English Chess Forum

I have recently purchased a copy of the ECF Certificate of Chess Merit DVD. I cannot however find any of the End of Level Tests (Levels 1, 2 and 3). Can anyone help?

Thanks

Deborah

Deborah Swann wrote:I have recently purchased a copy of the ECF Certificate of Chess Merit DVD. I cannot however find any of the End of Level Tests (Levels 1, 2 and 3). Can anyone help?

Thanks

Deborah

Good evening Deborah

I notice you have joined the forum quite recently and that this is your first post. You have certainly chosen the best place to ask for help. Hopefully Andrew Martin or John Upham will post a response very soon. You probably have not had time to follow the various threads which refer to the COM.

Regards

Peter Turner
ECF Honorary Life Vice~President
ECF Officer in charge of the Certificate of Excellence

Deborah,

(Assuming you use the ChessBase Reader application to view the DVD rather than a standard DVD player)

When you load the DVD, you should observe the following menu choices :

Level One
Level Two
Level Three

Select Level One and you will get further choices :

Level One - Pieces and rules
Level One - Questions and answers

and so on and so forth for the other Levels.

Please pm me if you need further assistance.

Thank you Peter and John

I have been all through all 3 levels. The Questions and Answers appear to be a practice test as I am told at the beginning of Q1 that "this exam will not be the same as the exam you are actually going to sit but it is very very similar".

I can't seem to find a link to the actual exams.

Deborah

Deborah,

You are quite correct. The Q&As on the DVD are practise ones. The real ones will be accessible from the CoM web site which we hope will go totally live very soon.

We are completing UAT type testing with children : the second test is at Abbey School, Reading and maybe a third at Wilson's School without me on-site.

Once all the Level Two and Three Q&As have been completed, checked and tested and we are happy that the ECF Office are fully on board we go live and I will announce the live URL / domain.

John Upham wrote:Once all the Level Two and Three Q&As have been completed, checked and tested and we are happy that the ECF Office are fully on board we go live and I will announce the live URL / domain.

Is there a 'test site' we can all have a play with then John to see if we can break it?

Carl Hibbard wrote: Is there a 'test site' we can all have a play with then John to see if we can break it?

Yes, but I'm not releasing the domain until we go live as it and the live site use a common backend database.

I'm sure everyone is queuing up to nit pick and I really can't be bothered with that just yet.

John Upham wrote:Yes, but I'm not releasing the domain until we go live as it and the live site use a common backend database.

Ah, not good - needs to be a separate database, even the grading site has one

Carl Hibbard wrote: Ah, not good - needs to be a separate database, even the grading site has one

It will be but it isn't today : this must be nit pick 1...

"You are quite correct. The Q&As on the DVD are practice ones. The real ones will be accessible from the CoM web site which we hope will go totally live very soon."

Thank you John. It would be useful to have this information on the DVD itself, as I have spent quite a while searching through the different menus, looking for the exams.

Am I right in believing that whilst the DVD comes with a Level 1 booklet, the materials for Levels 2 and 3 are only to be found on the DVD itself?

Deborah

Deborah,

You have advantage over me since I have only seen the DVD itself and no other item from the support package. I expect Andrew Martin will reply to you in due course.

Ladies and Gentlemen

The DVD was made in late-August 2008

The level one booklet has been ready for nearly a year.

The support package for schools is ready to be put on sale.

The COM website is not yet ready and will be soon,pending final tests.

When this whole project was conceived roughly 18 months ago, I had considerably more hair than I do today.

If COM finally works out, it could rejuvenate the finances of the ECF and provide the foundation course for a whole new generation of chessplayers. I am hoping and praying that will be the case.

Andrew

The DVD uses Chess Base Reader, which is a program I am unfamiliar with. Presumably it is used to animate the chess boards which accompany the commentary, however is there some other way I could or should be using the program?
Are there any instructions anywhere on the DVD for fully exploiting the Chess Base Reader component or is it just included for the animation?

Deborah

Deborah Swann wrote:The DVD uses Chess Base Reader, which is a program I am unfamiliar with. Presumably it is used to animate the chess boards which accompany the commentary, however is there some other way I could or should be using the program?
Are there any instructions anywhere on the DVD for fully exploiting the Chess Base Reader component or is it just included for the animation?

Deborah

Hi Deborah

I think you are proving to be an excellent poster on the forum and asking some very useful questions in your 'role' as a 'product tester'. Sometimes experienced chess players forget how complicated it can be to get started and forget that not everyone has chessbase etc on their computers. You will find that Andrew Martin will be very helpful with his advice and may appreciate your comments and perhaps make some changes to the presentation and information accompanying the DVD. Hopefully you will not be required to buy additional software to get best use out of the support material.

Regards

Peter T

Deborah Swann wrote:The DVD uses Chess Base Reader, which is a program I am unfamiliar with. Presumably it is used to animate the chess boards which accompany the commentary, however is there some other way I could or should be using the program?
Are there any instructions anywhere on the DVD for fully exploiting the Chess Base Reader component or is it just included for the animation?

Deborah

ChessBase Reader handles all aspects of the "Chess Media System" which is handled otherwise by such products as ChessBase or Rybka, Fritz etc.

Essentially, it is provided to display / render the content of any of the ChessBase DVDs.

It handles the video files by presenters such as Andrew and ties them in with the games being discussed which are held in .cbh / .cbv /. pgn formats on the DVD.
See http://www.chessbase.com/support/index.asp for more.