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In addition to the sessions for teachers and IT managers I mentioned earlier today, we're also running early-start sessions for school leaders in the next few weeks. They are a fast-paced 90 minute look at some of the key strategic opportunities and issues that schools are facing right now with technology adoption. They are being run by my colleague Travis Smith, who is an informed and entertaining speaker, so I can guarantee that it will be thought-provoking, as well as being a good investment of time. And because it finishes by 9:30, it's not going to eat significantly into the school day.
(Given the amount of discussion (and hype?) around BYOD, I've always appreciated Travis for his grounded views on BYOD in schools, and the need to stay absolutely focused on the teaching and learning, rather than the device strategy itself)
It's being hosted at the Microsoft offices in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, and the details are below:
With the technology landscape changing at such a rapid rate, it's easy to get lost in the latest idea or tech fad. Come and hear about some of the issues that will define the future of technology in education, including:
Microsoft invites you to join Travis Smith, one of Australia's leading authorities on technology in education for this executive session. After a career in the classroom and school leadership, including the Education faculty at Monash, Travis has developed exceptional knowledge of the links between effective teaching, learning and technology. Travis is now the National Education Specialist for Microsoft Australia. Please join us for this opportunity to hear his thinking about education and technology and participate in our Q&A session.
The session runs from 8:00AM to 9:30AM on each of the following dates:
Brisbane - 19th April - Find out more, and register here
Melbourne - 6th May - Find out more, and register here
Sydney – 9th May – Find out more, and register here
We're running a series of Microsoft-hosted events for schools in the next few weeks, and the invite is open to teachers and IT managers to come along to any of them in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
The events are morning workshops, followed by lunch and an opportunity to chat with other schools - and a chance to see some of the latest Windows 8 touch devices.
The agenda starts off at 10AM with a combined session for both teachers and IT Managers, and then splits into individual sessions for each group:
Hear first-hand from National Education Specialist, Travis Smith, on how Microsoft is shaping the future of education technology, and giving both educators and their students a significant advantage in the classroom.
Teachers’ Hands-On Workshop This session will allow teachers and curriculum leaders to: Explore new ways to integrate technology in the classroom for enhanced teaching and learning Discover some of the new features of Windows 8 and Office 365 in an educational context Get some hands on workshop time with Windows 8 devices Network with other educators around technology in the classroom or… IT Managers’ Deep Dive on Windows 8 and Office 365 for Education We want to ensure that you are the expert when it comes to our new product releases, so this session will help school IT Managers to gain a better understanding of: Management, Security, Usability, Devices and apps for Windows 8 Making your school more productive and cost effective through the use of cloud technology How you can ensure your students have sustainable access to a no compromise learning device
This session will allow teachers and curriculum leaders to:
We want to ensure that you are the expert when it comes to our new product releases, so this session will help school IT Managers to gain a better understanding of:
Management, Security, Usability, Devices and apps for Windows 8
Making your school more productive and cost effective through the use of cloud technology
How you can ensure your students have sustainable access to a no compromise learning device
We finish with lunch and a chance for schools to network while checking out some of the latest Windows 8 devices.
Brisbane – 19th April – Register here
Sydney – 9th May – Register here
Melbourne – 6th May – Register here
Each year teachers from around the world come together at the Partners in Learning Global Forum. This year, the camera crew that go along to the event asked those teachers for their thoughts on Windows 8, and the result is the compact YouTube video below.
There's a great sound-bite halfway through from Camille Rutherford who's a Professor of Education from Canada, where she says:
It struck me as the first time I'd heard anybody talk about the 'mouseless generation', and it's a great phrase that summarises a lot of device usage by very young children these days
The video above is the short (2 minute) version - there's a slightly longer version of "Why Educators Love Windows 8 for Education" also available.
Watch more of the Microsoft Education team videos on YouTube
Do you work in a girls or mixed school in or near Sydney? Do you want to help to raise the profile of the IT industry amongst your female students?
If you haven’t taken part in these events before, then you’ll be in a for a big surprise, as it shatters the image of IT as being a geeky, male-only preserve. As it’s a months away, we’ve still got some spare spaces (we have set a maximum number of 10 attendees per school due to high demand). Oh, and it’s free BTW – you just need to sort your transport (North Ryde train station is right around the corner)
Microsoft is committed to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to reach their potential. We believe that technology not only enables people, but can also be a fantastic career opportunity; especially for young women! Microsoft IT-Girls is one of Microsoft’s signature programs to invest in the technology and engineering education of young women, attempting to raise awareness about the variety of exciting and meaningful careers available in the technology industry whilst dispelling the stereotypes typically associated with high tech jobs and the people in those roles.
The 2013 Microsoft IT-Girls day will be held at Microsoft’s Australian headquarters in North Ryde, Sydney on Monday 6th May. The agenda is packed with workshops where girls will get hands on with the latest technology, learn about technology courses offered at universities, and listen to first hand experiences from a range of Microsoft women, from interns to senior managers.
Please email Rachel Bourke if you would like more information (timings etc) and to express your interest in bringing students to the event. There is a restriction of 10 students per school to ensure every school has the opportunity to attend.
The day is a free event – you just need to sort out your transport to North Ryde (we're near the M2/Lane Cove Tunnel, within a stone's throw of the North Ryde train station)
Make a date for the 6th May - Find out more, and register, by emailing Rachel
The University of West London won the UCISA-Eduserv Award for Excellence for their student portal, which provides a personalised experience for each student with easy access to the university services like their email, blogs, academic documents, library services etc. And it allows students to connect their portal account to their Facebook and Twitter accounts too. It removed the need for students to access multiple websites to get to the university information they need.
As Professor Kathryn Mitchell, the Deputy Vice Chancellor responsible for the project, says in the case study:
We did it in terms of ensuring that students didn't have to go through 25 different avenues in order to learn about their course, to learn about the social events going on in the university. I think the importance of the portal in terms of the University of Western London, was that we wanted to do something different in terms of just providing academic information was students. What we wanted to do was to allow individual students to personalise an academic journey
There's some great screenshots in the video, which give you a good idea of the student experience:
Read more about Office 365 Education
Today we had our Microsoft Education Partner Summit in Sydney, and one of the things that I talked about was the great range of Australian Windows 8 education apps that have been created already, and are still appearing on the Windows 8 app store.
One of the things I demonstrated was a very simple journey through a small number of apps, including a few key Australian ones developed for Windows 8. My promise to the audience was that I'd provide a link to those apps and a short summary of how to show them.
Here's how I arranged my Windows 8 Start screen. Basically, I created a new group called 'Education' right at the beginning of the screen, and then dropped the apps I wanted to demonstrate into it.
The apps I used were:
App: Travel You will already have this installed on your start screen.
What to show: This is a simple way to get a 'wow' moment for people within 20 seconds. Load the Travel app, then scroll over to the panoramas. If you've got a Windows 8 device with the gyro activated, all you need to do now is move your device around, and you'll see the picture move with you – so you're instantly in an immersive panorama. Want to see what's behind you? Turn around, and the picture turns with you!
What to show: The majority of schools in Australia already have a ClickView subscription, so the best way to show this is to let your customer login with their account in the app, and they will see their videos and subscriptions etc. This app is from the Australian ClickView team in Sydney
What to show: This is a spelling game, and the goal is for students to compete to spell the name of the object in the middle of the screen. The easiest way to show how this works is to put your touch device down flat on the desk and invite the people you are demonstrating to to have a go at spelling words. Give them 30 seconds and you'll easily have examples of competitive and collaborative learning taking place! This app is from the Australian nsquared team, also in Sydney
What to show: I created a simple class (using my webcam for the photo) and added some students (I had some dummy student images already, but you might need to get your pen out and draw some, or ask colleagues to dig out their old school photo ) Then I simply used the 'Take Attendance' button to show how you could take a register, and 'Random Student' to show how you might use it in snapped mode alongside lesson plan.
What to show: Although you really need to set this one up with some lesson plans, it's quite easy to setup a simple one, and then demonstrate the 'Deliver' lesson function – where it shows the teacher the lesson plan they were going to work with, alongside timings. If you want to show this app regularly, I'd recommend asking Lucas if he can give you a demo account with dummy lesson plans in it, so that you can show the full potential! This app is from the Australian developer Lucas Moffitt, based in Newcastle
Click on any of the above links on a Windows 8 device to install them from the Windows Store.
I normally avoid controversial subjects here, but today I thought I'd dive in with both feet with a question, and see what happens!
This morning in Sydney we're hosting the Australia Education Partner Summit, and I'll be talking at 10 o'clock about where things are going in the future. I thought you might be interested in some of the content, so here's one of my first slides:
The reason this is one of my first slides is that I believe that we’re at a tipping point in education.
In our lifetime we've seen the price of knowledge decreasing dramatically – in the age of Wikipedia and information being seconds away from discovery on the Internet, the cost of knowledge seems to be heading towards zero rapidly (perhaps I should more accurately say that it's the cost of access to knowledge – as a child it was about the affordability of the encyclopaedia set and the opening hours and location of the city library)
However, at the same time the price of education – to us as parents, as consumers and as taxpayers – is continuing to increase. If you look across the Pacific at the US, there's a lot of debate going on at the moment about the cost of education and the relative unaffordability of education for some groups.
And yet education, in many cases, is still the victim of Baumol's Cost Disease:
…the same number of musicians is needed to play a Beethoven string quartet today as was needed in the 19th century; that is, the productivity of classical music performance has not increased.
…in some labour-intensive sectors that rely heavily on human interaction or activities, such as nursing, education, or the performing arts there is little or no growth in productivity over time.
In the same way that it takes the same number of musicians to play Beethoven today as it did 200 years ago, in most classrooms teachers are still standing in front of approximately the same number of students, and teaching for approximately the same number of hours per week as in the past. The fundamental productivity as measured by classic economists hasn’t changed.
In actual fact, the Australian Bureau of Statistics published their "Schools Australia, 2012" statistics last week which showed that the number of students being taught per teacher has been going down for the last decade.
In summary we've gone from having around 15 students per teacher in 1998 to around 13.5 in 2012.
Which brings me back to my belief that we're at a tipping point. Baumol's Cost Disease is obviously not directly applicable to what's happening in education today. In fact, change is happening – the number of teachers per 1,000 students has gone up over the last ten years.
And yet there is so much conversation going on about the role of IT in education, and the ways that it can transform teaching and learning. That's why I think we're at a tipping point – we've gone through similar tipping points with other industries and sectors. It may be difficult to see an exact tipping point (it may have already passed), but I think we're probably in the middle of the moment.
But what happens next?
Every year thousands of worldwide partners get together with Microsoft at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. In 2013 it’s being held back in the USA in Houston (hint: great week to spend in the northern hemisphere summer rather than the southern hemisphere winter!). And some businesses walk away with the accolade "Microsoft Partner of the Year" with a global, country or specific category award. Just imagine, having the "Microsoft Education Partner of the Year 2013" label for your website?
Every year, more Australian education partners enter to win our Microsoft Australia Education Partner of the Year awards than the global awards, even though it takes only five minutes extra to enter both awards rather than just one.
I’d love as many as possible of our Australian education partners to get the chance to do well in this year’s global competition too.
I recognise that it means somebody has to put some effort into entering – even if it just means spending the time completing the online forms. And it’s not normally somebody’s day job. So I’m going to give you my advice in the form of a few handy steps focused on time saving when writing your winning entry:
Entries close on 5th April 2013. So start now – don’t wait for a few weeks, because the deadline isn’t going to be extended just because you forgot. You can read the published info, and start your application, here (I'm spruiking the Education Partner of the Year Award, but there's another 40 categories that you can also enter, and I'd recommend having a crack at a couple of different ones that are relevant to your business)
The simple eligibility criteria is that you must have a PinPoint listing. If you don’t have one, or it needs updating, find out how to update PinPoint here. The reason is that many customers use PinPoint as the starting point to find Microsoft partners.
It is also important to note that the competition is open to everybody that qualifies – whether or not you are attending the World Partner Conference. So you don’t have to commit to travel to be able to enter!
Like an exam, there’s a set of formal questions to answer, and the judges will have a marking scheme that’s linked to that. So don’t skip a question, even if you think it’s irrelevant to you. Give the best answer you can in the context – just like a tender response, a blank answer gets no points, whereas you’ll get at least one point for attempting it! And an answer like “We’re considering it for the future” is better than '”No”
Looking at the questions in the entry form, question 3 for '”Public Sector – Education Partner of the Year” is:
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.
I've highlighted my decoding of this. The judges want you to tell them how Microsoft helped you win against our shared competitors, and they want you to explain this from a technical and business perspective.
So “I beat ComputerSellerWarehouse on price” won’t cut it anywhere near as much as:
Hopefully that answer is likely to match the judges marking scheme:
When you get to Question Four (Describe which education solution area your solution maps to and which Microsoft technologies you have used), you really need to take a look at the Education Solutions section of our global education website to pick the right solutions.
The other gotcha to look out for is to ensure you are entering the right categories. Education Partner of the Year is for partners working with education customers. Don’t confuse it with Learning Partner of the Year, which is for partners providing IT courses and associated resources for IT professionals.
As you write your entry, save a copy of your answers. Because when you come to enter the awards for Australian Microsoft Education Partner of the Year 2013 (more details soon), you’ll be able to re-use almost everything for those awards (unfortunately, due to privacy restrictions, we can’t just transfer your data across, but it’s easy as long as you have a copy of your answers for the worldwide awards!)
Find all resources to enter the Microsoft WPC Awards here, including full information on categories, Judges tips and the Official rules.
If you want more advice, then I'd also recommend Gail Mercer-MacKay's guide to creating "Creating an award winning entry", which contains some great advice about creating your attention grabbing story for the entry.
For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not involved in the WPC Awards, and I have no special inside knowledge of them. All the advice is my responsibility alone!
If you work for a Microsoft partner, then today's the last chance to register for Monday's Microsoft Education Partner Summit in Sydney. We kick off at 9AM with Anthony Salcito, the Vice President of Microsoft Education Worldwide, who's an inspiring and engaging speaker on the future of education, and the way that technology and learning are linked. I'll then be doing a session on how to take some of those ideas and use them in your conversations with schools, TAFEs and Universities. And then we continue through the afternoon with a chance to select your own tracks after lunch, to join the deep dive workshop sessions on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in education, Collaboration and the Cloud, and a 'Compete' workshop which will compare education strategies achievable with different device choices.
If you can only make a part of the day, I'd still recommend registering, as I can guarantee that you'll get value from it*
Make a date: Find out more, and register, for the Partner Summit in Sydney on Monday
* Guarantee huh? Well, if you come along and feel that you didn't get enough value, I'll be in the Microsoft Café at 3:45 to pay for your coffee from Australia's top barista.
InformationWeek's Education section is reporting on the South Illinois University's plan to hand new students Windows 8 tablets from Dell as they start. According to the university, they'll be at the centre of a project to support new styles of learning as well as save students money through e-textbooks (helping to reduce the average $1,000+ cost for textbooks for an American student*).
The project, called Mobile Dawg, involves 300 students getting a Dell Latitude 10 tablet, running Windows 8, and access to a range of resources including a series of textbooks (through an Educause/Internet2 project), as well as integration with their existing systems including their Student Self Service system, and their learning management system from Desire2Learn.
The University will deliver a range of services that can be accessed by students on their tablets:
But the university didn't start off with a plan to use Dell Windows 8 tablets. At first they had to make a decision about which tablets for students – and they weren't looking at Windows 8 at all. As David Crain, the university CIO told Information week:
One of the reasons was cost – the university predicts that the Dell tablets will save them $3m through lower cost of ownership (on things like hardware, warranty and support costs over four years). And with the ability to manage the tablets using their existing Microsoft System Center software, it means they can be managed just like other Windows devices on the campus.
Another key reason was compatibility – in SIU's case, it was about being able to run existing tutorial and assessment courseware that wasn't able to run on the iPads.
They are one of four American educational institutions/systems Dell highlighted recently who are deploying tablets to support Windows 8 in education scenarios, including Fargo Public Schools, Spartanburg School District and Westwood Independent Schools.
Read more from the university on their campus-wide Windows 8 tablet initiative