Moodle, the LMS “engine” of DiscoveryZone, is the choice of around 80% of education institutions choose a Learning Management System in the greater London area, according to the latest research.
In the UK they use the term VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) instead of LMS, but the technology is the identical. No other NZ Ministry-approved LMS’s seem to feature – how interesting!!
We are working on the following areas as a matter of urgency:
Image Toaster – Photo resizing (FIXED, 23 Feb)
Flexidocs (FIXED, 20 Feb)
Upload Toast Images (FIXED, 18 Feb)
Absence form (FIXED, 17 Feb)
Newsletter upload (FIXED)
Custom pages (FIXED)
Intranet: eResources (FIXED)
Newsletter mailout (esp to large mailing lists) (FIXED – note new screen messages during mailout)
Our apologies for any inconvenience you are experiencing as we debug these components.
We encourage you to let us know immediately of any other features which are not working as expected.ter
We have been planning the migration of KiwiSchools to a new hosting platform (the place all your school web pages and database content sit)
The decision on precisely when we should do this was made for us recently. Without notification, our current hosting company made changes to their (and thus, our) system, resulting in some of your school website pages not working corrently.
It is disappointing that this surprise change occurred after 7 plus years of on-the-whole great service, but there you are!
We’re now well-advanced in the complete transfer of KiwiSchools and a hundred-odd school sites to our new hosting platform where we have much improved space and facilities for school websites, intranets and LMSs – all on the same platform, and plugged in to NZ’s fastest Internet “pipe.”
As you can imagine, this is quite an undertaking, so please bear with us during the transition – some of you will notice nothing at all, but we can’t promise this to everyone. If you’ve ever experienced a major network upgrade at your school, you’ll probably understand that “stuff happens” under such circumstances.
There will be a few bugs to iron out – if you notice anything not working as usual, please email us with brief details – team@kiwischools.co.nz
Our apologies for any inconvenience to you or your school community.
Here’s a great video outlining how Moodle/DiscoveryZone was implemented in an Australian secondary school:
http://www.edublogs.tv/play.php?vid=374
The “Our Photos” gallery on your KiwiSchools website has had a makeover!
Previously, the full photo downloaded and was displayed vertically. Now, viewers get a set of clickable thumbnails which load the photo in a new layer with your site in the background. You can navigate easily – just try clicking on the left or right of the displayed photo.
Technical note: This “layer” effect is done using AJAX, and allows us to make a web page behave more like a computer application. Expect more AJAX features in coming updates at KiwiSchools!
It’s time for us to stake our colours to Firefox.
I know that for most of you, your computer comes with Internet Explorer/IE, but unfortunately, IE does not support the Toast! editor we use for teachers’ My Pages, pupils publishing and Custom pages.
So what? Well, PC users can continue with IE but you won’t be able to optimise and upload images with the Toast editor.
Does this matter? Well, Toast! is, to our knowledge, the only WYSIWYG editor with an image manager which allows “on the fly” optimisation and resizing of digital photos. This is a genuine advantage since we (and probably you) know that tweaking digital photos is an issue for many teachers.
We’ve wasted a great deal of time (and money) trying to “fix” Toast! every time IE is updated, but it’s an endless task, so we’re saying “enough.” At some future date, we may replace the technology in Toast!, but to date, we haven’t found one with an embedded image manager.
The choice, then, is simple. Stick with IE and skip images in Toast pages or install Firefox and enjoy the unique image management features we’ve built into Toast!
It’s actually not hard! Switching is a bit like swapping from a Toyota to a Peugeot, with apologies to any driver offended by the comparison! Here is a link to the free download:
http://www.firefox.com
It’s not a biggie, and your tech should be able to roll out Firefox quite painlessly. Of course your favourites/bookmarks will be automatically detected and uploaded when you change…
Here’s another excellent reason: Firefox is also the best browser for our online training system. This lets you and one of our team share the same screen without either of us leaving our own office! We can then talk by phone, and do training and PD very conveniently and cost effectively.
This is a blog entry, meaning you can COMMENT below. Any replies and discussion welcome!
We’ve been having a bit of a tidy up, so wanted to keep you posted:
Contact Details
a. You can now change the word “Principal” to any other title e.g. Director
b. You can add a courtesy title for this name e.g. Mr. Mrs. Ms. Dr. etc
c. Feedback & Absence form links made more prominent and have new “look”
Welcome page
Text now wraps around photograph
Custom pages
Pages created from September on will let you change the title on each custom page. Existing pages have the title hard coded, but we can update all your “old” custom pages to the new format on request (A small charge will apply)
Newsletter
Sign-up invitation more prominent; newsletter image added.
