Confidence Course, Game planning / Rugby Tactics, Lunch, Unit Visit, Depart and travel to home location.

I have also broken out the xbox 360 controllers in my classroom today. Year 13 programming are starting development of XNA. This has been a long time coming due to various issues, problems, and virtual machines not working with the states that they need to be in. But they are now controllers colours with there controllers, and getting the vibration to work. One student was heard saying "My mac made the Microsoft controller vibrate". It is great to see students having this much fun and realising there potential, it is this easy to get able to create something which has this much fun.

Now I need to get some wireless adaptors so we can have a wireless controller race.

Concept

I have been working on this for a number of days and today i have a solution working, well a trial solution.

One of the problems I had was that I needed a bluetooth module which I found at Dick Smith Electronics, I came back to school and installed it with the software. First Mistake, don't install the software that you are give with the module, a number of the applications developed for bluetooth hotspot and bluecasting wont be able to use it.

Once I had sorted this out and destroyed a one of my virtual hard drives I was away.

i started off with Proxmity Marketing Light, and managed to send a picture out to my phone, though I found this rather difficult and too locked down as a trial to use.

Next I tried out BlueMagnet and this is great I have managed to get mp3 files sent out to phone, though some phones it does take a rather long length of time to push out a 2 meg mp3 file. The best thing about this is that i have been running it for an hour now and students have been accepting the file. which is kinda bad. But so, so, so cool. i can use this trial for seven days at the moment.

All in all I managed to capture 48 blooth devices, I love being in an environment full of technology and stduenst are always willing to get involved. out of the 48 cellphones, the mp3 was sent to 9 of them. Your phone does not make a sound which is a bit of a problem, you have to be aware that content is being "pushed" out to you.

But is there any NZ company using blue tooth marketing.