Free digital signage alternatives for schools – WordPress and Visible Tweets

Posted on by primaryt

Ever been quoted a rediculous amount of your digital signage software and figured why can’t I just use this old laptop/pc and do it myself? Well now you can, and you don’t need any extra software. These 2 options work through your web browser and are completely free.

Visible tweets

To use visisble tweets you will need a school twitter account and you will probably want to “feed” your twitter account from your school blog or website.  People can then follow your school twitter account and get the latest updates in real time and as you update your website/blog it will automatically update your schools digital signage.  Visible tweets is super easy but is limited to tweets alone so pictures or video are out of the picture….

Live Example

Primary Blogger

Primary Blogger is a blogging platform that supports themes for digital signage.  You can include videos, pictures, vokis, pretty much anything.  Primary Blogger can update itself from an RSS feed so you can have your blog or website anywhere and just tell Primary Blogger to update from that. It is fair to say that without videos it is less visually stimulating than Visible tweets.

Video:

 

Live Example – Guide for how to do it

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2 new visual ways to follow school blogs

Posted on by primaryt

Spective provides a visual way of sifting through school blogs by showing the image and using the image as context.

URL: http://www.spectives.com/primary

RSSVoyage displays only text on your page but allows you to easily move through blogs and time.  RssVoyage requies you paste the RSS feed address in (bottom left).   RSSVoyage has been pretty buggy for me, let me know what your experience is like!

URL: http://rssvoyage.com

Feed URL: http://www.xfruits.com/johnyma22/?id=80412

Both require registration, both are free.

Owl Nagios check plugin – Basic example inc. Source

Posted on by primaryt
1hr41min 1.563e+010 q19.179 dark green on whit...
Image by shannonpatrick17 via Flickr

I wanted to make a nagios check for the OWL energy meter.

First thing to note, don’t run any of the owl stuff while trying to run the check.

Secondly, I included the source so feel free to use Visual C# to hack it.

Third thing is, well, the OWL sensor software is very slow to respond, infact if you don’t get any response from it after a few minutes I recommend turning the kettle on.  The check may take up to 10 minutes (how lame is that?) so I recommend you increase your time outs.

Finally I’m not familiar with Visual Studio, that’s why I did so little in Windows.  I just wanted an output I could work with in a nice dark environment.

The check in bin\release\sensorapp.exe waits for a signal from the transmitter then echos it to command line.  Do with it what you will.  I’m pulling it into a simple .bat file.

Grab the files

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One social web could make school social networking a reality

Posted on by primaryt

Ever wished you could have a school social network that has the the privacy settings to protect pupils yet the power to connect pupils and teachers globally?

One Social Web may make this a reality.  The purpose of One Social Web is to enable free, open, and decentralized social applications on the web. *Like Facebook but not owned by Facebook, owned by, well um, everyone!

Usually your school data exists only on your school server.  If your school server was integrated with One Social Web school pupils or teachers could easily be “transfered” to another school without losing any information, files etc. and/or be able to access their old school work whilst being access to connect their new file storage.

The One Social Web platform is based in London, UK and has developers all around the world.  The platform is completely open so anyone can contribute and privacy settings are managed on a per user basis.

It would be interesting to see the first school deployment of this, I certainly hope I will get the opportunity to tie Primary School Teaching into the platform!  It would also be interesting to debate how One Social Web can work with Shibboleth providing not only single level accessibility but accessibility at an organizational level.

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Free Office 2010 Web Apps in your school

Posted on by primaryt

To compete with Google Docs, Microsoft Office 2010 web apps is free. If you want to use Microsoft Office without an internet connection you will need to purchase the offline version of the software for the usual educational price tag of around £30.

Microsoft Office Web Apps is an on-line version of Microsoft office.

So what do you/don’t you get with Office web apps?

  1. No Microsoft publisher
  2. You get limited web based versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote
  3. Access anywhere, any time (requires internet)
  4. You can upload your current existing Office 2003/2007 documents

When it comes to it, you have a few options for working with documents.

  1. Purchase the office suite.
  2. Use the free online tools by Microsoft – Microsoft Live @ Edu
  3. Use the free online tools by Google – Google Apps Education Edition
  4. Use open office (Free).
  5. Use educationally focused alternatives such as Glogster, Scribblar, Empressr, PrimaryPad – Each of these alternatives is specific to one job, and that job is done well. (Mostly free)
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