Archive for the ‘safe’ Category

• What style of illustrations do Primary School kids like?

  Date: 2011.01.19 | Category: ICT, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT, Primary School Safe Search, review, safe, Safe Search, safety | Response: 0

  

  Spot before

  

  Spot after

  We all know what a children’s illustration looks like right?  Sort of in-between Dr Seuss and the Gruffalo, maybe with a bit of Spot thrown in.  What I want to know is why in all of the test groups I have done over the last few weeks the most vector/cartoon style stuff is more popular with kids (both boys and girls) from the ages of 8 to the ages of 12?

  Explain yourself

  Spot is a good example of an illustrator moving their illustrations towards what we have found is a “preferred style of art” amongst Primary School age children.

  What has changed?

  The objects have become simplified and the “stroke” effect has been used with a greater thickness.

  I can only assume that cartoon channels such as Nickelodeon & The Cartoon network have changed the style of art that the children I spoke to enjoyed.  I know this is all very speculative and I am making some big assumptions but the evidence I have found whilst trying to find the correct illustrator for Safe Search has shown me that kids prefer vector based art as opposed to hand drawn objects..

  How does this even matter?

  Well it means that in the future we will try to keep our art more vector based, we will hire graphic designers/artists instead of illustrators.  There is a place for illustration and I’m sure if they are done right they can look great however I can be confident in saying that Primary Technology will be sticking to the style we have used in the past as it seems to be a winning formula(despite the fact I tried to break it).  Please don’t take this post as factual, it is not scientific.   It is my opinion based on my experiences of a small(handful) of children in only a few schools.

  Related articles

  • Hiring Illustrators (mclear.co.uk)
  

  Report This Post

• Update: Youtube into the Primary Classroom

  Date: 2010.11.04 | Category: e safety, ICT, Primary School, Primary School ICT, safe, Safe Search, safety | Response: 6

  Just a quick youtube video explaining where we are at with getting youtube into the primary classroom

  Report This Post

• How to enforce safe search with google search cse

  Date: 2010.09.10 | Category: ICT, Primary School, Primary School ICT, safe, Safe Search | Response: 1

  Enforce Safe Search by passing name=safe value=vss

  I assume VSS stands for Very Safe Search

  This will disable the ability for a user to change their safe search settings from strict to off.

  Here is an example for you

  <form action="http://www.google.com/cse" id="cse-search-box">
    <div>
    <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="000753778363423014722:xie0vouxf9m" />
      <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" />
      <input type="hidden" name="filter" value="1" />
      <input type="text" name="q" size="35" style="font: normal 25px Arial; line-height:25px;" id="q"/>
      <input type="hidden" name="safe" value=vss />
      <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Safe Search" style="font: normal 25px Arial; line-height:25px;" onClick="checksearch()"/>
    </div>
  </form>
  

  Report This Post

• Safe Search tricks by Tony Vincent

  Date: 2010.04.05 | Category: e safety, eSafety, google, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT, safe, Safe Search | Response: 0

  Tony did a great presentation on some of the tricks you can do with Safe Search and normal Google Search, try them out!

  Google Search Tricks on Prezi

  Report This Post

• Mission Accomplished :)

  Date: 2009.06.08 | Category: Primary School ICT, Primary School Safe Search, safe, Safe Search, search | Response: 0

  Woohoo, after several months of development work the new Primary School Safe Search site is live at http://primaryschoolict.com/

  If you have your browsers home page set to http://primaryt.co.uk/google then it will automatically redirect you to the new site. You might want to change your browsers home page, this is available on the bottom right hand side of the page

  Glad it’s finished, next project is PGA

  Report This Post