Education

Collaborative learning with Windows 8 multi-touch apps– flip the screen over!

Ray Fleming — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:54:08 GMT

Most of the Windows 8 education apps have been designed for a single user experience – a student sitting at a screen, or using a touch tablet – where the screen is always oriented in one way with a clear ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the screen – with the text and graphics designed to be readable in that way. However, there are some clever apps developers who have taken advantage of the new large screen devices that can be used in horizontal or vertical mode (like the Dell XPS 18 on the right). And the extensive multi-touch capabilities of Windows 8 certified hardware means that a Windows 8 device allows for at least 10 consecutive touches to the screen – allowing you to design learning activities that four students can take part in at once.

Some of the best apps I’d recommend come from nSquared, a Sydney-based software development company that has been developing software for the original Microsoft Surface (the original large table-sized device). With that background, they’ve been able to bring some of those apps across to Windows 8 touch apps. All of the apps that they’ve developed are designed for multiple students to be able to collaborate or compete on learning activities.

Here’s some suggestions for collaborative learning apps for younger students

nsquared snap, is easy to grasp and allows up to four students to work on a single touchscreen at the same time, and is designed to develop pattern matching and object recognition skills. Each player must take their turn individually, with a point being awarded when they successfully match a pair of cards. Only two cards may be turned over at any time in an attempt to find a matching pair.

nsquared numbers is a free-form application that can be used to teach basic mathematical concepts. It gives you number tiles, so that you can set free tasks like "How many ways can you make the sum of ‘9’, or ‘55’, or any other number you’d like to explore. And because multiple students can use it at the same time, you can also set team or collaborative challenges, eg how many ways can they create those same results?

nsquared missing card is designed to help develop pattern matching and object recognition skills in young children. It's a multi-player memory game for up to four students to match overturned cards. The players can turn over their three cards to see which one matches the next in sequence. Once each player has decided on the card they think will be next, they keep the other two cards in their hand face down.

nsquared herding is designed to develop numeracy, pattern matching and object recognition skills. Whilst it is designed for up to four players simultaneously it will depend on the device that you use - on a small touch device you may have enough screen space for two players. Each player has to collect the correct numbers of each target object and place them into their own playing area.

nsquared letters is a free form application designed for children to use with or without guidance. It allows students to explore words in virtually any language that uses the Latin alphabet. And because it uses the multi-touch features of Windows 8 devices, it allows for many children to use it at the same time. So you could put a tablet flat on a desk, and have a group of four children around it all using it at the same time. The app is free, and there are different activity packs available as an in-app purchase.

nsquared make words is an app in the form of structured educational game, compared to the less structured apps I wrote about earlier in the week. It's designed to help students learn object recognition and differentiation, and improve their recall and spelling. nsquared makewords has the ability to switch between a range of content packs through the menu and download new content as it's released (the app is free, and then you pay for the optional content packs).

There are other apps coming from nsquared, so I’d also recommend having a chat with their team to understand what’s on the roadmap, or just going to the Windows Store on your Windows 8 device and searching for ‘nsquared’

Learn more about other education apps on the Microsoft.com website

What technology do you need for the Flipped Classroom?

Ray Fleming — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:37:00 GMT

Caroline Chisholm Catholic College in Melbourne is on the pathway to the Flipped Classroom - a pedagogical model that inverts traditional teaching by delivering instruction online outside of class while moving problem solving (traditionally given as homework) into the classroom. And one of the starting points for the ICT department was to ensure the technology was there to support the vision, putting the students at the front of the classroom.

One of the keys to supporting a flipped classroom model really well as that students have access to good collaboration technology inside and outside the classroom and teachers have easy ways to record materials for students to watch. (Karl Fisch, of Shift Happens fame, uses the flipped classroom model – you can read more about it here)

The college were already using Live@edu for their student email, and an IP-based phone system, but they were starting to look also at Google Apps as another platform for learning. But when they got into deeper discussions with Generation-e (a Microsoft Gold Certified partner), they were very pleased with the solution that they were given, that included moving to the latest Microsoft software to fully support their new teaching and learning model – using Office 365 for education, Lync 2013, Windows 8 and SkyDrive Pro.

The Generation-e team summarises the impact for the college in their case study:

Caroline Chisholm Catholic College was very pleased with the end result. With features such as the video recording capabilities of Lync, teachers will be able to roll out the "Flipped Classroom" initiative. That means conducting and recording lessons using real-time collaboration, pushing video, presentations, white-boarding and chat during sessions. The initiative offers further enrichment through video collaboration with overseas sister schools for LOTE programs, as well as digital excursions.

Further benefits of the Microsoft stack include:

Increased staff productivity- heads of departments conduct online meetings; ICT staff collaborate between three campuses without having to travel or leave the support desk unattended
100% Lync uptake- staff have happily transitioned from desk phones to their screens
Collaboration enabled by federating with other schools and suppliers
Better student engagement- the use of My Site provides them with a single location to manage all their documents, content, and tasks enabling them to collaborate on group projects and present them in class
With Windows 8, SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint, students' notes are automatically updated and saved
Improved student efficiency- O365 enables students to access their laptops with a single login
Increased flexibility- O365 puts students in the cloud to provide maximum storage, allowing anywhere access from their laptops
Stronger community through social collaboration - access to discussions, newsfeeds and photo sharing on SharePoint
While the students are now able to push their notes to any device through OneNote, this will be particularly useful once they shift from laptops to tablets

Read the full case study on the Generation-e website

TGIF–I’m a PC

Ray Fleming — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:24:00 GMT

Remember those “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” adverts? If you do, then you’ll appreciate the humour in the new Microsoft TV ads from the US. (It’s Friday afternoon here in Sydney, and I’m feeling a little TGIF, so I thought I could share this). So here’s another one of those Windows 8 comparison adverts, this time comparing an iPad and a Dell XPS10.

These are US adverts, with US pricing, and link to the full specification comparison between the iPad and the Dell XPS10. Sadly the Dell XPS10 isn’t available here in Australia, so you can’t suddenly rush over to the Dell site to buy one – but the Dell Latitude 10 is worth a look instead – as it provides a full Windows 8 experience with Intel processors, so that you can run all your existing Windows software as well as the new modern apps.

Reducing friction for international student recruitment with unified communications

Ray Fleming — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:21:05 GMT

Two weeks ago I explained why Lync and Skype are joined together, and some examples of how it will be useful in education. In a nutshell, it allows you (and your external users) to connect conversations between your own Lync system and consumer Skype users – typically the kind of software students and future students use at home, outside of the institution.

Here’s one simple example of how you can make your student recruitment process friendlier by enabling the connection, and how you can reduce the online friction for your future international students.

Online retailers talk about reducing ‘online friction’ all the time – the myriad small steps that stand in the way between the consumer and the moment they commit to buy online – it could be the unfriendly online store, or their poor search experience, or the need for them to actually speak to somebody before they can order. In student recruitment too, this is pretty important in an environment where there’s plenty of competition between universities/TAFEs for international students, and where the smallest barriers could change your international student revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Using Skype/Lync federation to recruit students

Here’s a typical university recruitment website for international student recruitment. At some point, where the future student has done enough online research, they get to a point where they will want to speak with somebody. And this page is a typical ‘Contact Us’ page today. It basically encourages students to send an email, or phone.

When they click the ‘Phone’ link, it typically gives them a telephone number for an international phone call - so for every international student, it introduces two barriers. Firstly there’s a cost implication for an international phone call (even if the student is using Skype); and secondly there’s a break in their buying journey – they have to leave their laptop and head to a phone.

I don’t think it’s fanciful that a student would be put off a university simply because of a $5 phone call – there are plenty of examples of businesses where small cost barriers, like a delivery charge, have caused large numbers of customers to swap to an alternative supplier even once they are a long way down their buying journey.

As well as being a barrier for the student, the implication for the university could well be that there’s an immediate barrier to connections with students, and a risk to the international student recruitment chain. The student may have to switch devices from computer to phone, creating a break in the recruitment chain. If it is even only 1 in 200 people who give up because of it, that could have an implication of a hundred international students less enrolling further down the line, and loss of millions of dollars of revenue.

How can you improve the recruitment experience for a student using Skype?

With federation between Lync and Skype, it is possible to change the workflow dramatically, and make it much easier. Simply adding a Skype “Call” button means it’s a single click to launch Skype and connect a free call via Skype to the specified user. And a Skype Call button on the website is either one, or 11, lines of code, so it’s not a major issue for IT to implement, but a massive gain for creating a frictionless experience for student (and staff) communications:

For student recruitment, it removes the drop out from forcing them to change device
It demonstrate your institution’s open-ness and connectivity
Allow the calls to come in through Lync federation, so that it can be connected through to your other systems (eg to redirect calls, move to conference calls, check availability etc)
You can integrate it to your other systems, for example your student recruitment CRM, so that you can track your contacts.

Going one step further, adding a Skype “Chat” button allows you to improve the experience further:

Agents can deal with more than one incoming chat at a time
The instant messenger chat window can be converted to a call easily
All contacts are recorded in your archive, and are searchable
The chat can be stored into your CRM record for that student, so that they next time they speak to an advisor, they don’t need to repeat everything from the start
Just like the example above, it works the way students already do, rather than forcing them to use your own systems and processes.

Allowing future students to speak to you in their native language

Going a step further, you could use the Lync simultaneous translation system to allow conversations with international students (or for staff working on international projects) where each user chats in their own language – and the system handles the translation – like the example below.

And perhaps in the future, you can have the same translation for voice conversations! The Microsoft Research team have already demonstrated real-time voice translation too, so this could be something implemented further down the line – either voice to text (with translation) or voice to voice. You can see the example of what’s possible demonstrated by Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer in November last year on the Next at Microsoft blog

Learn more about what's possible with Lync and Skype joined together

Windows Azure Australian datacentres–the impact of last week’s announcement

Ray Fleming — Thu, 30 May 2013 21:50:00 GMT

Did you catch the announcement last week that we are planning to significantly expand our cloud services in Australia, by the creation of a new Windows Azure ‘major region’ for Australia? Which means that when complete we’ll be delivering Azure services locally from Windows Azure Australian datacentres:


	The new Windows Azure major region in Australia will consist of two sub-regions located in New South Wales and Victoria. These two locations will be geo-redundant, offering our customers the ability to back up their data across two separate locations, both within Australia.

The goal is to deliver the same enterprise-class public cloud services, delivered locally with all the security, reliability and scalability you get from our global datacentres already.

Read the announcement “Windows Azure expands Downunder”

So what does that mean for education customers?

There are already plenty of education customers using the Windows Azure cloud services from our global datacentres, scaling from high-volume transactional systems for state-wide projects (like the ESSA Science test in NSW) to clever software solutions using Windows Azure to deliver high volumes of content across the country (like ClickView). And plenty of projects in between – like Curtin University’s project to sequence DNA using Windows Azure.

What this announcement about Windows Azure Australian datacentres will mean is that there will be faster services to users (or ‘reduced latency’ as our geeks love to say), and also the ability to choose an Australian datacentre for very sensitive data subject to Federal guidelines about where it can be stored (although the reality is that often it is perceptions, rather than reality – more from Rocky Heckman on this). Although there are already many things being done in the cloud, there’s a couple of scenarios where the data cannot be stored out in an overseas datacentre (eg proper Secrets).

Read more detailed information about security, data sovereignty and compliance in the Windows Azure cloud

We haven’t yet announced the ‘go-live’ date for these data centres – either keep an eye here, or on Rocky’s blog for more info on that.

Learn more about Windows Azure

Why are Lync and Skype joined together?

Ray Fleming — Thu, 30 May 2013 07:53:50 GMT

We’ve just announced that Lync and Skype can be joined together:

Join – often called ‘federation’, it allows the two different systems to talk to each other, so that somebody on Skype can chat with somebody on Lync & vice versa
Lync – Microsoft’s service for unified communications for businesses – instant messaging, video calling, voice calls, conference calls, remote screen sharing, presenting etc
Skype – Microsoft’s service for unified communications for consumers – instant messaging, video calling, voice calls, conference calls etc

In the words of the Skype blog, it’s about ‘Connecting the Living Room to the Board Room’, but in education I see it as a way of connecting the student’s home life to their institutional one. This is because most students are using Skype at home for making and receiving voice and video calls, and instant messages. And then within the institution (school, TAFE, university) it’s most likely that you’ll be using an ‘enterprise grade’* system like Lync for the same job.

Typical education scenarios using Lync and Skype joined together

The way that we’ve joined Lync and Skype together means that you can now use the two systems together to let people talk more easily. For example:

You could allow students stuck on a homework assignment to fire up their Skype to IM chat to a support teacher on Lync – and your Lync system will record the whole conversation for you (whereas if they do it on Skype alone, you’ve got a completely ‘off the record’ system)
Parents or students could use it to ‘phone’ school without paying for a call. That would be handy for something like absence reporting (how about parents reporting their child is sick by IM’ing the office?)
You could even extend the ability to have an informal teacher:parent meeting through Lync, when parents (and students?) are at home on Skype (and when video calling comes along, that becomes even more useful)
How about letting prospective students chat with your university/TAFE Admissions Office on Skype? With international students, you might potentially be saving them significant cost, as well as improving the service you offer them.

The connectivity we’ve announced so far allows you to have instant messenger and voice chats between the two systems, and the next priority is video calling (think of the positive possibilities with that).

Here's more details about the Skype to Lync connection

And here’s more details about the settings you’ll need to set in your Lync system
If you’re using Office 365 for Education, it’s simply one tickbox in the admin page

* What do I mean by ‘enterprise grade’: In your institution systems, you want to be able to track all of your conversations, and keep archives of things like instant messenger chats. You’ll also want to be able to link your voice communications through your existing organisational systems (eg your existing switchboard phone numbers). And you’ll need to be able to manage the whole thing centrally – like adding, suspending and deleting users. And finally, you’ll want to integrate to your other systems, like email, CRM and collaboration services.
That’s what Lync allows you to do – manage the whole experience end-to-end, in the same way that you manage the rest of your IT and telecoms.

Education is still Australia’s biggest services export

Ray Fleming — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:34:00 GMT

According to the latest data on international trade from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, education services are still Australia’s largest services export, with a $15bn revenue in 2012. Whilst this is $3bn ahead of the next largest export (personal travel services), it’s still a big drop from the $17.6bn high of 2009. In fact, it’s the third year of falling revenue from international students.

Which means that Australian universities and TAFEs are still losing their highest value customers (an international student pays fees up to 5x the level of local students). Universities account for 75% of the revenue, with TAFEs taking 20% and schools accounting for the remainder. This is all neatly summarised in the one-pager from Australian Education International “Export income to Australia from international education activity in 2012”.

But it was only when I charted the detailed data from the ABS on Table 11.1 that I saw the deeper picture – that the biggest drop has been in vocational training, where there’s been a drop of nearly 50% over the last three years. Higher Education has seen a decline of nearly $0.5bn since the peak of 2010, but that’s less than 5% of their total. Whereas TAFE has lost over $2bn, 43% of their revenue since the peak of 2009.

And although they don’t appear to break out the data by country and sector, India is the place where we’ve lost most students, with an almost 60% drop in revenue from Indian students since 2009 (from Table 9.4) – which is presumably mainly TAFE students.

International Education Revenue by Country	2009	2010	2011	2012	Change 2009-12
China	$3.9bn	$4.2bn	$4.1bn	$4.0bn	+3%
India	$3.0bn	$2.5bn	$1.6bn	$1.3bn	-57%
Vietnam	$0.7bn	$.8bn	$0.8bn	$0.8bn	+12%
Republic of Korea	$1.1bn	$1.0bn	$.9bn	$0.8bn	-29%

I’ve now got a better understanding of some more of the reasons why TAFEs have been talking with us about student recruitment, student retention and business development systems – all areas addressed by CRM in education

What does a CIO in education make of Surface Pro?

Ray Fleming — Tue, 28 May 2013 21:58:00 GMT

The Surface Pro hits the shops in Australia tomorrow, 30 May, for the first time. The Surface Pro is the version of Surface that gives you a full PC as well as a touch-tablet. Which means that for teachers and students, they can run all of their existing Windows software, and use their curriculum resources that are based around that – as well as the new touch-based apps for Windows 8.

But the Surface Pro has already been available in North America for a while, so there are plenty of reviews that you can look at for opinions. One that’s particularly interesting for education customers is the ‘CIO Road Test’, written by Kevin Pashuk, the CIO of Appleby College in Canada. As he says in his introduction:


	As someone charged with identifying future technology trends that may impact education in particular and IT in general, I find it valuable to actually get my (or my team's) hands on a particular piece of technology rather than just read about it in an article.

One of his early observations is that he often finds that people end up carrying three devices – a laptop for working, a tablet (like an iPad or Android) for browsing and quick reference, and their phone. So he set out to see whether he could use a Surface Pro to reduce the need for so many devices – and that’s exactly what he found.

As a slate user myself (I’m a fan of my old Samsung Series 7 slate) I’ve found the breakthrough is having a touch device when I’m out and about, and then a mouse-and-keyboard experience when I’m in the office, connected up to external screens etc.

Read the full review from Kevin Pashuk on CRN

Bill Gates on Q&A tonight - what will he say?

Ray Fleming — Tue, 28 May 2013 00:23:00 GMT

Bill Gates will be on ABC’s Q&A tonight at 8:30, and although I have no idea on the specifics of what’s going to be discussed, I’m guessing it will focus on education and healthcare – the two focus areas for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

[Edit after the fact! Turns out I was wrong - the focus stayed on health and international aid for most of the programme, and only covered education when answering the question about the toughest problem the foundation is trying to solve. His answer was "the most difficult thing we work on is improving the US education system" - see his full answer here]

In January, he wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal, titled "Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems", in which, he focused on the need for measurement of progress as a critical factor of a journey of improvement. And then in his recent TED Talk, he focused on the need for supporting professional development for teachers, and on the importance of feedback. His view is that everyone needs feedback to help them improve, and that (US) teachers are a group that get some of the least (and least effective) feedback of all professions. Here’s the 10-minute video of the TED Talk, which is part of the Ted Talks channel on YouTube.

Did you know there's also a Ted-Ed channel on YouTube, for teachers?

The LifeHacker Education App Winner - Sort It for Windows 8

Ray Fleming — Sun, 26 May 2013 22:42:00 GMT

Last month Lifehacker announced the winner of the first round of their Developer Challenge, to develop Windows 8 apps. Round 1 was for education apps, and the winning developer was Lucas Moffitt, from NSW, for his free Windows 8 app, Sort It.

Sort It app for students and teachers for Windows 8

Sort it allows you to map processes, recipes, instructions and cycles into complex list items that require students to correctly arrange and complete. Teachers can create lists, and then share them with students, and collect their answers back via, the Teacher Collection website (that’s a subscription site, which is also linked to all of Lucas’s other Windows 8 apps for teachers). As well as creating activities, you can also export class results to excel, and get notifications when students have completed activities you’ve allocated.

Here’s a typical Sort It screen – in this case, a list of actions required to make cupcakes, which Natasha has sorted into the correct order (she’s better than me, I always get them ready to go in the oven, and only *then* remember to turn on the oven).

Find out more about Sort It at the Windows 8 Store online