Author: John McLear

King’s Science Academy announced in Bradford

Posted on by John McLear
This photograph shows Lister's Mill in Bradfor...
Image via Wikipedia

I’m confused… A load of secondary’s in Bradford weren’t able to get their BSF money to get a new build yet a new free school has been announced.

Does anyone know what it’s intake will be or who is behind the proposal?

UPDATE: Intake will be Yr7+ and it is funded by Alan Lewis.

UPDATE: It will be built on Northside Road in Lidget Green and will be a 2.1 mile drive from the nearest secondary school (Grange City Technology College).

UPDATE:  The school now has a website up that answers most of my questions.

There are many likely problems with the location/model and with the council taking education back from Serco I expect to see several sparks flying 🙂

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Construct in the classroom – The free open-source game creator

Posted on by John McLear


Scirra Construct is an game construction tool that looks like it may be a bit too complex for Primary but if someone could create a wizard interface and some primary school templates and maybe a few LA’s start doing some CPD around it the results could be excellent.

I have 2 gripes and they are obvious: It is a download + install application and the games can not be played in a web browser.

If anyone is currently using game maker you should check this post out on why Construct is better.

It certainly has the wow factor but with alternatives like 2simple’s 2DIY and scratch it may feel like overkill to some!

In Safari a Livescribe embed returns: Flash could not connect to the Livescribe server

Posted on by John McLear

I’m using embed code to embed a livescribe object onto a web page and I’m getting an error but only in Safari. Embed code works fine in IE/FF/Chrome
Code is:


<object height="316" width="224" align="middle" id="myFlashContent3" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000">
<param value="http://www.livescribe.com/media/swf/pencastPlayer.swf?path=http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/flashXML?xml=0000C0A8011600003A99724B00000129451710B5B2790EAA" name="movie" />
<param value="high" name="quality" />
<param value="true" name="allowfullscreen" /> <object height="316" width="224" align="middle" data="http://www.livescribe.com/media/swf/pencastPlayer.swfpath=http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/flashXML?xml=0000C0A8011600003A99724B00000129451710B5B2790EAA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param value="high" name="quality" />
<param value="true" name="allowfullscreen" /> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"><img alt="Get Adobe Flash player" src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" /></a></object></object>

Tried updating adobe Flash. Update went fine but still Livescribe still returning:

Flash could not connect to the Livescribe server, or your upload may have failed. Please delete this file from your Livescribe Online account and re-upload it with Livescribe Desktop.

(Code 3)

Any ideas?

UPDATE: I managed to fix this by adding codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0″ to the object code so now the embed code looks like this

<object height="316" width="224" align="middle" id="myFlashContent3" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0">
<param value="http://www.livescribe.com/media/swf/pencastPlayer.swf?path=http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/flashXML?xml=0000C0A8011600003A99724B00000129451710B5B2790EAA" name="movie" />
<param value="high" name="quality" />
<param value="true" name="allowfullscreen" /> <object height="316" width="224" align="middle" data="http://www.livescribe.com/media/swf/pencastPlayer.swfpath=http://www.livescribe.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/LDApp.woa/wa/flashXML?xml=0000C0A8011600003A99724B00000129451710B5B2790EAA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param value="high" name="quality" />
<param value="true" name="allowfullscreen" /> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"><img alt="Get Adobe Flash player" src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" /></a></object></object>

Transparent background with My Avatar Editor Object

Posted on by John McLear


If you are using the javascript swfobject method for the hosted My Avatar Editor object you can use this code to give your avatar a transparent background:

<script type="text/javascript">
        //<![CDATA[
        var avatarvalue = "<?= $avatarid ?>";
        var avatarURL = "myavatarcharacter.swf?avatar=" + avatarvalue;
        swfobject.embedSWF(avatarURL, "avatarSWFContainer", "160", "200", "10.0.0", null, {hosted:"true"},{wmode:"transparent"});
        function setFacialFeature(){
                var avatarSWF = document.getElementById('avatarSWFContainer');
                avatarSWF.draw();
        }
        //]]>
</script>

The only bit you need to change from the default code is the parameter which is the {wmode:”transparent”} bit

Creating your own Safe Search – A call to teachers!

Posted on by John McLear

Searchy Pants is a new exciting way for schools and parents to create their own safe search home page.

We focused on three main benefits:

  1. Include your family/schools branding/logo
  2. Include a message to your kids/pupils/teachers
  3. Include useful links

We kept the admin interface as simple as possible (Just 3 pages and a wizard style setup)

Please do sign up and test it, we are happy with it so far but we know that feedback over the next few months will get us to a point where we can do a formal launch to all schools.

We kept Searchy Pants as safe as possible with various bits I will talk about in the future, most of you will be aware of the Safe Search engine we have maintained for the last 4 years with great success.

SearchyPants is pronounced – Ser Chee Pants  – Like SmartyPants but that domain was gone 😛

Thanks to Matt Lovegrove for the testing so far.  If you think Searchy Pants is a good idea then please share it!