Archive for November, 2009

• Primary Blogger – How to use your own domain

  Date: 2009.11.28 | Category: Blog, Blogging, domain, ICT, Primary Blogger, Primary School, website | Response: 0

  So you want to move your current website to primary blogger or use a domain you own.

  An Example of this is http://www.wilsdenprimary.co.uk

  You can do this for free by accessing your DNS control panel and creating a new A record for your domain.

  Note: Having 2 entries means if one fails the visitor will automatically try the next. It also means we can load balance (Which is nice because PrimaryBlogger is huge).

  Add entries called www that point to 94.136.53.6, 217.199.169.145 & 109.107.35.108 (Or modify your existing A record to point to these).

  If you need assistance with this step please get in touch with Primary Technology.

  Once you have set your DNS then log into your Primary Blogger Dashboard by visiting your blog and clicking Site Admin.

  1. Click Tools
  2. Click Domain Mapping
  3. Under add a new domain type in your domain name.
  4. Click OK
  5. Wait 24 hours.

  You may want to let us know if you are going to do this.. Why? I hear you ask.. Well we have some clever caching in place that speeds up websites based on their hostname and if your hostname is not included it may mean your PrimaryBlogger blog does some weird things..

• Primary School Blog – Adding widgets, content and changing themes

  Date: 2009.11.27 | Category: Blog, Blogger, Blogging, ICT, Primary Blogger, Primary School | Response: 0

  A quick video showing how easy it is to make a great blog for your school!

• Emerging Technologies in Primary Education #2

  Date: 2009.11.24 | Category: ICT, Primary School, technology | Response: 1

  George did an article on Emerging Technologies in Greek and I couldn’t read it so I figured I’d do a post then ask George to see how many of technologies overlapped.

  Here is my list of Emerging Technologies:
  • Web 2 Replacement (ie Google Apps, Primary Email) for non web applications
  • Single Sign on / Federated Login (Such as the UK Federation)
  • SMS, Email & Social networking sites (Facebook/Twitter) to communicate both with pupils and teachers
  • Netbook devices
  • Touch screen devices (Such as fizzbook)
  • Cloud storage, Files stored online
  • More 1:1 projects (One Laptop per Child) and learning at home

  UPDATE: 4 out of 7 overlapped with George (see comments for more details!)

  Here are some I missed off ’cause I forgot..:

  • Learning while playing games (Such as Primary Games Arena)
  • Oled/eink display boards and learning panels once the technology matures
  • Learning outside of the school gates (Continued learning (with/without a structure))

• Troubleshooting Google Apps and Shibboleth

  Date: 2009.11.24 | Category: apps, google, ICT, primary, primary email, primary school email, Primary School ICT, school email | Response: 0

  If you receive an “invalid email” error or invalid user then this is probably due to the fact that the username provided by your identity provider doesn’t match the username created in Google Apps. To remedy this check to see if the user account exists in Google Apps, if so then contact your identity provider and ask them to tell you what username they are sending so you can create the relevant account.

• Testing your Primary School Google Apps Education Edition Configuration

  Date: 2009.11.24 | Category: apps, google, ICT, primary, primary email, primary school email, Primary School ICT, school email | Response: 0

  You can test your different Google Apps by accessing the below URLS (REPLACE yourdomain.com with the domain name you chose to use and set up):

  http://sites.yourdomain.com – Your schools Google Sites

  http://docs.yourdomain.com – Your schools Google Docs

  By now you get the idea… You can also access your Google Apps (including the admin panel) at (REPLACE yourdomain.com with the domain name you chose to use and set up) http://google.com/a/yourdomain.com

  Got problems? Visit the Troubleshooting page à