I did a little coding……….

This is a really nice new screen we’ve got in school – this video was taken while the builders were working….

In order to make this magical screen work we ran two CAT 6 cables to behind the screen from a Coms Cab about 80 meters away.

HDMI Over Ethernet - HDMI Over Cat5e / Cat6 1080p 30m Extender

I setup an Acer Veriton in the coms cab and wired everything together using CAT5 to HDMI Converters.

The converter that plugs into the screen needed 5V DC.  It came with a very chunky transformer.  That screen is mounted flat against the wall so we used the USB ports on the TV to squirt the 5 Volts needed into the converter – a rare moment of genius I must say!

I created this little script to run on startup on the PC:

@echo off
cd %1
If Exist *.wma Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mp3 Goto :M3U
If Exist *.wav Goto :M3U
If Exist *.gif Goto :M3U
If Exist *.bmp Goto :M3U
If Exist *.jpg Goto :M3U
If Exist *.avi Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mpg Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mpeg Goto :M3U
If Exist *.wmv Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mp2v Goto :M3U
If Exist *.m1v Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mp2 Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mpa Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mpe Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mpv2 Goto :M3U
If Exist *.asf Goto :M3U
If Exist *.asx Goto :M3U
If Exist *.wav Goto :M3U
If Exist *.wax Goto :M3U
If Exist *.wm Goto :M3U
If Exist *.qt Goto :M3U
If Exist *.mp4 Goto :M3U
Goto :EOF

:M3U
REM Create the playlist
echo %~f1
dir /o:n/a/b/s *.wma *.mp3 *.wav *.gif *.bmp *.jpg *.avi *.mpg *.mpeg *.wmv *.mp2v *.m1v *.mp2 *.mpa *.mpe *.mpv2 *.asf *.asx *.wav *.wax *.wm *.qt *.mp4 > “playlist.m3u”

REM VLC Didn’t seem to perform very well, but this might do it…
REM start VLCPortable\VLCPortable.exe –fullscreen –random –quiet playlist.m3u

REM let’s use Windows Media Player instead
REM Note that the playlist has to already exist in WMP, called playlist…
REM “C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe” /fullscreen /Playlist playlist
“C:\Program Files\Media Player Classic – Home Cinema\mpc-hc64.exe” /play “c:\video\playlist.m3u” /fullscreen

 

ICT Curriculum: Year 2

Year 2 ICT Medium Term Plans

This is most of my Year 2 Medium Term plan.  It is lacking the final unit about searching the internet.  On reflection it proved really quite challenging to deliver during the year, because I find this age like a bit of repetition but it gave the children with a wide range of skills.  I guess I’ll find out this year as the intake enters Year 3 how successful this set of plans were for the longer term.  It’s easy to assess children’s learning after a lesson or after a term, an interesting test is if they have retained the skill after a year.

Wednesday is our Network Doomsday

On wednesday I’ve got two Contractors coming into school with some new hardware and a mission:  BUILD ME A NEW NETWORK!

Being an ICT Teacher, I’m on the front line in the war against ICT Problems.  I hear about them first, experiance them first and am effectively the “first line” IT Technician.

I’ve inherited a mess of a network,  an oddly spec’ced poorly performing Windows 2003 Server (lots of Hard disk, lots of processor, less RAM then my desktop machine) acting as the Exchange, File and DC.  A member server running 2008 doing the printing with a disk fault, and a database server that wasn’t properly licence with more disk faults….. Oh and 170 new Computers, a mixed bag of Wireless points and a set of Network switches that last saw action on ARPANET.   Continue reading

ICT Curriculum: An Introduction

Here is my “Long Term Plan” for ICT

It is a single sheet showing the distribution of “Units” across the year, for Years 2 to 8.  It does not cover Reception and the Year 1 Classes because their ICT is taught by their class teachers and it needs to fit into their Thematic approach. Each class get two 40 minute lessons per week.  Year 7 & 8 have lessons that alternate each term with Music, so they get one half term of 80 minute lessons per term. I used the Warringhton ICT SoW as a framework to provide a “spread” of skill areas, some of the ideas from here and here.

Up next time will be the Medium Term plans.

The Challenge of INSET…

I’ve got four projects going on which will need whole Staff input in September.  I thought I’d share them and how I’ll tackle them in different ways.

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Microsoft EES Licensing

Microsoft Licensing can be flipping confusing.  I’ll break down our decisions here because it took an long time to work out what to do.  Firstly if you’ve got a computer running Windows, it needs an OEM Licence – the manufactorer needs to licence the machine when they sell it to you.  I’m not going to go into using Linux, it gets complicated.  If you use it on a network and it connects to a Server, then you need a CAL (Client Access Licence). You can get CALS for Windows Server, Exchange (Email), Sharepoint (Weby thingy) and probably SQL but I really dont want to think about that.

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Classroom Decor

thinkgeek

I’ve been spending money on Think Geek for my ICT Classrooms in the new term.  We’ve got three; my own magnificent palatial shrine to ICT which is the size of two normal classrooms, our Media Center which is the same size and is also our library. Our final ICT Room is in the science department and is a snug and very traditionally laid out IT Room.

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It’s time for more programming

For Programming enthusiasts it’s considered the most important possible thing you could learn in the field of ICT.  The earliest users of Steam Engines were of necessary Engineers.  The earliest users of the motor car were Mechanics, mostly because the earliest vehicles with an internal combustion engine were incredibly unreliable.  The PC was pretty much invented by hobbists, the first personal computers were sold as kits or schematics to be assembled by the super keen.  The first programs on these machines was shared as raw print-outs of computer code so all of the early users of personal computers had to be programmers, and thus understand concepts like Registers, Assembler and all that good stuff. Continue reading

Hello world!

Welcome to my website. I’ve made some changes to how it looks and have decided to return to a spot of blogging. Not sure how long this theme will last but I’ve got high hopes for it.