Certificate of Merit

[JamesMurphy]

There have been issues obtaining a working payment system in conjunction with the ECF Office. They admit to not having the requisite skill sets in house and have asked for my help. Kirstie Lapworth and I are attempting to get Joomla and its eCommerce plugin to work in the way that we need it to work.
For example, the only payment means right now is PayPal. I have asked for credit card methods to be added. I have no control over this and all I can do is badger....We no longer have a Manager of ICT which does not help.

Have you tried looking into Magento? It's a PHP CMS that is specifically designed for eCommerce use. It might provide you with everything you need, rather than relying on a 3rd party plugin for Joomla.

I'm not sure how customisable Magento is and whether it's fit for purpose but it seemed to me to be much more comprehensive than any of the joomla offerings...

[Carl Hibbard]

There have been issues obtaining a working payment system in conjunction with the ECF Office. They admit to not having the requisite skill sets in house and have asked for my help. Kirstie Lapworth and I are attempting to get Joomla and its eCommerce plugin to work in the way that we need it to work.
For example, the only payment means right now is PayPal. I have asked for credit card methods to be added. I have no control over this and all I can do is badger....We no longer have a Manager of ICT which does not help.

I have asked for the database export of the schools expressing an interest in Chess for Schools. I still await that data. I guess I asked two months ago. This is crucial. Again, I have asked repeatedly.

The Questions and Answers content for the three levels is being finalised by Ken Coates this week.

On a personal level I lost a month of my life due to severe family health problems and have taken two weeks "holiday" to finish my parts of the project.

My original remit was application development. It has become Project Manager. I have had to devise the entire business process that envelopes the application and persuade the ECF Office of the tasks it needs to perform to make the process work. I did not count on having to do this!

Consequently UAT with children has been delayed until the start of the new term. I think we will use Yateley Manor children to test with.

I fully intend to deliver this application. If I don't then I do not get paid however the amount is so trivial it is not what spurs me on!

Any chance of a status update on this please John?

[John Upham]

UAT testing with Yateley Manor School is scheduled for Tuesday, October 6th, 2009.

The 350+ questions and answers for the three real and one practise levels are being rechecked and finalised.

That aspect is out of my hands.

J.

[Alex Holowczak]

UAT testing with Yateley Manor School is scheduled for Tuesday, October 2nd, 2009.

October 2nd is a Friday.

[Stewart Reuben]

Dear Carl,
I am sorry to learn about your family health problems and hope they are now resolved satisfactorily.
Stewart Reuben

[Carl Hibbard]

Dear Carl,
I am sorry to learn about your family health problems and hope they are now resolved satisfactorily.
Stewart Reuben

Read up a bit (and again Stewart...) that is John!

[John Upham]

The first group UAT session for CoM will take place at Yateley Manor School on Tuesday, October 5th, 2009.

If I survive the onslaught of a dozen or more twelve year old children I will let you know!

I am taking sedatives now!

[Ian Thompson]

The first group UAT session for CoM will take place at Yateley Manor School on Tuesday, October 5th, 2009.

If I survive the onslaught of a dozen or more twelve year old children I will let you know!

I am taking sedatives now!

I hope you will be asking them to check the date handling in the application very carefully. Is tomorrow the 2nd, 5th or 6th October? You don't seem too sure.

[John Upham]

Is tomorrow the 2nd, 5th or 6th October? You don't seem too sure.

Tomorrow is another day...

[John Upham]

The first group UAT testing of the CoM application took place on Tuesday, October 6th from 6pm until 7pm.

20 children from Yateley Manor School took between them a total of 141 tests at Level One of the CoM Scheme.

Two students managed 100% by the end of the session.

None of them have had access as yet to the CoM DVD and book.

We gave them CoM credits for free and asked them to try their hardest to break the application. Microshaft Internet Exploiter tried the hardest of the lot!

Many of them took one test after another determined to get 100% and they seemed to have lots of fun. After a few attempts they began to realise that they were getting new questions for each test! They also realised that asking their mates for the answer to number x was unhelpful since their mates were getting a different 20 questions chosen from the pool of 100! The class was very competitive amongst itself and prizes were handed out for good performances.

I will publish a detailed analysis of their performance following a lie down in a darkened room!

My thanks to Andrew Martin and Ken Coates for showing me how to both control and amuse a class of hyperactive 12 year olds!

Good fun was had by all!

Some lessons were learnt and I will incorporate those into the next version before we go publicly live!

[John Upham]

I have today contacted the ECF Office with the following message :

Kirstie,

We have successfully trialled the CoM application with Yateley Manor School.

A number of students passed the Level One examination with either Merit or Distinction.

Are you in a position to send out the certificates and the associated goodies (whatever they are)?

We want the children to be presented with their certificates in school assembly.

Let me know that you are ready and I will send the required details.

All the best,

John

[Paul McKeown]

Good stuff, John! Keep up the good work - this is actually much more useful than the free chess sets stuff - and something that chess players in England actually have in their own hands. When do you expect this scheme to "go live"?

Best Regards,
Paul McKeown

[John Upham]

There is a second phase of UAT with sixteen pupils of Abbey School, Reading, Berkshire on Wednesday, 21st October 2009.

The remaining Questions and Answers for Level Two and Three are being checked over the next few days.

I will need to visit the ECF Office to train the staff in using the admin GUI so that they can add the anticipated (250,000 - 35) = 249,965 schools.

I am adding further admin functionality including results analysis : we can learn a huge amount from the use of this application. The feedback is immediate and concrete.

I need to deal with some browser dependancy issues (you can guess which http client is the pain..)

I ought to get the application penetration tested but this is likely to be beyond the ECF to afford.

I'm improving certain bits of the user GUI by the use of AJAX.

We are working flat-out on this and will keep everyone posted.

I have enabled the go live domain (but not uploaded the application) and we have been trialling on the testing domain which will continue as the development server following go live. I will reveal the live domain in due course.

The decision to go live will be a joint decision of myself, Andrew Martin and Ken Coates.

We will not make this decision until we are completely confident that all is in place and the ECF Office are totally on-board. I will not allow myself to be associated unless these conditions are met. This may well delay payment to myself but that is not important.

[Paul McKeown]

by the use of AJAX

Err, XMLHttpRequest, a non-standard method, first seen in Outlook, then the Internet Exploder, ne c'est pas?

Good luck with your conditional comments for the Exploder's css, but just give up if it's png transparencies you're trying to support...

Personally, the worst browser bug EVER was Apple Safari before 2.0.4 (iirc), which supported event listeners, including the preventDefault method, only preventDefault DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING! Barking gazoolas, Batman, that beat anything the Exploder ever did wrong into a cocked hat.

Mind you, IE 5.0 was first released in 1999, 5.5 in 2000, 6 in 2001, then a loooooong wait until 7 in 2007 and 8 in 2009. Hardly a top priority for Billy G., was it? And IE 8, although competent, just lacks any zing... from what I've heard 9 isn't going to shake the world either

Anyway, good luck, this is important stuff you're doing!

Regards,
Paul McKeown

[andrew martin]

After reading the last two posts I think I need to go and lie down.