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BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in education is a recurring topic that is coming up in conversations, and pops up in the media regularly too. There isn’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to BYOD in education, as each institution has different needs, policies, attitudes and current position. For some education customers, they are considering whether they’ll allow access to email from staff smartphones, whereas others may have been providing connections for students’ own laptops for years.
From an IT management point of view, there are many, many moving parts to implementing any kind of BYOD strategy, no matter how simple your plans. If you’re responsible for a BYOD strategy in a school, TAFE or university, then you may find the TechNet Jump Start training useful. The training is actually labelled ‘Consumerisation of IT’, which seems to be the phrase used in the US instead of Bring Your Own Device in education.
There are eight video sessions – all around an hour long – so there’s some real depth covered. If you’ve only got a bit of time available, I’d recommend the Keynote (01) and the Information Protection (06) sessions as particularly useful for education strategy decisions – closely followed by Desktop Virtualisation (08).
Get started with the BYOD Keynote
We’ve just announced registrations are open for TechEd Australia 2012, in September in the Gold Coast. Every year, TechEd brings over 2,500 IT Professionals and Developers up to speed on the latest Microsoft technologies. And with 10 tracks over 4 days, there’ll be plenty for everyone to see and do…
…and education customers can get discounted tickets
It’s a big year for product announcements, and the TechEd team will have had a challenge squeezing everything into one week. They’ve promised to cover all of the key new products:
There are a number of special discounts available for TechEd tickets – with education customers again getting special treatment
Learn more about TechEd 2012
I just got an embargoed press release from the UK Learning Possibilities team for 15th June – and luckily for us, I can write about it already as we’re half a day ahead of the UK
In a nutshell, LP+ is a rich Virtual Learning Environment for schools built on SharePoint 2010, which is run as a hosted service in the cloud – meaning that schools don’t need to spend on servers etc to run it on, and can provide seamless access at school and from home. What they have now done is to link this through to Office 365, so that students can access their email, file storage and the web versions of Microsoft Office applications, like Word, Excel and PowerPoint – making it much easier to create a single seamless learning environment in school and at home.
First of all, here’s an extract from the Press Release:
Learning Possibilities announces full integration of its new LP+4 learning platform with Microsoft Office365
Learning Possibilities, the leading learning platform provider, announces today that its new LP+4 learning platform now offers full integration and single sign-on with Microsoft Office 365. This means that LP+4 users can have access to Outlook Live, Lync and Office Web Applications from within the LP+4 learning platform and without need to login again.
Together with Office365, LP+4 delivers a whole new suite of online tools to improve collaboration and productivity where students and teachers are able to create, upload, edit and share Office documents and access emails, instant message and access calendars online from any device with a browser and internet access - even if schools do not have Microsoft Office installed on their computers.
One of the interesting aspects of LP+ is that they have built a system which can be designed around the individual schools and student cohorts – for example, the screen shots below show designs for a primary school and a high school – with different styles, sophistication and features showing up.
Today LP+ is mainly used with the UK, although there are plans to make it available in Australia, so for Australian readers I think the real interest is in the idea of linking a learning management system to the cloud, and how it helps to make a single coherent learning journey available at home and within the school – regardless of whether your students have 1:1 laptops or not. If they are using their own home computer, they can still have their learning resources, and tools like Microsoft Office available, in the same way.
I’m going to see if the LP+ team have a video demo available of the Office 365 integration, as that should give a good idea of how the students move between the different cloud services (and how students and teachers can move between using LP+, Office Web Apps, email and online real-time communications like Lync).
Visit the LP+ website for more information
I’ve noticed that they do things differently over in the US compared to Australia, and one of the areas I’ve always noticed is product comparisons. I’m always surprised by comparative advertising on TV whenever I’m in the States, with adverts comparing features and prices for products side by side. The Microsoft team in Seattle run a ‘Why Microsoft’ blog that talks about Microsoft’s strategic and technical differentiation to other products and services.
They’ve just written a blog post ‘A Day in the Life of a Teacher’, comparing the use of Office 365 (which includes Office Web Apps, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync) and Google Apps, and they’ve done a careful job of providing links through to all of the different comparisons they make.
If you want to click on the links, you’ll need to download the full infographic in PDF form
The comparison that caught my eye especially was the comparison of employer demand for Microsoft Office and Google Apps skills. This becomes pretty important as you get to the later years in the education system.
The links send you to CareerBuilder, a US jobs website and shows today that if you search for jobs looking for ‘Google Apps’ skills, you’ll get 56 jobs listed – and 600 times more job opportunities looking for Microsoft Office skills (33,730 jobs listed as of this morning). This situation is pretty similar in Australia – see my blog post from last year “What skills do employers look for in interviews”
Read the full 'A day in the life of a Teacher' blog post
A couple of weeks ago we released Photosynth for the Windows Phone. So now you can create 360-degree panoramas straight from your phone, and publish them onto the web. You can either get it from this link (or even easier, just print the Search button on your Windows Phone and point it at this QR Code, and your phone will go to it in the marketplace).
Photosynth can either create a straightforward panorama (where you stand in one place, and rotate the camera for a single image) or a complex 3D model (where you move around, and take lots of photos from lots of angles). For an idea of the power of Photosynth for creating immersive 3D models, pop over to the Photosynth website and explore.
And here’s three ideas for how you can use Photosynth in education:
Create a 3D model of a place you want your students to explore, eg this panorama of Yosemite Glacier Point. Want to make it more interesting? Hide clues and prizes in the Photosynth for them to find. You could use this instead of a field trip, or for prep work in advance of a field trip. Or get students to create their own whilst on a field trip. The image above is taken from my Photosynth of Westminster Cathedral in London.
I’ve hidden a treasure hunt in this Photosynth, and I’ve got a Microsoft water bottle to send to the first person who emails me to tell me how much the Westminster Cathedral Guidebook has been reduced to in this Photosynth.
Many schools spend weeks putting together their annual art exhibition in a hall, but then can only keep it open for a few days before it all has to be packed away again. One neat answer is to Photosynth the whole thing, so that students and parents can explore all of the artwork online – and be able to zoom in in huge detail. One great example is Wootton Bassett School, who have put their art exhibitions online for a few years. They’ve even done it as a standard panorama, and an immersive 3D model, so that you can see the difference.
There are lots of different uses for this:
Panorama photosynths can be created in the Windows Phone or iPhone app, and 3D immersive Photosynths can be created from photos taken on your phone or camera, and uploaded through the Photosynth app.
Find out more, and get your hands on, the Photosynth apps
I’ve just provided a brief 10 minute overview to our CRM partners about the use of CRM systems in Education within Australia. It isn’t a detailed presentation that’s intended to provide all the answers to everything – it’s more of a quick introduction into the use of CRM within Education institutions in Australia – including universities, TAFEs and schools.
The reason for providing the briefing is that I’ve noticed that many of our CRM partners are starting to see increasing enquiries from education customers about the use of CRM systems, and a quick overview helps them to understand the context (for example, by understanding the way that student recruitment works at a high level, they can see how it is similar/different to commercial organisations – eg membership recruitment for private companies).
Here’s a quick overview of the slides:
 
(If you can’t see them above, or want to copy emailed, then use the Contact Me link at the top of the page)
Next week there’s an open invitation from CALUMO to attend one of their Club CALUMO meetings, in either Sydney or Melbourne. The events are run like a user group, and for the last year they’ve thrown open the doors to non-users, giving people a chance to learn about how their Business Intelligence system is being used (and let’s face it, if you’re thinking about implementing a business intelligence project, there’s a huge value in being able to learn from other people’s experiences).
CALUMO have built up quite a bit of experience of BI systems and projects within education, and have helped universities and TAFEs with things like student load planning, smoothing the budget planning process, and the production of annual reports and financial updates. At this month’s meeting they have a case study from Graham Hoy, from the University of Canberra, talking about the automation of their annual report processes (read more here), and also a demonstration of what the CALUMO team describe as the ‘hidden features’ in our Analysis Services system, and the latest version of the CALUMO software that sits on top of the Microsoft BI platform.
When I went to my first Club CALUMO last year, I came away with some really interesting insights into the way that some of their customers were solving business problems using the CALUMO BI system, and especially about how they were simplifying the whole process for their end users – and some great stories to share with colleagues. CALUMO describe the event as being suitable for “CFOs, FCs, CIOs, BI Managers, IT Managers, Database Administrators, SSAS/SSRS/SSIS Power Users, Report developers, Project Managers and other managers interested in the latest approaches and developments across various applications and industries” – so you can be sure that whatever your level of knowledge, there’ll be content suitable. And it could contribute to any CPD/CPE hours for the year…
As usual, the event is free, and the bonus is that they’ll be including the usual selection of beer and pizza
Find out more details, and register here
Registrations have just opened for the Microsoft Australia Partner Conference 2012 (APC 2012). And the good news is that the tickets are discounted if you register before 13th July – saving you nearly $200 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
These are the three key reasons the APC organising team give for attending:
And, 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 2012 place booked and confirmed. Especially if you’re hoping to be jumping up on stage to collect your Education Partner of the Year Award…
You can find out more, and register, here
Walking down the corridor after I wrote about the Windows Azure DevCamps this morning, a colleague who’d read the post asked me what kind of apps would be developed next in the Windows Azure Cloud for education. So I reeled off the list of apps that I think we’ll see. And he told me that the blog post would have been improved if I’d suggested those ideas. (Boom, direct feedback, right there…)
So as well as remembering that feedback for next time, I thought I’d share the list. These are the next wave of things I think we're going to see as apps developed for teachers to use, linked to the Azure cloud. And I think these are the kind of things that teachers/school will just buy as a small app, and use it themselves – as well as potentially apps that a whole school or system will use.
And the reason I think they’ll be developed using the Cloud is that teachers need to have access at home as well as at school – because when you’re writing up your school reports, you want this stuff to hand – it’s no good if it’s locked inside a corporate system and you can’t get it when you need it. And you’re more likely to be sitting writing your reports in front of the telly, with sideways glances at the finals of The Voice, than sitting behind a desk at school. So you need to have the info right there – and the Cloud gives you a way to have it wherever you are.
So here’s the top 5 education apps I think we’re going to see next:
I don’t believe any of these are big and complex, massively long projects. And with the Cloud providing the infrastructure for it, they’re even easier. Oh, and when the online Windows Store comes along later this year, there will also be a way to reach an audience of half a billion PCs to sell this kind of software easily
Interested?
If you’re in Sydney, and you are (or would like think of yourself as) a developer, then you might want to devote a day to discovering how the Cloud could make a difference to your projects. I’m losing count of the number of projects I’m hearing about where developers are using the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud services in education projects to allow them to build an application, and deploy to an unlimited amount of users. The reason is obvious – it allows developers to get on with development of applications, without having the hassle of worrying about building a big backend datacentre to run it on. It’s especially important in education, where the job of getting an application setup on somebody’s education network can be painful, whereas deploying an application in the cloud can be straightforward – and something that users (teachers, students) can do themselves.
That might explain one of the reasons why education applications that use the Windows Azure cloud – like ClickView or the Janison Assessment portals – are growing rapidly. (Windows Azure is basically our public cloud, running in global data centres, where you can deploy applications, databases, websites or even complete virtual servers)
To help more people discover the tricks, we’re running a free Windows Azure DevCamp in Sydney on Tuesday 19th June at the University of NSW for developers that want to get under the covers of Azure. And the hosts are three people that really know their stuff:
The agenda for the day is going to help you learn how to:
The day runs from 9-5 at the Randwick Campus of UNSW on 19th June, and it’s free. And it’s open to all developers, whether you currently work for a Microsoft partner, or you work in a university, TAFE, school or government department.
Learn more, and register, for the Sydney Windows Azure DevCamp