• Why did we create this website?

• When did we start this site?

• How did we create this site?

• Future Improvements

• Problems we overcame

  
BiNct Club members decided to work on a project related to life at the School.  Each member could pursue their own interests, such as sport, or work on something of topical interest.  We also had an excuse to promote our new school extension as well as other successes.  We decided, as for the BCS Competetion in 2005, to build our own dedicated website linked from the school website rather than to develop pages within the existing school site.  In this way we could demonstrate, through use of a calendar and in other ways, the whole range of activities across the school year.

BiNct Club members work with the School's laptops and have used software available to them.  They tried using Microsoft Word but found it difficult to integrate graphics, so we resorted to MS Powerpoint which they use in class.  MS Powerpoint provided a convenient way to produce a visually attractive presentation with graphics and video-clips.  Unfortunately we were not able to use Hotdog Junior to create simple html-based web pages nor could we offer a full-blown html editor for each laptop such as MS Frontpage or Dreamweaver.  

We produced most of our material in the form of Powerpoint Presentations which were converted to individual jpg files and loaded onto web pages.  The full powerpoints, saved as pps files, have been added to the website, though in the knowledge that these can take time to download especially for those without broadband connection.  However, with patience, the user can see the visual impact of the actual powerpoint presentations.  As an aside, we have chosen to use jpg images created from the powerpoint presentations in our web pages so that visitors can get a quick impression, and those who wish to, and are able to, can download the full presentation.

Our site map provides an index of the pages and their author(s).  A second table gives each BiNct Club member and lists his/her contribution.  There is also a listing of the pages in chronological order which is also used for the scrolling display on the home page.

BiNct members enjoyed searching the Internet for suitable, free, animated graphics which they downloaded for their presentations..  Some of the presentations include sound effects.  Members have also tried their hand at creating their own animated graphics using MS Paint and saving the individual frames as files, which were later converted using Animator7 software.  One example can be found on our healthy eating page.  BiNct members have enjoyed making video clips and taking digital photos using equipment in school - each class has a digital camera and Digital Blue Movie Creator.  Examples of these can be found in our pages about the Christmas Concert, World War 2 Week, and Snow Day.

We are still looking forwards to BiNct Club members being able to create their own web pages and uploading these directly to the school site.   The absence of an affordable html editor for each laptop plus a "lock-out" imposed by Research Machines on uploading to third-party sites continues to be a road block.

Our efforts over the years to employ the Oxfordshire County Council's Digital Brain have not paid off as we wish to build a website which can be developed largely offline and with pages, when loaded, can sit alongside those in the School's own website.

In the interim, members have prepared materials offline (this time using MS Powerpoint rather than word files, images from Colour Magic, and web pages using Hotdog Junior) and these have been uploaded on their behalf.  Final editing has been done using MS Frontpage and a number of graphics packages (Coreldraw, Paintshop Pro and Animator7).  Common Style Sheets (CSS files), tables, javascript and other devices have been used to aid layout and consistency, though it should be stressed that decisions on use of fonts, colours, backgrounds, etc., have been made by BiNct members.

We followed the School's policy regarding Internet and Website safety which conforms with the DfES guidelines. Navigation around the website has been helped by construction of several indexes accessed from our site map.  

We would like to improve our website for those with visual or other impairments.  We do have one BiNct Club member who is visually impaired and so we could use him to highlight the problems.