Boy, am I sorry I said nur nur na nur nur to a teacher, to lots and lots of teachers! Some people have no sense of humour. Or, is it that they're easily insulted? Perhaps there's a reason that they're so fragile and vunerable, so quick to temper?

So I started to look at the sites of the unsubscribers and those that have written back saying they're, 'insulted, hurt and offended' by my 'rude, unprofessional' phrase, "our websites are better than yours. Nur nur na nur nur."

I find that in all cases, if they've got one at all, they're built in-house. It's someone's pride and joy. A ton of work has gone into them. Hard, sweating years and years writing HTML, FTPing, and using such long winded, skilled tools as Dreamweaver. A powerful, professional tool. I'd guess from some knowledge, that the webmaster has been on a course. Has sweated and learned lots.

But please, oh please, forget it. Ditch the horrors you've built. Stop the pain and chore. Move over. Get out of the way. Let the floods of fun begin!

Give the building to a 10 year old child! To the Head. To a parent. To all the staff. There's no excuse for your silo.

Tired of pussy-footing around
I'm going to start a new department, "Your School Website Sucks!" Time the rest of the world knew of the sorry state of too many of the UK's school websites.

Offenses include, but will not be limited to:

• Viewable email addresses, for spambots. Rendering such accounts useless for quick replies.
  
• News updates dumped as PDFs, Word docs, or even amazingly Publisher docs.
• Lack of updates. Is your school closed down?
  
• Awful, childish or amature layout and graphic design.
• Useless navigation.
• Broken images, 404s and missing page titles.
  
• Use of f-f-frames.
• Don't forget Google--if you're not in Google, you don't exist. You should be in the top 10 results for common searches for your school.
• Dull, boring, boring, boring information.
• Lack of interactivity, or feedback loops.
  

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 6:17:54 PM to the Your School's Website Sucks! dept.
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Nur nur na nur nur (revisited)

It all happens on a Friday, doesn't it. And at Kersey in Suffolk, they had a McFly in to visit. I'll have to Google McFly, because I'm old and withered. I love the shot of him posing like Superman :-))

And in Bodnant in Prestatyn, we've the stars of the week, again. Catching my eye again:

SO - Melissa for always being responsible, sensible and a pleasure to teach

LT - Shane for doing great number work

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 3:54:18 PM to the Community dept.
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McFly? And stars of the week at Bodnant

Moorside up near Manchester, has a brilliant lesson on friction. Now, I know my 6 year old Professor Bradley will be interested in this. This is the kind of thing that will only attract other children from other schools. I know from experience that seeing other children doing things makes them interested. Brilliant, keep it coming Moorside.

Meanwhile, Salisbury in Walsall, has their blog club going again. And a wonderful story about them having to shut their windows for fear of them blowing in in yesterday's gales. Having visited the school, and hearing of their 'infrastructural problems on more than one occasion, I know I'd be a trembling too.

And a story about being in someone else's shoes.

Great that they're getting the children to look after their blog. Weird though. I wonder if they could get some one to regularly update. Or perhaps a group of children. This way I could see them develop their own blog voice. (Which is a wonderful thing to behold.)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 2:16:05 PM to the Community dept.
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Friction and blog clubs

Don't know if there are ANY teachers into drum and bass. If you are, watch this, it'll blow you away. Via MeFi
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 2:02:35 PM to the Blogging news dept.
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Drum and bass?

Tracy at Waterloo, somewhere near Manchester, spies a good item on Bodnant Infants' and figures she'd like the same item on her site. So, she uses the item, says a thank you link love link in the text and adds a trackback ping to notify Bodnant that they're being talked about on another site.

Brilliant. It's great to know that some one, even if it's one person is reading your site. Even better to think that they're talking about you on their site. Even more to be sending you link love!

Ah! I can die contented, my work here on earth is done :-)

Before I go, I'll send them both some link love and a trackback ping to say, "come see, I'm talking about you talking about yourselves."
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 9:55:22 AM to the Community dept.
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Cross pollination 2

Matt brings out the old photos, when they were children gag. And threatens Year Six with more embarrassing moments, if they don't work harder.

Funny :-)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 9:49:22 AM to the Community dept.
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Threat to year 6

VLEs, Miles Berry does the visit and the thinking for us. Miles is a Head and long term Moodle user and fan.

He wondered why there aren't that many small developers, like me, there. Too expensive dude! Too much time—days of planning, days of recovering feet. I think I can better contact my customers through the net, in a Fat Controller way.

I say to myself, 'maybe one day.' But then, once you're there the once, if you're not there again, people assume you're out of business. It can become too addictive.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 19/1/07; 9:44:09 AM to the Blogging news dept.
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Did you get to BETT 2007