The good news is that my Milestone report has had the green light from the national facilitator. I had to make a few minor changes and additions, it was then converted to pdf and is now in the annals of the Ministry.

I will get some in depth feedback at a later point. Next Wednesday I have to present my findings to the cluster lead teachers, complete with my analysis of their efforts and what I feel the next steps are based on their submitted evidence.

I have been hunkered down for the last couple of weeks writing my milestone report for the ICTPD cluster. Today I have sent it off to the Ministry. Whilst it was a burden to administer and collate, what it has given me is an excellent insight into the progress of each school that I work with in a more in depth way than my anecdotal observations from my visits.

I still feel that the 31 page report could be a lot less cumbersome for the men at the Ministry if they were to allow me to read the reports sent back to me, cogitate on the contents and then synthesize my findings into a page of evidence. As it currently stands I sent in a 31 page document. I hope for the planet’s sake this is never printed out and is only stored electronically.

Almost as soon as it was launched I decided that the test site that this blog is currently attached to was not portraying an image that I was completely satsified with.  As a result, not only is the web page under  re-design, the blog will also be re-branded.

So I have a live web site that is only really a first draft, I must tear it down and put up a contacts page so that any traffic I do get in this transition stage is getting information they need.  The trouble with being your own client and designer all in one is that one half of the equation dominates at different stages of the process.  In the current iteration of the website the designer was blinkered to the needs of the client!  Only when the designer handed over to the client could the client’s views be heard!  Hence the return to the drawing board.

In the meantime work has been coming in at a pace that is pleasing and at the same time causing me to be distracted from this re-build.  I am currently working on several website projects, I have three schools who are seeking my advice and are wanting me to build/revamp their sites.  I also have two commercial clients wanting me to design webstites for them, both very different briefs, but interesting work all the same.  Finally I have also been very closely aligned with a very interesting video project which should go live in a month or so.

So work is keeping me from re-vamping this blog’s appearance in line with the re-vamped website next door.  Watch this space.

I uploaded the files via ftp to the Internet last night and now the the website is live.  I would welcome feed back.  What works and what is not working and also what are your impressions?  I already know that the link to the HIS site is not working, however if you change the last part of the url from hisdisk1o5.html to hismag.html in the browser window the link does work.  When I am back to my computer again, this evening, I will make that change and that particular link will be working.  I also know that the text on one of the panels on the front page is not the same, so will change that later on.  Any other faults?

Working on the website has taken quite a while.  The design has gone through several iterations and still we have questions.  But launch it we will and work on the changes based on feedback, so comments welcome!  It has become a case of looking at something for too long and now not quite seeing the wood for the trees.

Running this blog from a business perspective is proving to be something of a challenge.  What content should appear here?  In the first instance we will look at adding pages that contain resources and reviews, such as those on the Supertanker, although the presentation here will be different.  In addition links to the tutorials already published on You Tube will be linked to too.  As for post content, we will see what happens, but it is expected that the content will relate to what projects are in the offing and how current projects are progressing.

I am currently building my web site, more of that later.  However as part of my new endeavour I wanted to add a blog to it.  In time I will create/edit my own theme for the blog, but the current theme will suffice.  The job of getting the Wordpress engine working on my own domain was simple, there are plenty of tools out there to help for those of you wanting now to do the same thing.  Wordpress themselves have their own help and very thorough it is, however I find video tutorials suit my style of learning better and this particular video was most helpful.