Project Exchange template for offline preparation.

•	Delete the explanatory notes in the unshaded boxes and replace with your own text.
•	When complete, go online to copy and paste contents into the 'add new' form.
•	Avoid use of bullets and other special characters.
•	Non-mandatory fields left blank are simply omitted from the screen display.
•	See also Guidance Notes below
•	This template can be accessed from http://www.naaidt.org.uk/resources/projects/add.html

Title	(mandatory) You must provide a title	
School	Include the name of your school or organisation	
Submitted by	(mandatory) Include a contact name.	
Email	(mandatory) Provide a contact email address – note this will not be displayed.	
Search Categories

(tick all that apply to speed up Advanced searches – see Notes below)	Reception	Whole Class Project	Resistant Materials	
	KS1	Individual Project	Graphics	
	KS2	Short Task	Food	
	KS3	Research and Investigation	Textiles	
	KS4	Enterprise Activity	ICT	
	Post 16	Product Analysis	Systems & Control	
	Embedding ICT in DT			
Lesson Context	This will help users understand where the project fits into a scheme of work
	
Resources Needed	Focus on specific resources not generally available
	
Teacher Preparation	Include also any materials preparation advice
	
Project Brief	(mandatory) An outline project description
	
Design and Manufacture	A brief description of what pupils will actually do	
Expected Outcomes	(mandatory) A brief description of what pupils are expected to produce
	
Image	Browse your own discs for a suitable image to enliven the entry. Try to use JPEG or GIF and limit to a maximum of 800 –1200 pixels wide	
Image Caption	Optionally add a caption for your image
	
Differentiation	Include notes particularly on additional support and extension activities
	
Classroom Organisation	Any particular points about how pupils are organised or how furniture or equipment might be arranged for example	
Additional Information	Any relevant points not included elsewhere
	
Upload file	Browse your own discs for any files you wish to make available as a download (e.g. pupil hand outs).	
Text for file link	This is what will be clicked on to download the file
	
Associated URL	An option to provide a link to a related web site (e.g. your school)

Guidance Notes:

•	To facilitate copying and pasting, it is possible to show the off-line preparation form alongside the online input form on screen as follows:
o	Ensure that the off-line preparation form and the online input form are the only two items displayed on screen.
o	Find a blank space on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen.
o	Right click and choose ‘Tile Windows Vertically’
•	A quick procedure to copy and paste using Keyboard shortcuts is as follows:
o	Drag the mouse pointer over off-line preparation form text to highlight it
o	Hold down the Control Key and ‘C’ simultaneously to Copy.
o	Click into the appropriate text box on the online input form.
o	Hold down the Control Key and ‘V’ simultaneously to Paste.
•	Text produced in proprietary software such and MS Word often includes special characters and punctuation marks that are non-standard and not understood when creating web pages. A consequence of this is that the unknown characters are automatically substituted by their ASCII character codes (e.g. &#8220;) when web pages are created.
•	When including your school name it will help future retrieval if you are consistent in the use of any variants or abbreviations (e.g. work posted by St. Mary’s and St Marys would each require quite different searches to retrieve it).
•	If several entries are made from one school, a search URL can be constructed that will list all of them as follows:
o	 http://www.naaidt.org.uk/resources/projects/index.html?Search=SchoolName
o	or http://www.naaidt.org.uk/resources/projects/index.html?Search=%22Your+School+Name%22
o	Note that %22 is used in place of quotes when a search phrase is used and all spaces are replaced by the + sign.
o	This URL can be pasted directly into a browser or used to create a direct link from your school web page to your NAAIDT database entries using code similar to the following:
o	<a href=”http://www.naaidt.org.uk/resources/projects/index.html?Search=SchoolName”>A collection of myschool DT projects</a>
o	if you wish to list your projects in a separate web page window, add the target=”_blank” condition using code similar to:
o	<a href=”http://www.naaidt.org.uk/resources/projects/index.html?Search=SchoolName” target=”_blank”>A collection of myschool DT projects</a>
o	Note that web page code is case sensitive and so Search must be written with a capital ‘S’.
•	When choosing files to upload for others to see it is best to choose portable file formats such as HTML, PDF or RTF if possible rather than proprietary formats such as .DOC or .PUB (but most file types are accepted). This is to ensure that the person downloading the file is able to read it even if they do not have the same software as you.
•	As a ‘rule of thumb’ you should assume that it takes approximately 4mins to download a megabyte of data using a standard telephone modem. This should be taken into account when choosing a document to upload. In addition, some ISPs will block downloads greater than just a few megabytes for this reason.
•	If a document is too large, or if you need to upload a directory with several documents, the file or folder can be compressed to a smaller size using software such as 7-Zip (a program for creating or unpacking archived and compressed files) available free of charge from http://www.7-zip.org/.
•	Images should first be  ‘cut it to size’ by importing the images into software such as PaintShopPro, XaraX, CorelDraw (or the free GIMP or BIMP offerings) to reduce them and optimise the colour palette for Internet use. There is simply no point storing an image at a higher resolution than the intended display medium can support and monitor screens do not demand nearly as much as a printer does. So 600 to 1200 pixels wide and saving as a JPEG or GIF can result in a PowerPoint for example, from needing to be posted on a CD to one which can be emailed (50Mb down to 1Mb is really not that unusual using these techniques – PowerPoint looks as though it has resized the image but actually stores it at full size!). For a more complete treatise on using images on the Internet see - http://www.blunham.demon.co.uk/WebImages/
•	If you have several images to change, you can place them in a folder and do them all together using BIMP Lite for example, free from http://cerebralsynergy.com/ (using BIMP you can specify what size and what type the images should be - choose jpeg for photos and gif for diagrams).
•	If a collection of images is to be shown, they will need to be assembled as a collage in suitable paint type software and a single image created.
•	If you wish to create collage on the same green colour background as the NAAIDT web site you can either use your software to copy the colour or note the following:
o	RGB web/hex colour model = #1E823F
o	RGB colour model – Red = 11.8%; Green = 51%; Blue = 24.7%
•	Note that JPEGs and GIFs are already compressed and cannot be further compressed using 7-Zip or similar software.

Geoff Howard
January 2007