Frustrated in Fukushima
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Post by Frustrated in Fukushima on Jul 8, 2008 10:50:58 GMT 8
I think what you guys are doing here is really great. The resources and the way they are presented by textbook is fantastic. An awful lot of work went into coding this site, I can tell.
However, there is not an equal representation of asethics.
Most of the site is image heavy and appears as a bunch of blocked images due to my numerous schools proxy software. If you want to be a success I strongly recommend you remove any and every unnecessary image.
Also, your title graphic completely unviewable to me. This is a taisetsu mondai if I ever did see one. Your title should be text-based.
When a new viewer sees the site for the first time and they see blocked images they aren't likely to come back I'd wager.
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Post by Otaku on Jul 8, 2008 12:35:02 GMT 8
I know exactly what you are talking about. The whole problem would be solved the local BoEs allowing access to www.photobucket.com, which is where all of Englipedia's images are stored. The entire site is heavily imaged based because images are user-friendly. I thought about this issue of images being blocked for a long time before I made my decision. I basically had to choose to build a website how I thought a website should be built and best used by ALTs/JTEs or build it constantly thinking about random firewalls being put into place and which restrict access. To build a site in this manner would basically mean that I would be selling out to the Japanese system and I don't believe an educational website, especially one the size of Englipedia and built specifically for ALTs/JTEs, should have restrictions placed on it. Placing restrictions on education, in my opinion, is blissful ignorance. I know what you're thinking, how can a website built for ALTs not take into account the images that are blocked? Simple, Englipedia was already being built when Japan slammed down their miniature version of China's Great Firewall. To transfer the 1,000+ images stored on Photobucket would be a massive project. Even if I did take on such a huge project, who's to say the BoEs wouldn't start blocking the place I transferred the images to? The answer...nobody knows. Hence, transferring the images are not an option at this point. A much easier solution would be the BoEs allowing access to Photobucket's website, which would be an extremely simple thing to do. This is a 2-second fix, versus the 2-week project it would take me to do it. Looking at the history of Japan and seeing it with my own eyes over the past five years in Japan, this society has a history of doing these types of things. Meaning, when they don't understand something fully, they simply just shut everything up and block everything off. I don't believe in this type of system and choose not to concede an education website to ignorant security blocks. Photobucket's website actively screens out any type of porn images and videos so this shouldn't be an issue, something I can't say for Yahoo's search engine if you type in the word "nude". The crazy thing is you can do these types of searches and up pops nude women on your school computer...do they block Yahoo...no. The traffic on Englipedia is currently pretty heavy and would love for more ALTs to surf it and for it to get even heavier. However, I think right now, it's up to the local ALTs to convince the local BoEs to grant an exception. I've received emails from other ALTs about this exact same problem and I told them to simply show the BoE the website. BoEs have granted access in the past to ALTs once they have seen how beneficial the site is. It honestly hurts the amount of blows this website has faced since it broke ground. It hurts because the only reason I'm building the site is to do my part to improve the quality of Japan's English education, and it seems that same education system I'm trying to help keeps rejecting the help. I've donated almost 2,000 hours of off-work time to build this site and it just seems to keep getting kicked into the dirt. Thanks for the post and I hope everything works out with your local BoE.
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Post by junkdna on Jul 8, 2008 12:57:00 GMT 8
Dear Frustrated in Fukushima,
Login from home.
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Post by Otaku on Jul 8, 2008 12:59:14 GMT 8
Nah, I feel FiF's frustration. The website is meant to be utilized at work. Logging in from home kinda defeats the purpose of what the site is being built for.
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Post by junkdna on Jul 8, 2008 13:00:24 GMT 8
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Post by junkdna on Jul 8, 2008 13:04:00 GMT 8
i don't agree with you. yeah, i know you built the site, but it can EASILY and even more comfortably be used from home with NO FIREWALLS and HIGH SPEEDS. And I'm the guy who doesn't like to do any extra work, remember? I LOVE doing (a little bit) of work from home. Much more freedom on my own computer and I can chill with a real computer. Frankly, I try not to work at work. Nah, I feel FiF's frustration. The website is meant to be utilized at work. Logging in from home kinda defeats the purpose of what the site is being built for.
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Post by Otaku on Jul 8, 2008 13:08:31 GMT 8
I know what you're saying Junk and I agree working from home makes headaches much less when it comes to trying to get work done and work. I'm just saying ALTs shouldn't be forced to work at home to use a resource that is supposed to help their work. And frankly, it's hard to work at work because of the lack of working workable resources.
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Post by Otaku on Jul 8, 2008 13:11:01 GMT 8
...not blocked for the time being, but who's to say they won't block it in the future. Then, all the time I spend transferring the photos would then be wasted. I really think if some BoE had anything to say about it, there wouldn't be any contact with the outside of their stupid intranets. And, is that a picture of my baby?
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Post by junkdna on Jul 8, 2008 13:13:35 GMT 8
so you would rather keep everything at a site that IS currently blocked.... I'll let you in on a little secret... flickr won't be blocked because they think they already have it blocked. that is to say, they blocked the login, but you can still easily access pictures (see cute baby picture below).
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Post by jed on Oct 30, 2008 14:19:47 GMT 8
I can't speak for other BOEs or schools but we have our fair amount of blocking software, and for me a few smaller pics are blocked but it doesn't effect me in the slightest from using this site at work!
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Post by Otaku on Oct 30, 2008 21:51:01 GMT 8
i've been thinking more and more about this issue lately and I've got a couple of ideas floating around in my head. However, I think ALTs need to be quite proactive themselves that show BoEs what kind of resources they are blocking. I think Englipedia has blown up enough and is huge enough to not be able to ignore it and its usefulness. The only thing the BoE has to unblock is www.photobucket.comHowever, like I said before, I've got a couple of things I'm thinking about...
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Post by mybelovedsushi on Nov 12, 2008 13:06:07 GMT 8
There is hope - My school block images as well as Flickr.com, but they have one computer in the office that can access anything. It really helps when Im looking for a nice headshot of Harry Potter.
Good luck convincing the BOEs! They are silly, but they will come around one day.
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Post by Otaku on Nov 12, 2008 13:44:18 GMT 8
For the past week I've been working on making the site more aesthetically pleasing for those peeps behind stringent firewalls. The elementary school section of the site should be looking much better now. When I'm finished with the ES area, I'm going to start making the JHS section look better.
However, I've got a question since MyBelovedSushi did say something about the BoEs. Right now, a lot of BoEs block websites like Photobucket and even Flickr but what if they started blocking Englipedia? I'm not saying Englipedia is the end-all for ALT support but it does provide a wealth of activities and worksheets. If a BoE blocked Englipedia, would that cause you to MAYBE ask your BoE about unblocking the site? Or, are people okay with their BoEs blocking sub-sites of a main site as long as it doesn't affect their access to the main site?
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Post by junkdna on Nov 14, 2008 11:26:29 GMT 8
There is hope - My school block images as well as Flickr.com, but they have one computer in the office that can access anything. It really helps when Im looking for a nice headshot of Harry Potter. Good luck convincing the BOEs! They are silly, but they will come around one day. Blocks you from LOGGING IN, or blocks images? I'm barred from using Flickr, but I can see images hosted there no problem. Can you see the cute baby picture above? If so, you can see images hosted at Flickr.
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Post by jessen100 on Jan 14, 2009 10:21:03 GMT 8
so, uh... how do you start a forum topic? i dont see that option anywhere.
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Post by aznxshinobi on Jan 14, 2009 10:27:43 GMT 8
First off this is a great website. It is a very valuable resource.
I'm in the same boat as everyone else, except I cant access anything period. Its more of a question of what can I access. Flickr is blocked as is almost everything else (picture websites, translators sites, rss feeds etc...). This includes, unfortunately, all the worksheets. Luckily I'm tech savy enough to work around the filters/firewalls at a severely reduced speed.
Considering the situation, I do have one suggestion. The links/html code for the worksheets contain links to pictures for them and therefore I'm unable to click them (the tags are viewable, but is not allowed to execute). Is it possible to create an additional text based only link? Currently the work around is to view the page source then copy and paste that into the browser or go through the chain of proxies I use.
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Post by Otaku on Jan 14, 2009 13:29:19 GMT 8
so, uh... how do you start a forum topic? i dont see that option anywhere. At the top & bottom on the righthand side of every forum topic list there is a green button that says "New Thread".
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Post by Otaku on Jan 14, 2009 13:40:41 GMT 8
First off this is a great website. It is a very valuable resource. I'm in the same boat as everyone else, except I cant access anything period. Its more of a question of what can I access. Flickr is blocked as is almost everything else (picture websites, translators sites, rss feeds etc...). This includes, unfortunately, all the worksheets. Luckily I'm tech savy enough to work around the filters/firewalls at a severely reduced speed. Considering the situation, I do have one suggestion. The links/html code for the worksheets contain links to pictures for them and therefore I'm unable to click them (the tags are viewable, but is not allowed to execute). Is it possible to create an additional text based only link? Currently the work around is to view the page source then copy and paste that into the browser or go through the chain of proxies I use. I really liked the idea of thumbnail of each worksheet being used as a hyperlink to each worksheet. I thought it would be nice to see what each worksheet looked like BEFORE you wanted to open the document. However, like the orginal poster mentioned, using other online storage areas to house the images renders Englipedia useless. So, for the past couple of months, I have been trying to make the switch from images back to 'text hyperlinks'. But, this is a rather drawn out process seeing that the site has 500+ worksheets. So, until I get around to finishing this big task, if you could just tell me an area of the website you are trying to access, I'll try and get those thumbnails changed over to text hyperlinks ASAP. That's the best I can do.
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Post by Otaku on Jan 14, 2009 13:48:12 GMT 8
Currently the work around is to view the page source then copy and paste that into the browser or go through the chain of proxies I use. If you do this type of workaround in the future, try 'right mouse click' on whatever document you're trying to get to and go down to 'properties'. If you can get to properties, you should be able to see the direct link to the document. This might be a little easier than sifting through the source page.
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Post by jessen100 on Jan 14, 2009 14:55:54 GMT 8
I apparently cant see this new thread button. There is also a reply button at the top of this page that i cant see either, but i can use it if i hover over it with my mouse.
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Post by Otaku on Jan 14, 2009 15:02:41 GMT 8
I apparently cant see this new thread button. There is also a reply button at the top of this page that i cant see either, but i can use it if i hover over it with my mouse. I think I know what the problem is...give me a little while and I should have it fixed.
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Post by Otaku on Jan 14, 2009 15:27:09 GMT 8
Jessen100,
You should be able to see the buttons now. If you can't, try pressing F5 and see if that works.
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Post by regardo on Jan 15, 2009 7:35:28 GMT 8
Jessen100's problem is the old photobucket problem. "everybody" working from behind the firewall of the average boe or school has this problem. how about hosting the forum buttons on the englipedia server. they shgouldn't be too big the "hovering-over-and-reading-link-on-status-bar" is kind of tiresome...
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Post by regardo on Jan 15, 2009 8:45:24 GMT 8
haha, i just saw that you changed some of the image links. gomen. but i still can't see them buttons. must be because our school's internet is very "selective" today. the only sites that work today are the englipedia forum and the jetprogramme.org website. weirdo desune?
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Post by jessen100 on Jan 15, 2009 10:44:54 GMT 8
i can see them now
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Post by Otaku on Jan 15, 2009 12:13:34 GMT 8
but i still can't see them buttons. which buttons can't you see?
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Post by regardo on Jan 15, 2009 12:39:57 GMT 8
from school? the only images i can see are the reply, quote, modify and delete buttons. everything else is grey (placeholders).
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Post by Otaku on Jan 15, 2009 13:49:42 GMT 8
from school? the only images i can see are the reply, quote, modify and delete buttons. everything else is grey (placeholders). If you can't get to the Englipedia website, you won't be able to see the other buttons. The buttons are store on the Englipedia server.
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Post by regardo on Jan 15, 2009 14:52:35 GMT 8
from school? the only images i can see are the reply, quote, modify and delete buttons. everything else is grey (placeholders). If you can't get to the Englipedia website, you won't be able to see the other buttons. The buttons are store on the Englipedia server. the buttons i can see are the buttons stored on the englipedia server. the buttons still stored on photobucket i can't see (namely "send topic" and "print" and all the rest there is) but it's ok, has it's own charm. feels like sitting behind the chinese firewall doing something forbidden
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Post by Otaku on Jan 15, 2009 16:40:01 GMT 8
Hey Regardo,
I think I fixed the buttons you were talking about.
What's funny is the buttons you couldn't see, everybody else couldn't also see them because the images I used actually erased the buttons so that everyone couldn't see the buttons. I was trying to make a simplier-looking forum.
I'm still in the process of getting a new and better forum up and going, which should do away with these little firewall quirks...hopefully.
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