Steve
Each time I have visited over the weekend it has been a revelation! I just wish I had found you a year ago!!!  

A FANTASTIC job and I am really looking forward to introducing the site to parents and pupils. I have decided that the way forward to start with is for me to get to know the site a little and then launch a school "Web club" then children will be able to get actively involved in the process. In the meantime, Gina and I will continue to post items.  

Once again many thanks. I look forward to a long and happy working relationship!

Woodside near The Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, had an IK site but found it too limiting. I took the bulk of what they did there and their prospectus and created this new editable, bloggable, manageable site. Just awaiting some bigger pictures of their good looking school to complete the design. Then, they're off... Into the blogging world :-) With me, as big brother, watching over them.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/5/08; 8:11:21 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Happy new customer

Sorry! We were off line for 5 hours, from 5.15 till 10.15pm. It was the connection, not us.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 24/4/08; 10:51:08 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Oops! Outage

YouTube.:

"We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos."

This looks cool. For me to receive and serve video isn't trivial. Videos can be big. Very big. 100Mb big! If I were to handle the number of videos that I do of pictures on one site, take Bodnant for example... She uploads 30 pictures in one news item post, sometimes there's 20 out of 30 that have images. Sure, you're only going to see one screen shot per video, not the whole video, unless you watch (and download) the video. But still, bandwidth and processing power would be hugely expensive.

Video usage is going to go up and up. It's on nearly every modern digicam now, and in high quality—640 x 480 x 30 frames per sec.

It'll be neat to use YouTube to serve video. For you to just press the upload button and have the news item in your pending items ready to go when it's uploaded and been processed. One click video blogging, rather like the one click video emailing. Currently, using Google Video, it's a bit 'copy/paste clunky' to add to your website.

My only worries:

1. The click throughs to adult content—can I control the interface to hide the click through?
2. Would there be ads inserted into a school's video? Can we opt out of ads? Are there ads in the first place? I'd guess so, how else would YouTube/Google pay for this?

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/3/08; 4:51:38 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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YouTube new API

It's the mantra for the consumer society. But here in Walsall Schools we're doing the same thing!

I know budgets are refreshed in April, but that shouldn't stop you buying a website now.

If you want one, have one and I'll bill you in April.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/3/08; 4:01:01 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Buy now, pay later

As it says in our FAQs:

"We now have sites in 19 LAs: Conwy, County Londonderry, County Tyrone, Coventry, Denbighshire, Doncaster, Havering (Essex), Leeds, Lincoln, Northampton, Morayshire, Powys, Staffordshire, Stockport, Suffolk, Tameside, Walsall, Warwickshire and Worcestershire."

That's England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Bonus link. Paul Hardcastle's Nineteen.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/3/08; 12:16:01 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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N n n n nineteen LAs

I send emails to schools, legally. I've built up a list from many places, some, from a school's own website. I think it wrong that they publish email addresses publicly on websites, other spambots take advantage, I should too.

Many schools block my mail, many LAs block my mail wholesale. Many people never open my mails, they either delete it before opening, or that mail box is never checked, because it's full of spam. But some finally get there.

I've learnt that Liverpool block my mails if I use my surname (Hooker). I've learnt that many LAs won't allow links. Or, won't allow HTML emails or pictures embedded or linked to.

Some schools are insulted by my mails. Rather some one is insulted. This can be the web designer, insulted that teachers and me can do a much better job. A Head, because I'm right when I say their school's site sucks, even though I've never seen it—just guessing. An ITC because they've a fantastic website, but they do it all themselves, leaving the children and the rest of the staff to wonder when they can have a go?

Of course, I make mistakes in my mails. I should never have said 'nervous secretaries' in the last mail. I should have written the 'after the demo' email better. I should not have said. 'nur nur nu nur nur' in one email last year. Some people get irritated by my mails. I guess they read all of them.  Email me back the code and for sure, I'll unsubscribe you.

For a few months, many years ago, I sold cable door-to-door. I was taught, in training, that you never know what's going on behind that door, but as you knock, you're about to find out. Smile nicely, and hope they smile back. They could be having an argument, be in a bad temper because of their boss... At that moment, you knock the door. Or, these days, they open your email...

Some, only read one mail. They like what I'm saying and respond, usually with questions. Usually, they're considering a new website and add me to the list of potential suppliers.

This time, I'm sending a bunch of nice things users have said about this service. Hopefully, there's nothing in there that will insult, irritate or annoy.

Occasionally, I do send slices of dead trees with stamps on to some schools. Though it seems ritualistic, witch-doctory. And it costs a packet! Were I ever to stop sending emails, I'd have to triple the cost of my websites as the cost of gaining a new customer would rise astronomically. And the number of dead trees sent to land fills... Shudder. I don't want to send 30,000 glossy brochures out to 30,000 UK schools.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 12/3/08; 10:13:59 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Email marketing

Someone did the right think and asked one of my schools...

Good morning,

I am the school administrator for a Primary School in West Yorkshire. I have found your website through WalsallSchools.org who I believe helped you set your website up.

We are currently looking into using this company for our own website and I wondered whether you would mind letting me know what you thought about it.

Your website looks great and I note that it has been recently updated with articles (sorry to hear about the fire, what a nightmare to sort out!!). Again if you could let me know your thoughts on how easy, or not, it is to update much appreciated.

Many thanks and look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Melanie
School Administrator

And this is the answer...

Hi Melanie

Thank you for looking at our website. We are more than happy with the service we receive from Steve. He has taught me everything I need to know by telephone and if there are any problems or anything I unsure of, I only have to text or email and he replies almost instantly.

The great thing about the site is that it is so easy to keep up to date. As you saw with our fire .......(thank you for your sympathies- we are up and running again but using porta-cabin loos for reception children and the building still harbours some smell and grim from the smoke despite professional cleaners—not to mention the material loss!)

.......I was able to post on the website, before the fire was even out, that school would be closed and of course keep it updated as to the latest news.

We have a children's website club and they write for the site. Posting is even easier now you can directly email Word docs, PowerPoints and publisher which you can see quite a few examples of on Waterloo Site (Moorside Primary is also my school). Small video clips and still photos are also easy to upload via email!

All in all I would say go for it... The support is excellent, it couldn't be easier and if you have any ELCs left you can use them too.

Hope that helps!
Sue Broadbent

I owe a glass of wine :-)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 6/2/08; 10:59:34 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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You owe me a glass of wine when you come to Manchester!

My latest is badly written. (I'd moan to myself that these emails are sometimes hard to write. But nobody will listen to that.)

If you come here and are wondering who, at your school, ordered a demo... You've probably not ordered a demo at all. If you read near the bottom, where I ask you to phone me for a demo... But, seemingly, most have not read that far.

To be crystal... It's a marketing email AKA spam. I'm trying to get you to to buy a website from me.

If you've come this far, you should check out the other schools that are here. Most are run by Heads and teachers who aren't great at computers—I make it easy and fun for them. A small few are run by clever ICTs, who have a lot of fun too, since there's no HTML nor FTP, it's painless. Read their reviews on the BECTA site.

It's so easy, in fact, that even children update their school's site... As part of their learning. They love it, because they get comments and feedback from classmates and from all over the world.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 5/2/08; 10:13:57 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Marketing emails

Love. Hearts. Kisses. Cupids. And puppies. It can only be the new Valentines theme. I'm just wearing it in, before allowing it to be deployed on our other school sites.

All looks well.

I think I'll have time to create an interface to it so you'll be able to pick and chose which ones you want, which will load first and the order.

If you notice anything weird with the designs... Maybe their too old, either adult or too antique. Perhaps you've got some other ideas, perhaps a manga one, for the boys?
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 30/1/08; 9:06:30 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Gone all Valentines

I always ask new customers, these days, what sort of design you you want? I need the school colours, a logo and a load of pictures: of the building, key iconic parts of the school, gates, gardens and so on, and some of the school life, preferably of children around a typical school desk.

But, on top of all that I need some descriptive words. Bright, staid, fun, straight.

Adswood, a new customer in Stockport, South of Manchester gave me all this and one other word, 'funky.'

I've not done funky before. Here's some funky typefaces. And some more.



Trouble with funky typefaces, is... Well it seems they're just fancy typefaces, which is 'everything else' in the typography world.

I'm sure I'll get the mix right. I'm listening to funky music as I write, and will do as I design. To help those creative juices flow. Here's a selection from an iTunes 'funk' search of my 8,000 songs (which will play for 29 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes and 29 seconds, if set to play continuously).

• Tone Loc: Funky Cold Medina
• The Clash: Overpowered by Funk
• Digital Underground: Rhymin On The Funk
• Blackeyed Peas: Smells Like Funk
• Philip Glass: Cloudscape (Huh?)

And here's some funky patterns.


# Posted by Steve Hooker at 24/1/08; 2:35:42 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Funky Design

I'm quite happy to give demos, just call me and we can do one there and then, over the phone, on-line. Just go to demo.walsallschools.org, login with the email address of demo@demo.com and the password demo.

I'll give you a little tour, and we'll post a news item with a picture to the front page.

Also, you could look at the video how tos for posting to the front, adding links, searching, uploading a thumbnail. And how children can also create news items for the front page, but are not allowed to publish there. There's a lot more there.

There's also a page of strategies for bulk joining children. Either individually or as classes or as work groups and so on.

This is all part of the suite of lesson plans based around writing for different audiences. And if you want further reading, we've got some of the best for you.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 16/1/08; 10:10:33 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Training and demos

Yesterday, I received this from a prospect.
"I am very interested in creating an interactive and exciting web-site for our school as part of our on-going marketing strategy and as an effective way to communicate with parents.  As a teaching Head with no deputy, little IT skill, experience or time available on my part, your email captured my attention..."
It says it all. Hurried, non-geeky Heads, wanting to connect with the outside world.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 14/1/08; 8:11:31 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Perfect customer

Mr Cox the Deputy Head at Walsall Wood is using the 'bulletin' feature well. Everytime he does a big update, like today, with dozens of new pictures, he sends all his members an email telling them he's just updated.

Though, I'm sure he has by now, several parents who'll be subscribed to his RSS web feeds, who'll see the updates in their aggregator.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 18/12/07; 2:16:19 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Spamming parents

I'm often asked for more information on our services. I never know what to write, and always end up writing far too much. So, I thought I'd standardise wot I write...

Updating is a doddle. Anyone, anywhere, so long as they have the correct rights. Kids can work at home, and have. I've done it from the beach, sending email off my mobile phone, with pictures and videos attached. Schools have blog clubs, adding news items can link in with lesson themes, writing for different audiences is own my enthusiasm. I'd like to see roving reporters in the playground. Small news is big news for little people.

Our costs are simple and public, £3 per pupil up to a max. of £990. Per year, thereafter: £1 per pupil up to a max. of £200. We're on Becta's list so you can find out about our prices, and reviews there, and if you're in England you can use your ELCs.

We totally look after your site while you update and have fun. [Warning:] it can get addictive and a little competitive.

We take your prospectus, stuff off your old site, some pictures, logo, and design you a nice look fitting your whims.

Take a look around the other sites, see how easily stuff gets put on? Content Management for the rest of us. Feedback from parents and ex pupils is full of praise. These are not just ordinary sites, these are are living, breathing, active sites. With high traffic and detailed stats.

Donemana, Northern Ireland, is such a small school, yet they have the most active comments! The Head posts the most but other teachers help out too. Jemma the nursery nurse at Bodnant Infants, Prestatyn, whacks 30 pictures in, in one go, three, four or five times a week—sometimes much more—she wouldn't do it unless it was easy. She's going to add video in the next few days. With Walsall Wood: the comments from parents addressed to their children on a weekend adventure holiday are priceless.

Fun is what we're here for; we work hard to make it easy for you.

All my customers will say good things about me. I count all my customers as friends, albeit distant ones.

I listen: fix and modify features. Add power, make things easier, take out process steps. We've recently added multi themes, seasonal, high day and holiday designs. Just a bit of fun.

We're totally tooled up as web 2.0. We were there at the start of web 2.0, way back in 1999, when we helped test RSS. We were the second blog platform, ever and were the first with podcasting and in-built aggregators. We are totally Google friendly, respectful and have good Page Rank scores. Been there, got the t-shirt.

There's two ways to add content. Through the web, which many of my schools choose as the sole way of updating, or, and once you've done this your eyes will pop out, by merely emailing in: 30 pictures; Word, PDF, Excel docs; even small videos.

Rob, the ICT in Glendale, Nuneaton, Warwickshire adds pages full of pictures via email directly into the depths of their site's structure. Simple!

You could set up your secretary to email in newsletters & letters home to the right place too... As Stuart Cox the Deputy Head at Walsall Wood has done.

An ex grammar school in Leeds, has two sites, one for video for the media department and one for as the main site. (I wish I could get him to let the children 'have a go.')

Waterloo in Tameside have a large past pupils section. It's good to hear about school life during the Second World War. I think children learn lots from such real stories.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 11/12/07; 10:08:32 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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A standard letter

I've often been asked, "how do you put weekly newsletters on these sites?"

I've had two answers:

1. Add them as gems and link to them. If they have Word, they can click the link and it will open in Word. If they aven't Word, and Word is expensive, they're a bit stuck.
2. Copy, paste into a new news item. This has the benefit that it's right there, they can see it. But there is exra work involved.

But, it's the savingof time that I've tried to solve. I know time is crucial.

So, now, soon, you'll be able to email in your Word, Excel or Powerpoint file and it will pop on the front in a readable, printable format.

Should be fixed by Thursday teatime.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 9/10/07; 9:07:46 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Coming soon!

I find that I'm constantly writing the same sort of thing, when I'm asked for more information about our services. So, here, I hope, is the definitive reply.

We don't have a prospectus that we could put into the post. I like to keep costs down. I've looked at your school roll, we base our costs on the size of the school, since this is more equitous. Following are example costs:

• 350 pupils x £3 + DNS set up £25 + £50 domain name admin + £5 manual = £1,130 (but we have a cut off limit of £990) for your first year thence, £1 per pupil per year or £350 per year (but we have a cut off limit of £200)
• 250 pupils x £3 + DNS set up £25 + £50 domain name admin + £5 manual = £830 for your first year thence, £1 per pupil per year or £250 per year (but we have a cut off limit of £200)
• 150 pupils x £3 + DNS set up £25 + £50 domain name admin + £5 manual = £430 for your first year thence, £1 per pupil per year or £150 per year
• 30 pupils x £3 + DNS set up £25 + £50 domain name admin + £5 manual = £170 for your first year thence, £1 per pupil per year or £30 per year

This covers everything. You can use your ELCs since we're registered with BECTA.
You can read more about the above costs.

You can read what customers say on the BECTA site.

We've also a suite of lesson plans. I'd love to see a roving 10 year old reporter, prowling the play ground, note book and camera in hand. Here's some other 10 year old's work (notice the number of comments. Children react strongly to other children's writing.)

If you want to see how it all works here's a section of how tos.

You'll get a site that's as big as you want, no limits on pages, images nor files. We design the graphics from your instructions and images, logos and school colours. We add pages from your existing site or prospectus (you can add these but it's just nicer for us to do this for you, for you to have such pages completed from the get-go). These pages are editable at any time from any location: school, home, Spain, up a mountain from your mobile phone—seriously. Here's the Head, at Northern Ireland school Donemana doing it via the web interface from Prague.

Also included is the telephone, email and text support, mentoring, monitoring, maintenance and training. Training is as you'd expect, very easy. 10 minutes over the phone, and you've got it licked. You can have as many 10 minute sessions as you want. In short you get everything you could possibly need.
Once the site is up and running you add content to it yourself. And this is easy! It has to be or we wouldn't do it. Hit a button, type away, hit another button. I have my 8 year old daughter doing it and some Heads that can hardly move a mouse too. Updating the front page is a joy. Everything is automatic, new stuff at the top, old stuff falls off into the archives. Updating can get quite addictive. As you see traffic increase, visitors coming from other sites, people getting in contact with you, you'll realise the power of speaking directly.

Once you've posted a few items though the web interface, I'll talk you through the email interface. Essentially, you type your news, add your pictures as attachments, and send. That's about it.

Jemma the nursery nurse at Bodnant does it in 3 or 4 minutes. She doesn't hang about, doesn't spend much time on the niceties.

Stuart, the Deputy Head, at Walsallwood does it from his phone, possibly from up a tree on his school trip to Wales.

Tracy and Sue in Tameside do it too, in minutes.

Rob in Coventry... Look at the times he posted (the greyed out text at the foot of each posting). Apparently it took less than 8 minutes to post 3 news items and 26 thumbnails, but that isn't true, gathering the pictures, changing the file names to captions, ordering them, adding the story... Editing them once they arrive at the site. I'd guess a maximum of 45 minutes for those three news items. He does it weekly, sometimes more.

And there's me. I eat my own dog food :-)

Here's a good one of mine, with video, from the beach.

There is a lot you can do with the email to weblog feature. It's very, very powerful. It makes you look as though you've spent ages, and ages, when all it really took was a few minutes.

And remember, I look after you as you do this. In a kind of big brother way, I watch updates as they happen, comments coming in, pictures too. If there's something that I spot that you could do better with, I'll fix it, or text you so you know what not to do next time.

I hope this helps you and look forward to helping you in the future :-)
Steve (Can't say Hooker as some school's spam filters block me.)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 18/9/07; 10:10:55 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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FAQs or 'more information'

Over in Northern Ireland! I like the design, based on a woolly jumper :-) Makes a nice change.

I'm sure there are lots more schools needing a website out in those Western open spaces South of Londonderry. Cullycapple, the newest and Donemana, two schools from N.I.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 7/9/07; 8:14:10 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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New customer

One of the stats pages that come with these sites are the referers page (it's spelled wrongly for historical reasons). I find it useful to see where traffic comes from. 99% comes from Google, and I can see which search strings people used to find me. They're usually single hits.

Sometimes, I receive a huge number of hits from one source, when another high trafficked blog links to me. It's also useful to see old links, links in blogs from years ago still sending traffic.

Today I'm watching the results of my spam campaign. Seeing which schools click through to the site. Not that I can always tell which school it is, sometimes I can only tell which LEA, or which email system they're using. I don't always register a referer if the email they click through from is in an email application, like Outlook, or Thunderbird.

One thing though, one very bad thing, is that with some systems, I'm also given the user name to the email account! RM and Digital Brain are the largest offenders here. From there, were I a villain and so disposed, it's trivial to do a guess, dictionary or at worst a brute force attack.

Of course, you don't have the crown jewels in your email account. But still, it's just sloppy for these systems to send your user name in a referer.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 22/5/07; 9:15:30 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Watching you, watching me

Today, I've been cleaning up some of the schools' posts. Taking out some of the extra bits that come along sometimes when you edit an email-to-weblog—nothing too difficult, just a little too much for a teacher. I see it like brushing up after the children :-)

And, cropping out an 'up-skirt' shot. This was probably quite a normal, innocent view for the photographer. It may have been a bit Victorian of me, but, I felt a little uneasy, so out it came.

(Note: all I needed to do was download the big version, crop and edit the thumb, so as to write over the original. As we use short cuts, every version was then updated.)
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 15/5/07; 9:28:28 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Chores

I've posted some stuff from the past few days on my personal blog. OK. That's cool. Only a few days out of date. Some pictures of Chester Zoo on Friday, a few of our fishing trip on Saturday and a horse riding video on Sunday.

Nothing today, as I'm deep in code.

But, what if you'd want to watch me tapping away at my keyboard? What if you wanted to watch me and my children over the next weekend? What if you wanted to watch everything we did. If I taped a webcam or my camera phone to a hat?

Like Justin TV or the new service, Ustream TV. I've just been watching the check-in desk of the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference in San Fancisco. Robert Scoble has a camera stuck on a hat and is meeting and interviewing—it's all live (streaming) video. It's engaging stuff! Honestly. Even if it's a bit stoppy, starty. This is the way it's going to go.

Is this the next thing for schools? Probably too 'live' for schools? Could it be that each classroom has a web cam or two? Parents can log in, see their children in action? LIVE? Now, as a parent, who lives on a computer, this is definitely something I'd really, really love. I want to see how my children are doing at school. I miss them while I'm at work.

I suppose teachers wouldn't like it though. There'd have to be guaranteed authentication so only parents can see too.

All this could have been done before, easily. But the next thing, is getting mobile. You don't need a physical connection, you can do this with a laptop and a mobile data card, or even, straight from a camera phone.

Perhaps for schools this would be good for school trips? What else? Is this a goer?
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 16/4/07; 10:43:26 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Last weekend, next weekend live

Thursday night, while I slept, a spammer crept into my mail server and caused havoc and mayhem. Not by sending me spam, but by using my mail server to send spam to... Well, probably several hundred unknown addresses. I've a throttle on it just in case. Otherwise it could have been thousands or more.

Of course, I had everything, I thought, secure. But there was this little, tiny hole...

I, as everybody on the net is continually port scanned. Once they find your mail server they attack, using all known vulnerabilities. Luckily, I use a scarce application on an uncommon operating system. But my set up is old, and it had this little, tiny hole.

So, for the past three days, even over my precious weekend, I've been upgrading, shutting everything down, and opening up little by little. I think I've everything sorted, even the added luxury of less general spam arriving in my in box, but I'm keeping my beady eye on my mail server's monitor, just in case.

So, now I'm back. With a catch-up head on. Moving my to-do lists around to down play some and move others up.

# Posted by Steve Hooker at 5/3/07; 9:19:12 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Three days lost

Some of the responses to my nur nur na nur nur spam ask, "where can I get more details?" I guess the FAQs may be a good start, or the how much money page. Or, perhaps you'd want to read some reviews by our users.

Or see an emailed in bunch of pictures by a nursery nurse in Prestatyn. Or a Deputy Head in Walsall. Or, an ICT near Manchester. Or me, of my children (I do it from my mobile phone, sometimes off the beach in Porthcawl ;-) And perhaps a quickie how to email pictures into your site, though it is as simple as attaching pictures to your email, it can get more interesting.

We've two manuals. One that's long and in depth and 51 pages, and the other light and only two pages.

Maybe you want to see, on-line how easy it is to add a news item? Or how to upload an image? How to resize an image? There are plenty more of these how tos.

Perhaps you want to know how English schools can use their eLCs to buy a website? (I'm angry this doesn't apply to Welsh, Northern Irish nor Scots schools.) We fought hard with BECTA to approve our lesson plans. Jump straight to our integrated task—my personal favourite. The side benefit is you can use your site to promote your school. A big, big side benefit :-)

If all this isn't enough. You can call me 01952 271 671, text me 07886 301 767 or email me with your strange question.

Or, arrange for a 20 minute on-line, over the phone demo. I can show you how really, really easy to update your site can be. Together we can have some fun.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 18/1/07; 12:45:46 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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On-line over the phone demo

I'm a spammer. I'm not proud. I hang my head in shame when people ask, "how did this school get to hear from you?" But what is a poor developer to do. I could cut down trees, mash them, and print expensive out of date slogans on them, send them off in an envelope, for Postman Stan, in his red and white polluting van to deliver.

My latest spam, was childish, puerile, rude, offensive, stupid, ridiculous. Just some of the comments that were emailed back. It's also had the highest number of unsubscribes so far.

However, it's also had the highest number of requests for more information. Wow!

Odd isn't it. Can't please all of the people, all of the time. So, I have to please myself. And I do. I'm a happy writer. I enjoy wordcrafting my spams. I try to make them different, because we are different. Completely different.

So, if you got one, were offended, please don't be. It was meant to make you smile. And, no, sending spams in the UK isn't illegal so long as it's to organisations, not individuals. And, my spams are on topic, even if a school, didn't subscribe in the first place. I don't send dietary advice, expanders, pills, or mortgage or share tips. Just spams about me.

You can download my podcast, such that it is, Monty Python's Spam Song its a small wav file. Or, from Google Video, the whole sketch with Japanese subtitles. Or/and if you want to read the sketch... Or/and/as well you'll need to read Wikipedia on the subject of the Spam Sketch.
I do hate spam. I'm constantly fighting it here. Referal spam, member spam, trackback spam, mail to spam, comment spam, as well as the plain old ordinary email spam. Oh! And splogs! People trying to make a blog here to host their spammy wares. Sigh.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 18/1/07; 11:58:01 AM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
Comment [0] Trackback [1] Podcast enclosure  1K to download
Nur nur na nur nur

This in from Sue Broadbent at Waterloo.

The blog style website is so simple to keep uptodate. I used to create my website in html and heave a sigh of relief when I had a finished product. I would then just leave it sitting on the web gathering dust, never getting round to updating it.

This website is so easyto update, it makes you want to put new news on every day! There is no tedium! It is exciting and it gives you a real buzz when you see it changing daily with the minimum of effort.

Lengthy training sessions are not needed. If you can email, you can add a news item. It is so easy and yet the results are stunning.

Waterloo get regular emails now because their website is getting noticed instead of sitting there looking tired. Achieving all this in html with the time I have available is impossible. I have a vibrant, exciting website that is getting read everyday, really showing Waterloo Primary School to the World.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 9/1/07; 6:45:56 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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More nice about us

I asked some users to say something nice:
Matt Prosser an ICT-Coordinator in Croft Community in Walsall
www.croft.walsall.sch.uk

When asked to set a school website up at the start of the 2005/2006 school year I was sent on a training course to get the 'old way' using HTML, after two training sessions I still had problems getting used to the format. After a meeting with the company who run WalsallSchools.org's blog service it seemed the most efficient way to keep the local community informed with what was happening in the school. The website was up and running in a few hours from go. As the only contributor to the website, updating on behalf of the whole school this simple service has probably saved me days and days in writing codes and FTP uploading.

Training was given to myself and with the aid of a fool proof book I set about adding news items to the website. At first I relied heavily on advice from Steve Hooker and now after over a year of blogging I still get handy tips. At the moment the website has over 600 pictures and 100 news items.

The effect the website has had on the school has been overwhelming for both the school and myself personally. Here are some quotes from people about the website, these quotes have either been emailed or given in person.
"Hi, my name is Matthew Prosser, just like yours. When I searched the internet I found your name over 20 times, I thought you might be famous... When I realised it was a school site I really enjoyed reading all the cool stuff you do over there in the U.K.." Received from Matthew Prosser U.S citizen - May 2006.

When meeting some Canadian teachers who were on an exchange I introduced myself as Matthew Prosser and got the response, "hey you're the one teacher I was looking forward to meeting, I looked at your school's website and thought how terrific it was."

We had a visitor to school Dr. Kenn who was performing a science workshop for the children. The first thing he mentioned to the Headteacher was, how wonderful he thought the school website was and how it was one he actually read and not just looked at... “I can't wait to read the report about my show.”

During the first few months of the website I was asked by the Headteacher to keep a close eye on the number of people viewing and when they were viewing. Around a month into this exercise I took my findings to the Head, who was quite alarmed at the number of people logging in during the early hours of the morning with a peak at around 4am to 5am. "Who could this be? " After a couple of days I returned with some of the answers that the children had given. "My uncle looks sometimes from Pakistan," and during Rhamadan the children were getting up before sunrise (5.30 am) to eat and prayer as they were fasting, after they had eaten they thought it was a waste of time going to sleep for an hour and so looked at the school website and compared it to other websites using the walsallschools.org format.

The number of times the school has been visited as a result of a 'Google' search has also increased. This boomed during the time the school was advertising for a Deputy Headteacher,  this had a positive effect as we had quite a few applicants.

The children love the school website, I know this because they comment on how proud they feel when they see their writing work on the site. They also enjoy the fact the the staff are not afraid to be seen as almost human. There are many occasions where the staff are dressed funny, wearing silly hats or ears or have been part of one of my jokes or remarks. In fact the children loved it that much that when the staff were out of their classroom they would put the embarrassing pictures on as a wallpaper so that the staff would be reminded. In fact there was a time that staff were giving reward points for another teacher's picture to be used as a wallpaper on the desktop instead of their own. This turned into a bidding war.

A final example of good feedback received as a result of the website occurred only last month. I received an email from an ex pupil from the 1970's asking me to post some old pictures from that time. Within minutes I received an email from Steve Hooker sarcastically wishing me, “good luck” as it seemed a big job. Liking a challenge, I found out some old photographs and published a mini report, with trips, the old building, etc. being included. Since I have had a great response - two parents with children currently at the school are on the photographs and feel rather embarrassed (but at the same time secretly proud) they are on the website. Also, a great response from other people reading the website. 

Most importantly is the effect the website has had on the children's work. I started an assembly on a Thursday where good writing examples were shared and then uploaded to the website. The children loved seeing their work. This assembly will start again, but did take a small break over the Christmas period. This also had a good response from people who read the website, they really like the idea.

What makes me keep updating the website is the response from the staff and children, the response from the people who read and the rather surprising emails I receive and finally the support I get from Steve. It is great to read his comments about what he likes and also what can be improved. I used ideas from other sites as it is great to having a community of people using the same system sharing good practice – using the trackback system from the site and looking at walsallschools.org's site gives a great idea of what is happening in other schools.

The future for the website in this school. I know I don't use the website to its full capacity and there is plenty for me to learn so it can only get better. I also intend on getting other staff and pupils to contribute. The pupils will be easier then the staff, I already have a willing pupil volunteer who leads regular messages on the site. Hopefully with a willing army of contributors we will get more hits and more publicity to the site.
# Posted by Steve Hooker at 8/1/07; 2:00:14 PM to the Walsall Schools business dept.
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Something nice about us

Again, I'm going to bury myself in code. I've got good defences against spam, now I want good defences against paeds. In fact, I'm going to make this ship so tight that, well, yes, it's going to take the fun out of it. By fun, I mean that comments are going to be approved, before they make it to the site. Though I'll allow existing members to be able to post comments straight away—thus, pupils will immediately be able to post comments on their or other's work, while a surfer from Australia will have to wait till their comment is approved.

It's far better to be able to see that your comment has made it through, rather than waiting for approval. For pupils, who I expect to be posting comments the most, this will be correct, their comments will go straight through, but that Australian surfer will be disappointed, that is until he comes back and posts another comment—as they'll be an approved member, their comment wi