Friday 28 August 2009

Remember this

SELECT * FROM table WHERE myid IN (2, 16, 93,102);

Sunday 16 August 2009

our own schools mathsweek

Comments on the past weeks maths competition.

Stats
Monday = 42
Tuesday = 34
Wednesday = 26
Thursday = 16
Friday = 6

Out of 1814 students able to compete each day, I am not too sure how this has been successful. Though comments about the number of paper entries during the same period last year suggests the same.

Things I need to consider if running this next year.

An Admin system for the maths staff to login and check the results
The system working out what day it is and displaying the correct days questions
Not importing all the students into the system, self registration might be possible
Not limiting long answers to varchar(50), may have to use the text field next year
Not leaving this to the last minute to design and implement.

Monday 10 August 2009

our own schools mathsweek

I have bene busy getting tomorrows questions online, this has been an interesting experience as I am gaining more and more skills in php/mysql.

I am using seperate tables to record each days results from the students, this will be able to be used for stats next week.

41 students completed the monday tasks, though I must admit that I had a flaw in the program that locked one of the answers to 50 characters, which meant that some students, they way that they formatted the answer might get it marked as incorrect. I have passed this information onto the people running it, and hope that this will not disadvantage those students.

While getting tuesdays information up, which was all written up, and the database table for tuesday was designed to handle multichoice answers only, which was the next step to be updated, I had a students submit answers for tuesday by the time I had made a cup of coffee. I will have to make sure that I amend the database table first before putting wednesday, thursday and fridays questions up. Though i still have to work out how I am going to put up a three part answer, as the database table was originally setup to handle one answer for each question.

Online apps

This time of year is a busy time for me, as I seem to go through a Rapid software development mode. Last year it was the subject choice system, which I have had to make some amendments to this year to help make it just that little bit easier for the students.

But no, this year we also have a maths online version running, just for our students. Ok, its not as flash as http://www.mathsweek.org.nz/ and I didn't expect it to be, as I just ran out of time developing it. I should not have left it to the last moment to design and run, but all it needed to be was a simple login and collect data. Though I did not think I would have to apply the function of saving the answers so they could be modified later.

It is working well, though i have not seem the final results for the day, as this closes at 7pm and I cannot access the database backend through the school connection.

Just finished designing the form to be used tonight, however, tomorrow is the problem, as one answer has three parts to it. I knew I should have provided some more specifications on the development of the questions.

just went to use www.mathsweek.org.nz and its down, poor web site developers, spending all that time creating the website for it to fall over on the first day.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

The flu

Three weeks back at school and I have a cold, it is not the greatest thing. But, have I slowed down, no.

We are into dress rehersals for the school production
We have two data projectors being used to do the back drop which has allowed us to use moving images and something that is a bit more lifelike to get the show across to the audience.

Curriculum developments,
tomorrow is a teachers only day at school where we are looking at curriculum planning for implementation for the new curriculum in New Zealand. This is causing a bit of strife as we are trying to follow examples from around New Zealand on curriculum planning and delivery, but put our own spin on it, so the students can understand and get the localisation from it.

IT Support
Getting up to speed and working out what is needed to be carried out, I am spending more time on helping teachers get what they need out of ICT. Though I would like a more structured helpdesk solution in the school. People need to learn if there laptop isn't connecting to the network, there are a few simple problem solving techniques that could use, instead of, I can't do that, or just not doing anything.
I am working on a system to run our school maths week as well. Though this starts on Sunday, I haven't exactly spent much time on it. I think I am going to have to say, whoops, can we try this later on? How about we jump on board with the national one?

We start rehearsal in 10 minutes, and the majority of the students still have not arrived or got there sound equipment yet. Its gonna be another late night. No voice warmup yet either. Not Happy