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Gamification of learning continues to be a hot topic for education (and as with most things within the education system, there's plenty of divided opinion on how it could be used in the classroom with students). But it's not limited to conventional education systems – we're also seeing gamification being...

It’s on again, the annual online science assessment (the ESSA test) that brings all year 8 students, in all Government, Catholic and Private Schools in NSW, together on one day to do an online science assessment. And it's happening right now, with help from Microsoft's cloud services. Each year this...

Remember yesterday, when I said that ClickView won the Microsoft Australia Education Partner of the Year 2012 in the Microsoft Australia Partner Awards? And I mentioned that the judging was very tight. But there can only be one winner. Well, it turns out you can have more than one winner! These were...

The biggest event for Microsoft's partners in Australia is the Microsoft Australia Partner Conference 2012, which will be in Brisbane from the 4-6 September. As well as the full conference experience, we also use it as the opportunity to announce the winners of the Microsoft Australia Partner Awards...

I've written a few times about one of our partners, Janison , who worked with the New South Wales Department of Education to produce the ESSA online science test for all students across their government, catholic and private schools. And whenever I meet Wayne Houlden, the Janison CEO, I'm always interested...

Yesterday I wrote “ Why put assessment in the Cloud? ” about the project last year for students in New South Wales in Australia to complete the statutory Science examinations online - replacing a paper-based system that had been used for years. As well as the time-saving and paper-saving, one of the...

One of the often-quoted benefits of using Cloud computing is that you can provide for big bursts of activity by using the flexibility of massive datacentres being built around the world for this. And that if you want to use this service, you simply pay for the bit you use. It means that you can activate...

This week, it’s the week of the Microsoft Australia Partner Conference. There are nearly 1,000 people gathered in the Gold Coast to learn together about Microsoft’s future strategy, from both a technology and market perspective. (From a distance, you can get a bit of a flavour by seeing what people have...

The Microsoft Australian Partner Conference is getting closer - and so are the Australian Partner Awards. We’ve just released the list of the Awards finalists, and the Microsoft Australia “Education Partner of the Year” Finalists are three partners who have each been able to make spectacular contributions...

Imagine you’re a big IT supplier. You build a successful business by being responsive to your customers, and giving them what they need. If the customer is a big one, then normally their budget is too. And so, their list of requirements is big too. Which means that when they want to do IT projects, they...

Whoops – despite me talking about this project frequently, I forgot to put anything on the blog…which came to light when I was writing about Janison being a finalist in the Microsoft Partner Awards . So let me put it right Last year Janison worked with the New South Wales Department of Education and...

The World Partner Conference kicks off in Los Angeles next month, and in the build up to it, we’ve just announced the results of the Microsoft Partner of Year Awards for 2011. It’s a tough race, with over 3,000 companies entering from over 100 countries – and the judging process is tough on the entrants...

I have a huge respect from the Microsoft IT team - the people who have to keep our IT systems up and running, in the face of tens of thousands of highly capable internal users ( yes, 'highly capable' also means disruptive! ) and millions of users externally (including some with evil intent). So when...

Yesterday I used an example of school examinations to show how IT has to cope with peaks and troughs (where the systems get intensive use for a few weeks each year, and then lie idle for much of the rest). Overnight I got an email from a colleague pointing me towards the video below - which illustrates...