August, 2011

As you’d expect, we run a massive internal SharePoint system at Microsoft. It contains 250,000 site collections and 36 terabytes of data - growing at the rate of 1 terabyte every three months (yup, that’s the equivalent of 300,000 extra 1MB documents every month). The impact of that growth was not just storage cost - it is also search speed and search relevance (if you’re searching a gazillion out-of-date documents, it makes it harder to find the one you really want).

The Microsoft IT Team, who keep it all running, have implemented a SharePoint governance and lifecycle management system, to help meet the information standards for the business, as well as reduce cost and improve the search experience. And then written a great Technical Case Study to share their experiences. I thought it worth sharing because I know that education users of SharePoint are grappling with similar issues, as they develop SharePoint usage out from an IT department to institution-wide.

Policies for SharePoint site lifecycle management

There were four key policies implemented, which helped bring the system under better control:

• Site classification. Sites must assign and maintain site information classification, information security classification, and ownership. Eg Team sites must have one full-time employee site owner and two administrators at all times.

• Site lifecycle management of expired/abandoned sites. Sites expire one year after creation and must be renewed annually. Sites that have no activity over a period of six months are considered abandoned and are subject to decommission.

• Site storage and quota management. Depending on the hosting environment, storage quota limits range from 2 gigabytes (GB) to 100 GB, depending on the type of sites and hosting options. SharePoint libraries and lists are not to exceed 5,000 items. Sites are backed up daily and recoverable up to 14 days.

• Customization and server-side access. For most of the standard SharePoint-hosted services offerings, MSIT neither allows server-side access or server-side configuration changes by users, nor does it allow most third-party plug-ins, site customizations, new features, or additions.

Although our IT environment is very different to an average education user, there is some really useful implementation advice in the IT Showcase case study - for example, in the way that we’ve tagged all SharePoint sites with an Information Classification - something that could be ideal for categorising sets of data in an education SharePoint system (see right).

There’s also interesting insight into the way that sites are categorised for traffic - with ‘heavy hitters’ categorised when they reach more than 100,000 hits a day, or consuming more than 10GB of memory.

Read the full Microsoft IT Showcase case study on SharePoint Site Governance and Lifecycle Management

Phi Delta Kappa - a US teachers professional association - use Gallup to carry out a poll of 1,000 Americans about their attitudes to education, teachers and related areas in the public schools system. There’s some interesting statistics in there (which made me wonder whether Australia is similar, or very unlike the US education system), as well as some hot political issues that are current in Australia too. For example, there’s a question about whether standardised test scores should be published for individual teachers (parents marginally in favour). You can read a summary of the survey here, and the full report here

There is a specific section about ICT in education, which makes interesting reading. Here’s a couple of interesting things I found:

ICT is very important to learning, but less so for ‘academic success’

70% thought that is was very important ‘that all students have access to computer technology’, but only 52% thought that access to computer technology was very important ‘for ensuring student academic success’.
They don’t explore the reasons for this - I wonder if it is a reflection of the disjoint between learning (often using technology) and the exam process (often pen and paper based)?
See page 15, Table 17

Which is better - a more effective teacher online, or a less effective teacher in the classroom?

This was the question that the survey asked:

“Suppose a school wants to offer a new class and is considering whether the class should be taught online or in person. Would it be best for the school to hire a more effective teacher who was only available to teach over the Internet or would it be better to use a less effective teacher who could teach the class in person?”

I was really surprised by the result - almost evenly split:

• More effective teacher online - 46%
• Less effective teacher in person - 50%

I feel there could be hours of debate about why parents answered this question in particular ways. But if you were considering talking about the use of video conferencing and online learning to support a wider curriculum, you’d know from this that half the room may not like the idea, whilst the other half would be focusing on the quality of the teacher on the other end of the video link or system.
See page 16, Table 22

Find out more, and download the full reports, here

There are all kinds of interesting documents that describe the Australian Government’s ICT strategy for Education, so here’s a summary of some of the key resources you can use to research the market.

If you’re from outside of Australia, it’s important to know that there is a Federal strategy - which applies to all states, and then State strategies for each individual state. They normally mesh together, but it’s common for a federal strategy to be implemented in different ways in different states (in fact, it’s sometimes the strategy for some states to ensure that they implement things differently to their neighbouring states)

What I’ve linked to below are the strategic plans for education ICT for the three largest states and the Federal government.

The Australian Federal Government Education ICT Strategy- ‘Digital Education Revolution’

• Australian Federal Government’s Digital Education Revolution (main webpage)
• Australian Federal Government’s Digital Education Revolution Strategic Plan (PDF)

New South Wales Government Education ICT Strategy

• NSW Government Education Corporate Strategies (main webpage)
• NSW Government Education ICT Strategic Plan (PDF)
• NSW Government Information Management Plan for Education (PDF)

Queensland Government Education ICT Strategy - ‘Smart Classrooms’

• Queensland Government Education Strategy (website)
• Queensland Government Education ICT Strategic Plan (main webpage)
• Queensland Education ICT Strategic plan - Information and Knowledge - 2010-2014 (PDF)

Victoria Government Education ICT Strategy - ‘Digital Learning Statement’

• Victoria Government Education Plan (website)
• Victoria Government Education ICT Strategic Plan - Digital Learning Statement - 2010 (PDF)

If you have links to the plans for smaller states, please add a comment below with a link, and I can put them into the list.

One of the most-read blog posts from the last six months was “Something for the weekend - free ebooks from Microsoft Press”, listing 9 free e-books available in PDF format. The bonus news is that the Microsoft Press team have now made five of them available free in two additional formats, DRM-free EPUB and MOBI.

Which means you can now read them more easily on a wide range of ereaders, notably Kindles and iPads - as well as the Nook, Sony Reader and Kobo eReader. As the MS Press team point out on their blog:

	Of course these files can also be read with ereading apps for the various devices on netbooks, laptops, and desktop PCs. The key difference between these formats and the previously-offered PDF and XPS files is that the text is “reflowable,” meaning that it recomposes depending on the width of the screen (or as you resize a Window).

Hint: Choose MOBI format for Kindles, and ePUB for most others

Here are the links to the free ebooks for Kindle and other readers

• Charles Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 is available here as EPUB and here as MOBI.
• To get Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines download here as EPUB and here as MOBI.
• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner is here as EPUB and here as MOBI.
• Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker with the Windows Server Team at Microsoft is here as EPUB and here as MOBI.
• And finally, Katherine Murray’s Own Your Future, Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft is here as EPUB and here as MOBI.

Go get em…

If you’d describe yourself as an ‘end user’ of data, then this isn’t for you. But if you’re the kind of person that is wondering how to bring your different sets of data together to get real insight into some aspect of your school/TAFE/university, then read on. Especially if you’re job title includes the word ‘data’ or ‘developer’, or you think of yourself as a ‘power user’.

The case for using Business Intelligence (BI) in education is growing stronger all the time, as massive amounts of data that could enable individual students to achieve of their potential is being collected and made available from external sources. As it’s in its infancy here in Australia, then the leading edge users are going to need to understand more about the technical intricacies, so that they know what’s possible so that they can become demanding users & buyers.

The free ebook ‘Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2’ (wow, mouthful) is aimed at database administrators, data analysts and data programmers - and I think they are the kind of people that are going to start on page 1 and work their way through to page 213.

However, the whole of the second part of the book is specifically about the Business Intelligence -BI - capabilities that are built into the system (really important point here: You get Business Intelligence as part of your Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - you don’t have to buy an additional BI system from us).

I’ve read across these BI sections to understand what’s valuable reading if you are thinking about BI in education contexts - such as performing complex mixing of school data and learning analysis reports. And I’m wondering if the book is the wrong way around for people like you and I - because the most useful, and technically least challenging, part is Chapter 10.

Where to start from a “BI in Education” point of view

My recommendation is that you take a look at Chapter 10 - about PowerPivot - to understand how you can give self-service BI for principals, senior leaders and teachers/lecturers. And instead of producing reams of reports that tell them things they may want to know, you see if it could help you produce simple spreadsheets that they can manipulate easily, so that they can answer their own questions - and be inspired by being able to dig into their data.

If Chapter 10 is good for you, then perhaps work your way back through Chapter 9 and 7, looking at some of the other facilities added (and stop when it starts to get too complex).

Here’s the full detail on Part 2 of the book - Business Intelligence Development

I’ve listed the chapters in Part 2 in reverse order, because that’s the order you might want to read it.

• Chapter 10
  Self-Service Analysis with PowerPivot
  PowerPivot is without doubt the unsung hero of the business intelligence system. The reason is that it keeps control of the data in a central place - where it can be secured, cleaned and managed - and it devolves analysis out to users, by giving them a toolset that means that they can dig into data, understanding reports, patterns, and performing ad-hoc analyses in Excel. It means that you can link together multiple data sources, and analyse them simply from one spreadsheet - through the PowerPivot Excel add-in. If you are used to working with any of the usual reporting tools, to create reports and datasets for other users, then PowerPivot will make things much easier - for both you and your users. And because it can bring together data from lots of different sources, it is ideal for the massively fragmented data challenge that exists in education. (For example, it can bring data together from SQL, Oracle, Access, Informix, Sybase and other ODBC databases, as well as from Excel spreadsheets, plain text files, SharePoint lists, and commercial datasets online.
  To the end user, it simply looks like you’ve created a friendly-spreadsheet, with the ability to filter and select different information. In some ways, a bit like a pivot table, but drawn from many sources.
• Chapter 9
  Reporting Services Enhancements
  This chapter, with Chapter 10, are probably the two that are the most widely useful, as they look at the less technical services available - and help you to understand how you could link the multiple data sources within your institution together. Although these are still written for programmer/IT Services level readers, they do a good job of explaining the kinds of scenarios that the reporting systems in SQL Server 2008 R2 allow - such as having a single reporting system that can collect data from its own SQL database, as well as users’ Excel spreadsheets and SharePoint lists. And report them in tabular, chart or map format.
• Chapter 8
  Complex Event Processing with StreamInsight
  This is all about aggregating and handling rapid streams of complex data, and acting upon triggers. Although this might be a feature that is used extensively already in university research projects, there are likely to be more scenarios where school education systems are coping with rapid streams of data, as we move to fully online, real-time assessment
• Chapter 7
  Master Data Services
  This chapter is about the maintenance and organisation of ‘master data’ - the things which tend to be more static (eg students/academics/places) as opposed to transactional data (eg attendance records for each lesson/lecture; assessment marks). Master Data Services is all about creating a Single Point of Truth - the one student identity record or one authoritative source of a student’s address(es)and then sharing that across the applications that need it.
• Chapter 6
  Scalable Data Warehousing
  Probably not the place to start, as this is principally about massive data appliances, which would only be used at the top-end projects for BI in education (such as university research, or massive scale analysis)

How to get the free ebook

The good news is that the ebook is free, and available in a number of different formats

• For a Kindle/iPod get it here as MOBI
• For screen reading/iPod, download the PDF format here
• And for other eReaders (Nook, Sony) here as EPUB

I guarantee, you’re either going to learn something that you can use yourself, or some important questions to ask potential BI suppliers.

* Mike Henegan, at Calumo (one of our BI partners in education here in Australia), has weighed in with his thoughts on this too - take a look over on his blog.

Last month, I wrote that two-thirds of PCs are still running Windows XP, and wrote about some of the things that hadn’t been created when Windows XP was launched (Feeling nostalgic? Your students may not be). It surprised me to hear that there are so many out of date PCs (as Windows XP is a decade old now).

However, I’ve just read on ZDNet, reporting on a Gartner analysis, where they are predicting that by the end of the year, 42% of PCs worldwide will be running Windows 7. Which means there’s a massive wave of upgrades and deployments going on right now…

Read the full story on ZD Net - 42% of PCs will be running Windows 7 by year-end

Following on from my previous blog posts, ‘Ten of the best SharePoint School websites’ and ‘Ten of the best SharePoint University websites’, then it’s time to get closer to home with Ten of the best Australian school websites built on SharePoint (or best TAFE websites or best University websites).

The reason I’m focusing on ‘built on SharePoint’ is because most Australian education institutions have SharePoint, and have it integrated into their identity management system and their security model. So extending that same system to run your public-facing website means that you can easily create a website that allows students to access their course materials from home, and staff to be able to use the document storage and workflow, without having to setup yet-another login or user list on yet-another system. Anyway, back to the best school websites list…

I’ve had help from colleagues tracking some of these down, and recommendations from customers and partners. But ultimately I take total responsibility for the completely subjective Top Ten list and their rankings!

So here’s my top ten of the best education websites built on SharePoint in Australia

It’s my take on 10 School/TAFE/University websites, built on SharePoint, that are worth looking at for design ideas and inspiration for functional ideas - or simply because you want to nudge another colleague towards seeing that SharePoint can deliver a beautiful experience for staff, students and prospective students.

Click on any of them to link to the live website

1. Gordon Institute of TAFE, Victoria

   This was easy for me to pick as Australia’s best education website built on SharePoint. I’m sure this website must inspire potential students - it gives off the impression of a vibrant learning community, with a fun attitude to the serious subject of learning. And the design makes it easier to navigate to the key information - and encourages you to explore more.
   
    

2. Victoria Department of Education - FUSE

   An amazing interactive experience which puts access to learning materials right at the front of the site. And let’s be honest, it breaks the mould for ‘policy-type’ websites, because it’s putting the ‘fun’ into ‘functional’.
   
   

3. Abbotsleigh School, New South Wales

   You can tell from the very first page that this is a school that takes learning seriously - and the strong photography shows how it puts students at the centre of the experience. With many private and Catholic schools, you can see the increased importance of needing to ‘sell’ the school to prospective students and parents, as well as keeping in touch with the parents of existing students.
   
   

4. Trinity Grammar School, New South Wales

   Another design-centric site, but with a clear navigation structure that means students & parents can easily find the section that’s relevant for them. (Pipped by Abbotsleigh for #3 position because it didn’t have Search on the home page)
   
   

5. The Learning Place, Queensland

   Another government site, which are often some of the trickiest to design and run, because they are trying to meet the needs of so many stakeholders. Although the SharePoint portion of the website sits behind the login screens, there’s an excellent video here that shows what Stage 2 is delivering.
   
   

6. Brisbane Catholic Education, Queensland

   Although this doesn’t have the high graphic design of some of the previous sites, the navigation here is clear - with the tabs at the top helping users find their way quickly to the section that is right for them - students & parents; schools & curriculum; employment etc.
   
   

7. Bendigo Tafe, Victoria

   Another great TAFE site in Victoria (is there a secret recipe they have there?). I particularly liked the 3D box design, which was very simply to create, and added to, rather than confused, the navigation.
   
   

8. John Paul College, Queensland

   A nice looking site that crams a lot of information onto the home page - but without making it too busy. A slow rotation of the main picture adds interest, but without detracting from the content and links.
   
   

9. Hale School, Western Australia

   A slightly more traditional design, which puts details on the front page, rather than just short links. As with the others, it’s often the photography that makes the first impression.
   
   

10. Australian School of Business, New South Wales

    Okay, this may be 10th out of my list of 10 - but there’s hundreds of sites that didn’t make it to the Top Ten, so it’s still good going. I like the way this page is easy to read, and has all the vital components - news, events and search - right there.
    What would have given it a higher rating? Less ‘stock’ images and more good photos from the School of Business itself would have helped me, as a parent, to imagine my daughter going to study there.
    
    

Download the PowerPoint Top 10 Australian Education websites on SharePoint

My colleague, James Marshall, writes the UK Live@edu blog. There isn’t an Australian equivalent, but almost everything that he writes is relevant to Australia too. If you’re a Live@edu user in Australia, or you’re interested in learning more about the service (which is the Microsoft free hosted email and collaboration service for schools, TAFEs and universities), then it’s worth keeping an eye on it, or adding it to your RSS feeds.

Some of the recent posts that have caught my eye include:

• Live@edu deployment webcasts
  Download links for his two recent Live@edu deployment webcasts, covering domain ownership; user provisioning in Live@edu; migrating data and automating Live@edu management
• Configuring regional settings and setting UK English dictionaries in Live@edu
  Contains the answer to the golden question: “How do I set the dictionary for all of my Live@edu mail users”
• Why and how to delete and de-provision users in Live@edu
  After explaining why you may or may not want to delete users once they’ve left your institution (ease user management, remove the risk of abuse of your email domain versus continuing contact with alumni and giving students a continuing email address they can use for university/employment applications), James then lets you know how you can delete mailboxes and still keep the Live ID going (so that students don’t lose their SkyDrive, Xbox ID etc)

There are lots of other good blog posts there too, so keep an eye on it.

Read the UK Live@edu blog

The Microsoft team that run our internal IT systems have to manage a complex and very fluid IT environment - just like you. And the It team are often at the leading/bleeding edge of technology (especially if you consider our habit of ‘eating our own dog food’). So they have some hard-won lessons on technology implementation.

The latest addition to the IT Showcase, a huge library of published case studies on their work, is a technical case study on how they developed a Private Cloud infrastructure. I’m sure there are universities across Australia who have exactly the same kind of challenge today, and will find their case study useful.

Developing a Private Cloud infrastructure for research

Microsoft IT wanted to reduce lab space server sprawl and introduce a new level of management and support efficiency. The facility needed to be both efficient and flexible enough to support the research and development needs of the different product groups. The solution was to build an energy-efficient, flexible, high-density facility that meets the needs of the research and development community at Microsoft and is able to host private clouds that provide Infrastructure as a Service.

It meant changing the research culture, as well as the IT infrastructure, and replacing a 180,000 square feet facility with something nearly 80% smaller. And designing a local datacentre that could run with a PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.3 or lower.

What that meant was:

• Reduced the footprint of on-campus lab space
• Efficiencies in scale and facility design provide power-consumption savings
• Virtualisation reduced the number of required physical systems and the amount of resources required to manage them
• Offering Infrastructure as a Service through the private cloud shortened the time it takes to deploy systems and reduced variations in the deployment of systems

The full case study talks through details such as designing the network fabric and the process of picking the host requirements (eg memory, storage and processors)

You can read the full case study online (and download a Word version)

This year we’re offering a series of live webcasts, led by a Microsoft subject matter expert, on a range of core Microsoft products. They are not specifically designed to focus on education - and attendees will be from a wide range of industries - but I wanted to highlight the opportunity for you to take part to get up to speed with leading edge technology changes.

Each week I’ll highlight the webcasts coming up soon, and provide a more detailed overview, and give a list of future sessions that you can book into your diary. All of the webcasts are scheduled for 2-4PM AEST (Australia East Coast time). See ** below for more details on how the webcasts work

This week’s webcasts

Microsoft SQL Server Code-Named "Denali" AlwaysOn Series, Part 1:
Introducing the Next Generation High Availability Solution

In this session we talk about the new high availability solution that is being introduced in SQL Server code-named ‘Denali’. The session provides an overview of AlwaysOn and introduces the key new features and capabilities that will help businesses achieve the high availability SLA for mission critical applications. The session is the first part of a three-part series. See table below for parts 2 & 3

16th August - Find out more, and register 

Microsoft SharePoint Online Overview

This informative and demo-filled session provides an overview of SharePoint Online, and as much detail as we can fit into 2 hours.

16th August - Find out more, and register

Sneak Peek at Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2012 Concepts

The upcoming version of Service Manager 2010 R2 will deliver standardized, compliant, and automated IT as a Service.  Come to this session to see an early preview the all new Silverlight based SharePoint self-service portal, service catalog, service requests, release management, IT business intelligence, and many other improvements that are being added to Service Manager.

19th August - Find out more, and register

Future webcasts

** By running them as webcasts, our aim is to allow you to get the latest news, without travel costs, or event fees. And with all of the advantages of being able to watch an online webcast whilst also being able to do other things if necessary.

All of the free webcasts are two-hour long sessions, and combine technical presentations and live demonstrations. The level of the content is suitable for IT teams in schools, TAFEs and universities, as well as for pre-sales consultants and technical consultants working within Microsoft’s education partners. There are some which are much more specifically tailored for developers, and I’ll highlight those below.

You’ll need to register in advance, and you’ll then receive a Calendar note as well as info on how to join the Live Meeting online. All of the webcasts are scheduled for 2-4PM AEST (Australia East Coast time)