Just a brief post to note that we updated the site with slight design updates (especially on widget styling) and additional features for moderators to clear items flagged in error.
Lots of updates for the new school year (oops did you already go back last week? Sorry, we’ve been so busy, we didn’t notice the calendar flip over to September).
We’ve launched the new design for the Challenge Machine – we hope you like it. Along with making the site look fresher and more friendly, we’ve also tidied up the layouts (where things are put on the page) and the navigation (how you move around from page to page) so that (we hope) the site is easier to use. Give it a few days and then let us know what you think (you can add a comment here, or you can use the new contact form on the site).
Along with the new designs comes several new features… Continue reading ‘New design, recommendations and more’
A small update just now to fix a few bugs that crept in with the last update. Tidied up the layout slightly too. The wysiwyg editor (for descriptions and “info/questions” works on Safari on the mac now.
Browsing
- You can browse untaken challenges (the “challenges” link in the header)
- Preview of first line of the Challenge/Collection Distinction
- Better clarity (we hope) for the distinction between collections and challenges (collections are “selected by” someone wheras challenges are “created by” someone)
- There are some improvements to the challenge creation interface for easily moving between a page and the creation
Internet
In advance of integration with Learning platforms, we have made some material available from the internet (basically the browsing interface and the challenge names and interface). You still have to login to contribute to the site, or take a challenge.
Error reporting
Now when something goes wrong on the challenge machine, the development team are notified by email (Why didn’t we have this before! Experience with rails apps (where this is a very easy feature to implement. This also means you get a more succinct page afterwards – less intimidating when things go wrong. Hopefully also there will be less and less of these pages…
A few helpful updates to get us cracking with what will be regular updates to the site:
- The tag cloud at the right of the browse listing has been improved – “empty tags” (tags referring to hidden/incomplete challenges) are no longer there.
- Challenges and collections now list (in a small and unobtrusive way) the ‘permalink’ for linking back to them (e.g. using in an email)
- Challenges and collections always list who the creator is, with a link back to them
- A strange bug had crept in which meant that some of the challenges, after being edited, ended up with pages that started with page 5 or page 25 rather than page 1. This gave page 1 (the normal first page of any challenge) give an error. This has been now fixed and the relevant challenges’ pages are numbered normally.
Great workshop gives us loads of input … and inspiration
Published 13 June 2008 Events Leave a CommentLast Thursday, twelve students and five teachers who have been using the Challenge-Machine over the last few weeks and months spent several hours and lots of concentration telling us what was right and wrong about it. Some of the stuff we knew about, and some suggestions and bug reports which we’d heard before hadn’t made sense until we saw it happening in front of us. But beyond that, some exciting and new ideas. I only wish we could get them all done all at once immediately. Lots to think about, and we’re very inspired by the workshop.
We realized that better communication of changes changes that were going on behind the scenes might be useful, so we thought a blog would be a good way of letting people who use the Challenge-Machine know what’s happening. The aim is that we let you know here about any planned downtimes (announcing it on the site too, when appropriate), and when we make changes to the site we let you know here.
