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The Australian Education Blog
Ray Fleming's take on what's interesting in Education IT in Australia

  • Education

    The newest Windows 8 TV advert from the US

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    This Windows 8 advert has just started running in the US. And it’s accompanied by an iPad versus Windows 8 tablets comparison website that allows you to compare the various Windows 8 tablets side-by-side with iPads. It’s not specific to education (and the prices are based on US retail prices), but I think it’s worth sharing, and might bring a smile to your Friday Smile

    Learn MoreFind out more about Windows 8 in education

  • Education

    Business Intelligence in schools–PowerPivot and PowerView in Excel 2010/2013

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    Rod Colledge, is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for SQL Server, and an expert on the technology side of the use of Business Intelligence in education in Australia. For a living, he helps Microsoft customers with their own business intelligence projects, through his business at StrataDB. But in his role as a Microsoft MVP one of the things that he’s been able to do is record a series of short videos of examples of using business intelligence in education, to show some of the simple things that are useful for school leaders and teachers.

    Today’s video is in two parts:

    • The first part shows you how you can take a complex data set, containing both central data and a user's own data - in this case, a spreadsheet of their own data.
    • The second part shows you how users can visualise it together in a number of different ways.

    Part One – Creating and connecting the education data sources in PowerPivot

    Part Two – Reporting education data using PowerView

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    If you’d like to know more about Rod and his projects, you can find out more on the StrataDB website or email Rod directly

  • Education

    One week to deadline for Australian Microsoft Education Partner of the Year entries

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    You’ve got until the end of the week to enter for the Australia Microsoft Education Partner of the Year award. And I know that every year a bunch of you sit down with your keyboards and screens, and craft a carefully worded entry to give it your best shot – something I see because every year I read every single entry, alongside the education team members who act as judges.

    But I know you are busy people. And there are plenty of other competing priorities. So this year we have aimed to make it as stress free as possible. We’ve taken out all of the tricky questions that some of the other categories have in their entry forms. And we’ve removed as many of the entry criteria as is reasonable (all we ask is that you’re a registered Microsoft partner, and that you have a PinPoint profile – both of which 99.9% of partners have already done).

    So all that is left is the task of telling us your best customer story, using the five headings we’ve given you, to help us recognise the way that your partnership with Microsoft helps our joint customers in the Australian education market.

    And because I like making your life easier, you don’t even need to download the Award Guidelines – because here they are:

     

    Microsoft Australia Education Partner of the Year

    The Education Partner of the Year Award recognises a partner organisation that excels at providing innovative and unique services or solutions based on Microsoft technologies to education customers.
    The successful submission for this award will demonstrate industry knowledge and expertise, as well as consistent, high-quality, predictable service or solutions to education customers. Successful entrants will also demonstrate business leadership and success through strong growth in new customer additions and revenue by integrating with Microsoft cloud-based technology such as Windows 8 Apps, Office 365 Education and Windows Azure in addition to the Windows Phone platform.

    Partners applying for this award should demonstrate effective engagement with Microsoft by taking advantage of the Microsoft Partner Network to develop, create demand for, and sell their software solutions or services.

    Eligibility:

    Questions

    (These are the headings you need to respond under on the website)

    1. Is your solution specific to one particular customer, or does it have broader market potential?
    Upload or provide outside references or data sources that illustrate exceptional customer experience or satisfaction (links to published articles, case studies, videos, customer testimonials, etc.).

    2. Did your company partner with any other Microsoft partners in designing, developing,
    implementing, and/or integrating this solution?

    If yes, please describe your partnering story and how it benefited the customer.

    3. Describe how using Microsoft technologies in your solution helped you win against the
    competition in a customer situation from a technical and business perspective.

    4. Describe which Microsoft technologies you have used.

    5. Describe the problem your solution solved for customers.
    If possible, identify the impact of the customer’s pain points, contrast before and after scenarios, and provide metrics on benefits received by the customer.

     

    And, err, that's it. Hopefully, we’ve done everything we can to make it as easy as possible to enter the Awards, and give you the chance of telling us your story. Now it’s over to you to do the hard bit – finding an hour before the end Tuesday 28 May to enter.

    Make a dateEnter the Microsoft Australia Partner Awards 2013


     

    PS Want some tips on writing your entry? Then I’d recommend reading "How to win the Microsoft global Partner of the Year Awards"

    PPS If you know an easier way of getting your case study read by the whole leadership team from the Microsoft Education business, then go for it. But if not….

  • Education

    Business Intelligence in schools - mapping data with Report Builder

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    Rod Colledge, is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for SQL Server, and an expert on the technology side of the use of Business Intelligence in education in Australia. For a living, he helps Microsoft customers with their own business intelligence projects, through his business at StrataDB. But in his role as a Microsoft MVP one of the things that he’s been able to do is record a series of short videos of examples of using business intelligence in education, to show some of the simple things that are useful for school leaders and teachers.

    Today’s video is a short demonstration of using geospatial visualisation, using a demonstration education data set. It's a simple example of how you can take a complex data set and visualise it a number of different ways.

    The demo is using a dummy dataset and was built in Report Builder in MS SQL Server 2012

    If you’d like to know more about Rod and his projects, you can find out more on the StrataDB website or email Rod directly

  • Education

    A short video for training when rolling out Windows 8 for teachers

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    If you are using Windows 8 for teachers’ laptops, then you might want to make a note of this video, from the Windows team. It’s a great way to explain how to use some of the new features of Windows 8, and the way that you can have both existing Windows software as well as the new Windows 8 apps. It’s good for students too, but I’ve often heard from education customers that making change is often more difficult for staff, so if you are planning to roll out Windows 8 for teachers, then this video is a great start to your staff training day.

    In addition to the video above, there's a whole host of other Windows 8 videos on the WindowsVideos channel on YouTube

  • Education

    Business Intelligence in schools - Dashboards in SharePoint 2013

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    Rod Colledge, is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for SQL Server, and an expert on the technology side of the use of Business Intelligence in education in Australia. For a living, he helps Microsoft customers with their own business intelligence projects, through his business at StrataDB. But in his role as a Microsoft MVP one of the things that he’s been able to do is record a series of short videos of examples of using business intelligence in education, to show some of the simple things that are useful for school leaders and teachers.

    Today’s video is a demonstration of using SharePoint 2013 dashboards, for an education BI project - in this case creating a NAPLAN summary dashboard for a school. Once the report is created, it becomes a dynamic, clickable report that users can use to break down their own views of the data.

    The demo is using a dummy dataset in dashboard designer, using SharePoint 2013 and PerformancePoint

    If you’d like to know more about Rod and his projects, you can find out more on the StrataDB website or email Rod directly

  • Education

    Business Intelligence in schools–a short demonstration of setting up alerts

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    Rod Colledge, Microsoft MVP, of StrataDBRod Colledge, is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for SQL Server, and an expert on the technology side of the use of Business Intelligence in education in Australia. For a living, he helps Microsoft customers with their own business intelligence projects, through his business at StrataDB. But in his role as a Microsoft MVP in his spare time he speaks at conferences, writes books, and shares his knowledge freely.

    One of the things that he’s been able to do is record a series of short videos of examples of using business intelligence in education, and the new features in SQL Server 2012 and Microsoft Office 2013, to show some of the simple things that are useful for school leaders and teachers. I’ll share one video every day for the next week, as I think they are ideal for showing to colleagues to start a discussion about how they’d like to use data in your institution, and whether they can start to use some of the features of the latest software releases.

    Today’s video is a demonstration of a key feature for an business intelligence in education project - the ability to set alerts automatically, to allow you to 'manage by exception', rather than having to trawl reports looking for outliers and identify performance issues manually.

    The example that's used here (with a dummy dataset) is using student absences to generate alerts, and uses Microsoft SQL Server 2012, and PowerPivot reports.

    If you’d like to know more about Rod and his projects, you can find out more on the StrataDB website or email Rod directly

  • Education

    Register now for the 2013 Microsoft Australia Partner Conference

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    Microsoft Australia Partner Conference 2013

    Registrations are open for the Microsoft Australia Partner Conference 2013 (APC 2013). And the early bird discounted ticket offer closes this Friday (17 May) – which saves you $172 off the normal fee.

    Even better news, Australian Gold Competency Partners get two free tickets – so quick, grab them before somebody less worthy in your team does Smile

    These are the three key reasons the APC organising team give for attending:

    • See new products in action and learn more about our strategic investment areas for the year ahead
    • Take advantage of networking opportunities on a massive scale with Microsoft leadership, sales and product teams
    • Experience first-hand a showcase of Microsoft products in real-world business scenarios aligned to customer needs

    APC 2012 imageAnd, as usual, we’ll be doing a whole load of things to make it even more valuable for education partners, including giving you the chance to book 1:1 sessions with our Account Managers across our team, and get deep insight into the trends and stories across the education market. I’ll publish more details on who’s attending, and how to grab a slot in their diary next month, but for now I’d recommend that you get your APC 2013 place booked and confirmed. Especially if you’re hoping to be jumping up on stage to collect your Education Partner of the Year Award…

    What: Microsoft Australia Partner Conference 2013
    Where: Cairns
    When: 20-22 August 2013

    Make a dateMake a date: Find out more, and register for Microsoft Australia Partner Conference 2013

  • Education

    Microsoft Australia Partner Awards 2013–winning Education Partner of the Year

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    Microsoft Australia Partner Awards (MAPA) 2013

    It’s that time again – your opportunity to gain fame and fortune for your business and for the great projects you have done in the Australian education market this year. Yep, we’ve opened entries for the 2013 Microsoft Australia Partner Awards, and yet again there’s an entry category for ‘Australian Education Partner of the Year’.

    Without a shadow of a doubt, winning any of the awards is a great way to raise your profile across the education marketplace, and you get a bonus of a snazzy logo to use in your marketing (and your spot on the Microsoft Partner Award Winners page).

    It's an effective way to raise your profile within Microsoft too

    Even just entering the awards raises your profile, as it means that your entries will be seen by the judges, which includes four key people in the Microsoft Australia Education business. Last year the judges learned about some new projects that they were able to discuss with customers, and helped create some new business opportunities for our partners.

    The deadline for entries is 28th May, and the winner will be announced at the Microsoft Australia Partner Conference in Cairns on the 20th August 2013.

    There are 24 categories that you can enter (although, obviously, your first priority should be Education Partner of the Year!).

    Learn MoreLearn more about the Microsoft Australia Partner Awards 2013

  • Education

    Is there academic pricing for Windows Azure? No, but there's something better…free Azure

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    For many of our products and services, there's special education pricing – these typically give education customers up to an 80% discount on normal prices, or even go so far as providing some services (like Office 365) free for education customers.

    It doesn't apply to Windows Azure, as there isn't a specific Windows Azure Academic licensing price list. The basic Azure service is pretty low-cost already (renting a virtual machine on Windows Azure costs $2c an hour!), and some parts of the service are free to everybody – for example, with Windows Azure Web Sites you can run 10 basic websites for nothing in the cloud.

    So when you're looking to move some of your IT to the cloud – for example, to host a learning management system like Moodle on Windows Azure – you would just use our standard Windows Azure pricing.

    What could be better than Windows Azure academic pricing?

    So if there isn't special academic pricing for Windows Azure, why did I say that there's "something better"?

    Well, it turns out that if you want to use Windows Azure for teaching purposes, you can apply for a "Windows Azure Educator Grant", which will give you a 12 month free subscription to Windows Azure for faculty, and a 6 month free subscription for your students!

      Grant applications are designated for faculty who are teaching Windows Azure in their curricula as well as faculty preparing to integrate Windows Azure into their curricula. Educator Grant awards are subject to demand and availability.  Educators will receive a special 12-month pass for their exclusive use, and may request 6-month non-renewable passes for distribution to their students.  Each pass is valid from the date of redemption. Educators may apply for passes for each of the courses they are teaching, and may only distribute these passes to students registered as part of their educational institution.  

    What does the free Windows Azure Educators Grant include?

    There's a ton of different services and resources included within the free subscription for both staff and students, including:

    • 2 small compute instances for Cloud Services or Virtual Machines
    • 10 Shared Web Sites
    • 10 Shared Mobile Services
    • 35GB of Azure storage
    • 50,000,000 storage transactions
    • 750 Service Bus Relay Hours
    • Two 1GB SQL Web Edition databases
    • 8GB of data transfers in and out

    Azure was expanded last month, when we announced the availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.  This new service now makes it possible for you to move whole applications into the cloud, and puts us in the position of being the only global cloud provider with fully supported infrastructure and platform service offerings.

    How to apply for the Windows Azure Educators grant

    To get more information, and apply for a Windows Azure Educator Grant go to the Windows Azure Educators site. After receiving your application and verification of your faculty status, we will send you a grant letter to sign and send back to us to get passcodes for your Azure accounts. Neither you nor your students will pay for access to Windows Azure. Accounts are valid for 12 months for faculty and 6 months for students and can be extended if needed.

    Learn MoreFind out more on the Windows Azure Educators site


    To help you get started with Windows Azure in the classroom, there are plenty of resources, and course and lab material, at Windows Azure Resource Kit and on Faculty Connection Web Site. It includes an Introduction to Cloud Computing, Software & Tools and Course 50466B: Windows Azure Solutions with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

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