http://www.shineweek.co.uk/

Brightlemon were chosen by the Department for Children Schools and Families (Dcsf), the Arts Council and Creative Partnerships to build a social networking web site built along the lines of YouTube allowing children, teachers and creative organisations across England to upload content showcasing their talents. Users will be able to register and (subsequent to a verification process) upload video, photos, audio and written content and details of Shineweek related events. This content managed web site features:

• uploadable video, audio, images and written content
• mapping of registered users (using Google maps)
• verification system (via fax, email and phone)
• personal schools pages
• customised content for each user
• custom blogs
• tagging, voting and rating of content
• customisable galleries

and many web 2.0 features.

Watch this space because Stage 2 will be launching soon…!

http://www.mandarama.com/

About the Mandarama web site

The Mandarama web site is an online Chinese learning, subscription-based web site aimed at new learners of Mandarin. Specifically targetting primary and secondary school students in the UK, USA and overseas schools the site features:

• Multiple integrated Flash games
• Chinese Wiki with audio, images
• full online postcard (e-card) system with audio messages and chinese text
• full content management system
• e-commerce subscription system integrated with Protx
• multiple account levels with set number of allowed logins

About Mandarama (from the Mandarama web site)

The company behind Mandarama is Bamboo Learning Limited (www.bamboolearning.com) - We only teach Mandarin Chinese and only to children - We are a team of experienced Mandarin Chinese educators, Western Digital content creators and professional managers.

Why Mandarama?

We are passionate specialists in providing opportunities for children to learn Mandarin Chinese - We are innovative – combining the best in learning Chinese with the best in Western style animation and thought leadership on ICT in education - We represent great value in comparison with one-off DVDs, books with no sound, non-dynamic content.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Javascript

http://www.englishforlifeandwork.co.uk/

About this project

Brightlemon were chosen to work with Tribal Group to develop the front end design for this English Learning portal.

The site features mutiple languages - English, Polish, Urdu and Mandarin to cater for a diverse target audience.

About English for Life and Work

“Improve your English with online courses that will help you in your life and work in the UK”

The English for Life and Work web site is run by Tribal and CTAD and provides online courses in English specifically to native speakers of Polish, Urdu and Chinese.

Brightlemon worked on the design of the application built by Tribal.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS.

http://www.planschoolslink.org/

About this project

Brightlemon successfully launched an interactive messaging web site for Plan international - Plan Schools Link.

This social networking based site features private messaging among students in the UK and Africa. Additionally it contains customisable school profiles, messages with embedded Flash video, images, WYSIWYG editing and multiple access levels and related roles.

It also features forums (for Teachers only) and workflow and swearword filtering.

From the Plan Schools Link web site

Over 70 UK primary & secondary schools in the UK are now linking with their peers in Kenya,Sierra Leone and Malawi. The programme develops your children’s cultural awareness, contributes to curriculum development and helps you achieve the International School Award.

Plan ed can take the hard work out of the link for you because we have already found a school for you to link with. We put you in touch with an African school and support you to reach a partnership agreement to help you clarify mutual aims and objectives with your linked school.

You will receive a resource pack, with lesson activities, photos, DVD, take home activity, artefacts and access to downloadable and search friendly web resources (which are updated regularly).

Every term you will send and receive a correspondence with your partner school, carry out a set of activities for your children to learn about your linked country and work on a collaborative project of your choice.

You will receive ongoing support via a telephone helpline service and your linked school will receive support from dedicated plan staff.

Ten key benefits to Plan ed School Linking

• A facilitated link with a school overseas
• Your school will have an ongoing, actual link with a school in Malawi, Kenya or Sierra Leone
• Your children will have regular communications with children from your linked school (6 letters a year and email possibility). We suggest a class writes letters, but the whole school is involved through assemblies and curriculum days
• You will receive a resource booklet (with a fact sheet on link country, curriculum activity ideas, set of lesson plans,10 photos about day to day life of children in linked country; DVD on school life in your linked country; artefacts from linked country; take-home activity).
• Your children will have access to Linkzone a secure resource centre with online resources include videos, photographs and sound files
• Your teachers will receive expertise from School Linking Co-ordinators, who are teachers in the respective countries providing twice yearly inset and guidance
• Teachers and pupils will have the opportunity to have some management experience
• OFSTED Criteria of global dimension and ‘every child matters’
• Endorsements and evaluation by the Institute of Education
• Makes your school eligible for applying for the International Schools award

Why Plan?

Plan has been working in communities around the world for 70 years and is working with 64,000 communities. We have experience of working with children around the world and there are already 65 schools from Malawi, Kenya and Sierra Leone who are ready and keen to link.

What are the costs involved?

For all of the above benefits the cost is just £600:£400 of goes towards the benefits described above & £200 goes to your link school’s development fund. As Plan International is a registered retailer of Curriculum Online this means until August 2008 you can use your allocated e - learning credits to pay for all the benefits this programme provides, and you would then only be required to make the small contribution of £200 to you partner school’s development fund.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Javascript,

http://www.shineweek.co.uk/

About the Shineweek web site

Site Summary

The Shineweek web site is a social networking site built along the lines of YouTube allowing children, teachers and creative organisations to upload content showcasing their talents. Users will be able to register and subsequent to verification upload video, photos, audio and written content and details of Shineweek related events.

Verification

The web site has a detailed verification system - each user associates himself/herself with a school from the Dcsf database
which is integrated into the web site. Once a user is registered they can request verification via phone, fax or email.

Tagging, voting and rating

The web site will also allow users to vote for, rate and tag content. As well as tagging of content using pre-defined fields, free tagging will be enabled to allow users to suggest and add new tags. This will enable users to generate ideas for what “talent” really is.

About Shine and Shineweek

Shine is a UK government initiative (organised by the Department for Children, Schools and Families formerly the Department for Education) aimed at showcasing the talent of all children in schools nationwide. It is jointly organised by Creative Partnerships, the Arts Council, the Talent and Enterprise Taskforce and the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

From the Shine web site

We, the new youth culture trust with the DCSF, are inviting schools up and down the country to join this festival. We know there are many exciting end of year events already planned in schools. SHINE offers an opportunity to bring them together in the festival week and join a national campaign to celebrate the talent in everyone.

SHINE will create a real buzz with a strong media presence, the endorsement and support of the Prime Minister and other senior government ministers and well-known faces in the arts and the creative industries.

Technologies used:
XHTML, CSS, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Javascript

Normally we use .htaccess and .htpassword for setting up username/password for accessing certain page/folders/directory.

In Webmin, there is a function called “Password protecting a durectory” set up for you.

Below are the easy steps to password protect a directory using Webmin:

1) login in to the Webmin interface

2) Main menu -> choose “Others” -> choose “Protected Web Directories” -> “Add protection for a new diretcory”
3) in setting page:

Directory path: select the path/directory which you want to protect
File containing users: if any, or choose automatically

File containing groups: if any, or choose None

Password encryption: choose the encryption type

Authentication realm: the name will appear in login box, ex: “Admin Area”

Users to allow: put the username you want to setup in “Only Users:” field

4) click the “Create” button

5) in next page, you can add/edit password for this user, then click submit/save button. It’s done!

If you would like to know more details about Webmin, please visit the Webmin site here .

I thought it might be helpful to many, to point out a couple of shortcuts that would make orienting through one’s screen quicker. For those of you, who know the following already - good for you! :-)

For starters, if you have couple of programs open, for instance Internet browser, a word editor and say PSPad you can press down Alt + Tab to flicker between each of the programs much quicker than using the mouse. To flick through them in the opposite direction press: Alt + Shift + Tab. Press tab repeatedly until you get to the program window you require.

When you are in an Internet browser press Ctrl + Tab to flicker through open tabs. And Ctrl + Shift + Tab to move backwards.

To open a new tab in the Internet browser press Ctrl + T.

To close a tab press Ctrl + W.

To open a new window press Ctrl + N.

To close the whole window of the Internet browser press Ctrl + Shift + W.

If you want to open a link in a new tab click the wheel on your mouse or right click the link and select “open link in new tab” on the the pop up menu.

I believe shortcuts like Ctrl + S to save a document, Ctrl + P to print a page and Ctrl + F to find an item on a page are already quite a common knowledge.. but for those who didn’t know…

I hope, this will prove helpful in speeding up your work and browsing.. Enjoy the ride!

If you want to create a site like YouTube there is an easy way to do this using open source software. The following things are necessary to start a video site:

1. First you need to install the basic Drupal package on your server.
2. Then you must make sure you have ffmpeg on your server.This program allows you to convert all major video formats (including mobile video) to flash playable (.flv) files. This is a flash playable format used by YouTube, Facebook and numerous other sites.
3. The 3rd part is the Drupal Flash Video module. You can download it from the project site http://drupal.org/project/flashvideo. After installation you need to configure your module to work with the content types you want and then embed their video in any node type in the Drupal System using the simple [video] tag. As always first you should follow the README.txt and INSTALL.txt files from the relevant module directory.

You can find complete documentation/tutorial on this web site: Flash Video in Drupal 5: A complete multimedia tutorial.

With the latest release of the Drupal Calendar module and using Drupal Views, you can keep track of events easily by year, month and day easily. The following modules are necessary for this functionality:

CCK, required for module Content
http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/cck
Views
http://drupal.org/project/views
Date (with Date API)
http://drupal.org/project/date
Event
http://drupal.org/project/event
Calendar
http://drupal.org/project/calendar

Install these modules in Drupal in the order given above.
With Views module installed include Views UI
With Date module installed, include Date API
With Event module installed, include Basic event, Event All Day and Event Views

Create some new content as Events, provide the start and end dates and times.

Create a View to access these events via the Calendar, a step-by-step guide on setting up Calendar View can be found at:
http://drupal.org/node/133341

Jquery is an powerful javascript library that can be used to easily enhance websites. It allows web developers to painlessly integrate features like modifying the appearance or content of a page, respond to user interactions, animate a page and retrieve information from a webserver wihtout refreshing a page (ajax).

Jquery is the javascript library of choice for the Drupal CMS project and here at Brightlemon we have been increasingly using Drupal to develop the larger Social networking sites we are working on. As such we’re becoming more and more familiar with Jquery and how it can be used and extended. The following link offers a great round up of some of the best plugins available for Jquery, 45+ Fresh Out of the oven jQuery Plugins .