phew…after what seems like months of writing, designing and coding we have managed to upload our new website. We’ve added a lot more content about what we do and improved the layout of the pages. 

This is the third version of the site and we’d welcome any comments about the site.

I’d forgot how tricky it is to get everything together for a new site!

so you agreed the spec, got the contracts right, got the team in place and then you’ve started work. Everything is going well but you know that you have the first review coming up. How do you manage the process? What is going to be documented? How will you make sure everything is done?

We’ve started using a really simple excel sheet for logging all change and test requests. Each entry gets a unique ID and we record:

The problem, the requested change, browser type, operating system, wider impact of the change, who requested it, screen grab (with a reference),who did the work (in our office), any url or reference and any additional notes.

We’ve found this to be really useful when we manage changes. Giving everything a unique ID and sharing the sheet across the development team means that we can track a change and also have something to refer to. Instead of saying has the menu been changed we can ask about 1.1-12. It might seem a bit long winded, especially when you start but if you’ve got lots of requests to manage it is really helpful.

Scott

Before we made the move to Basecamp we did do some thinking about the tools and features that we needed. We looked at a several tools and decided that we wanted to have the following functionality:

1: web based so that our clients could use it without having to buy and install software

2: email notifications so that the system could deal with some of more the basic notifications

3: secure, safe and reliable service - managed by someone else if possible

4: store files so that clients can download them

5: ability to store multiple projects and multiple clients

After a review of several tools we went for basecamp. As an elearning company we were also impressed with the online instructional videos. These saved a great deal of time when training staff and our clients. There is still a challenge in getting everyone to look at the project plan but the easy layout and email notifications makes it a lot easier to encourage use across the project team.

At our last elearning forum our topic was Second Life. Andy Powell from Eduserve presented from within Second Life to our forum members who were all watching on a big screen. It was very interesting to see the reactions of the gathered audience to Second Life and the presentation format.

Andy gave a really interesting presentation but I thought that it must have been really hard for him as he couldn’t see the reactions of the audience…at the same time the audience couldn’t really see any emotions from Andy other than those displayed in Second Life. After the event I spoke to a number of people who were looking at Second Life for the first time who were disappointed. They had expected so much more in terms of visual appearance and functionality. Such is the depth and complexity of how second life can be used that we didn’t really get the time to show that its about more than the graphics.

From our perspective the most interesting thing was the way the presenter within second life had to interact with a real world audience. Several of the forum members were interested in using it to develop scenario based learning, while others were worried about the unrestricted nature of the world.

Over the past few weeks we have been working on our new website. We are at the final stages and plan to have the site live before the end of August. In addition to the new site which you’ll be able to see at www.realprojects.co.uk we’ve also got plans to update the norfolk elearning forum website. You can view the elearning forum website at www.norfolkelearningforum.co.uk.

We’ve spent a lot of time updating the content for the new site and getting everything ready for the launch. It will be interesting to get feedback once the site is live!