Author: primaryt

The "Open" arguement and how it changes learning

Posted on by primaryt

Why do I publish everything I do?

I don’t, I publish about 90% of what I do. I don’t publish all of the School Email source. I do publish nearly all of my music work and most of my educational source code especially the php work I do. I also create free to use resource sites that enable learners and educators to quickly and easily access the content they want to access.

Why be open?

I’m a computer geek, we have an entire community dedicated to sharing code, ideas, thoughts and knowledge. It’s great. In fact its probably the best part of working in IT. For example, Primary School Teaching has 900 man DAYS of code yet 890 of those days were provided for free, by a community of contributors.

How does this translate to educators?

Education created IT, yet IT seems to of outdone education when it comes to sharing resources/ideas/plans and knowledge. How bizarre is that?

I have spent the last few days trying to encourage educators to spend 30 seconds a day uploading their lesson plans to Primary School Teaching and the #1 argument I face is why should I share my hard work with someone who will just steal it? For me this just doesn’t compute. I don’t see how it does in teaching, I don’t understand why teachers won’t share as much as I’m used to.

It should be free to learn.

Shouldn’t it?

When to have closed systems

Only when security is an issue (ie child details) should a system be “closed”. Certain niche systems that require lots of revenue to fund them and have large start up capital may also be closed. If the content is of a high quality then this can be justified.

But if everything is open then how do we make money?

This all sounds a bit communist… Not at all, schools will steal need teachers, learners will still need resources. I get paid for what I release publicly too. There are lots of revenue models other than the simple pay for knowledge.

Today’s great debate

Today was great, I was using twitter(A free service) while talking to some resource creators who felt it was inappropriate that Primary Games Arena(A free service) had an iframe linking to other websites which had games for kids(All freely available games). The argument was that it looked on the website like Primary Games Arena is taking credit for the resources it links to. On each game there is some text that displays who the publisher is of the game.

In my nature I feel that if something is available on a website then referring to that resource should never be a problem as you are making it easier for the learner to learn and/or teacher to teach.

After our short < 1000 word debate we decided that Primary Games Arena will now email each resource creator asking for permission to put games on Primary Games Arena. This is a simple procedure that will take a matter of minutes to accomplish and should keep everyone happy.

Thanks for everyone who got involved in today’s debate.

I do hope we can encourage teachers to share more and for websites to show more respect to the resource creators/authors and publishers who create the content.

This post will probably spark some conversation and I hope that it does because I feel this is an important issue that needs addressing.

Snapcasa is down – 06 July 2009

Posted on by primaryt

Appears that snapcasa is having some hosting issues, this is affecting some other hosted services that rely on snapcasa.

We can’t shed any more light on this right now but if we find out anything we will update this thread.

*Update on 07th July – Snapcasa is back up 🙂
*Update on 15th July – More reports of unavailable from various sources and its down for me today
*Update on the 17th July – Server has really taken a turn for the worst and is now showing Runtime Error… Down for many hours. I will begin compiling a list of alternatives to Snapcasa for the public however I have started writing my own thumbnailer to provide http://primarygamesarena.com
*Update 18th of November – I have published a post on how to create your own snapcasa alternative.

My Extremely dissapointing TTS shop experience

Posted on by primaryt

I needed some prizes for a competition and TTS were the only people that had the items listed on their website. The price was great, unbeatable infact.

I began the ordering process with a positive bounce about me, thinking in a matter of moments I could perform the magical single click that turns an outlook flagged task into a beaming tick of joy. Turns out, I was wrong.

TTS don’t seem to support any browsers but IE in their ordering process. I began to grumble, I’m not usually super fussy about browser support but an online shop should surely support all browsers.

I email them and tell them about this flaw in their ability to generate revenue, no obvious email address on their website so I email sales@.. I get no response, no thanks, no “okay we will fix that”.. Just nothing..

So I started the whole process again, this time in IE. I get all the way through and I think to myself, what if this item is not in stock. So when I get to the end of the ordering process under notes I put in “PLEASE CONTACT ME IF ANY ITEMS ARE NOT IN STOCK”.

I complete my order and receive a verification email that states TTS will email me with the delivery date. This never came..

So I asked a colleague to chase TTS up and find out where the order is, the competition is on the 6th and by the 4th we’re starting to panic..

I think to myself, surely they read the order notes and will be in touch if the items are going to be late.. So he rings, gets through to a phone operator and we ask, when are the items due? With a complete level of content she replies “on the 9th”..

A moment of disbelieve spreads the office and most small insects and animals flee the room in what can only be described as the energy portrayed at the end of Heros season 1 final scene..

I ask her, “did you not read the order notes?” – she blissfully responds, “Yes sir!”..

I asked her to read them to me – she reads “PLEASE CONTACT ME IF ANY ITEMS ARE” and stops there.. I think my phone has cut off, I respond “hello? hello?” She questions, “Yes sir?”. “Is that it?” I ask.. “Yes sir…” I grumble and hang up – using the power of my mind I destroy all positive thinking in the area.

See if you are going to run an online shop/store at least set the right amount of varchar in your table.. Also if something doesn’t make sense on an order then contact a customer. I feel totally let down by TTS.

Update on 14th of July 2009 – Still not recieved all of the items. Looks like no one at TTS reads my blog or tweets 😉

Update on 16th of July 2009 – Rang customer services today after they ignored several of my emails. Took 4 minutes to get through to anyone. The last parts of my order will not be in stock until the first week of September….. Way to wrap up a terrible experience TTSftl!