THE WORLDWIDE FINALS ARE UNDERWAY

Follow the action from Australia July 6 - 10 on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the Imagine Cup blog.

WATCH LIVE

Microsoft Student Partners, acting as roving reporters, are covering Imagine Cup and broadcasting live! Sit back, relax, and join in the fun.

ROCK THE VOTE!

There’s still time to choose your favourite team and help them win the People’s Choice Award. Vote for your favourite videos by July 9 and the winning team will go home with $10,000!

MEET THE FINALISTS!

The Imagine Cup yearbook lists the project descriptions and introduces you to the teams competing in Sydney. Read about their inspiring apps, and wish them luck! .

We are going to live stream the following Imagine Cup events,  here http://icsocialmediateam.com/live-stream/

Best of luck to Team EyeWork @teameyeworks from Newcastle College and Northumbria University representing the UK.

Microsoft Research’s Project Hawaii extends the Windows Phone with the power of the cloud. The smartphone provides the sensors, mobility, and data; the cloud provides powerful algorithms to enable scenarios that would otherwise not be possible. The newly released Project Hawaii Software Development Kit (SDK) 2.0, developed by the Mobility and Research Group, has added four more cloud services to Project Hawaii’s existing line-up, namely:

· Key value pair, which enables the storage of any data in the cloud—easily and quickly

· Translation, which, well, translates from one language to another

· Text to speech, which does just what its name implies

· Path prediction, which narrows location searches based on the direction of travel

Microsoft Research continues to offer Project Hawaii to a growing list of universities worldwide (50 by spring 2012), with more than 2,000 students already using the Hawaii SDK in the last year or so.

Take a look at some of these exciting projects developed by students.

If your interested in the opportunities of Hawaii Learn more about Project Hawaii by reading the following blog.

If your interested in experimenting with Hawaii you can download the SDK.

LIVE Coverage of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, July 16–17, 2012

For the first time, we'll be broadcasting the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit live. We will stream the keynotes from the Faculty Summit plus entertaining interviews with scientific and academic visionaries who will discuss how they're tackling some of today's top research and computer science challenges.

Join us for the live broadcast of the Faculty Summit on July 16 and 17, 9:00 A.M. to 1:30 P.M. Pacific Time.

· See what’s in store and view the Faculty Summit broadcast live.

· Join the conversation through Twitter hashtag #FacSumm.

Visit Microsoft Research website: Microsoft Research Connections

So how do you go about developing Metro Style Apps for Windows 8?

‘Metro style’ apps are built for the new Metro touch interface for Windows 8, and will be able to run on any Windows 8 device, whether that’s full function PCs and laptops, or the different kind of Windows 8 slate devices running Intel or ARM chips. If you’re already testing the Windows 8 Release Preview, you’ll know that an Intel-based computer running Windows 8 can run all of your existing Windows software, plus the new Metro style apps.

Microsoft Surface http://www.surface.com  

Useful resources to building Windows 8 Metro Style apps

• MSDN Webcast series on developing Windows 8 Metro style apps
• Jennifer Marsman’s new series: Developing a Windows 8 Metro App
  • Part One: Why Would You Want to Develop a Metro Application for Windows 8?
  • Part Two: Getting Started
• Porting an iPad app to a Metro app – this article, focused on design, shows how to transition between these user experiences
• Rethinking a website as a Metro app – shows the design process of reimagining a food truck website as a Metro app
• Migrating a web app to a Metro style app – development and conversion of a front-end web app to a Metro app using HTML/JavaScript
• Migrating a website to a Metro style app – this short article is focused on development and discusses some back-end considerations like communication, streaming, security, client package deployment, data sharing, and syndication
• Migrate/port a Windows Phone 7 app to a Metro style app

Resources from TechEd Europe

A Selection of useful videos from Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012 on Metro Style App development

FREE Ebook

• The life story of a Metro Style App
• Quickstart
• App Anatomy and Page Navigation
• Controls, Control Styling, and Basic Data Binding

And the further 14 chapters will come out over the next few months. But if you’re interested in getting started, or you’ve got students that you know will want to have a go, then this is a good start.

You can either download it in PDF directly, or go and read a bit more about it on the Microsoft Press blog.

Here’s a long list of more free technical ebooks from Microsoft Press.

Many of you are now using Moodle, as your Virtual Learning Environment and have access to Microsoft's SkyDrive via Live@edu.

Were pleased to announce that the Moodle community has developed and released a plugin for Moodle 2.3 which allows students to save their files into SkyDrive, directly in the cloud, from Moodle.

You can find out more, and download the SkyDrive plugin from the Moodle website

Note, this plugin doesn't come from Microsoft, but from the Moodle open-source community.

The Generation App website, from the Windows Phone team, is a really well structured guide to developing apps for the Windows Phone. And ‘well structured’ means that it talks you through a 30-day plan to design, build, test, distribute and monetize applications for Windows Phone – and connects to all of the resources you will need in the form of training, documentation, tools etc.

Don't forget as Educators, Academics and Students you get access to DreamSpark so you get Visual Studio 2010, Windows Phone and Azure tools for FREE and also a FREE Apphub Account to upload your finished apps to the marketplace.

For students, it’s almost like a ready-made summer school course, and where you’ve got students who are already programming, but want to move onto advanced projects, this seems like just the perfect resource.

Remember, we have lots more FREE academic resources available at Microsoft Faculty Connection resources including a full academic curricula for Windows Phone see http://www.Microsoft.com/faculty

The Microsoft IT Academy Program can provide benefits to all parts of a school or college. Here are a few of the core functions and the potential benefits that will be most relevant.

Here is a set of current questions which the UK Academic and Education teams have received..

The Head of School

· I need to present my school as being an attractive selection for parents and to make a significant contribution to the wider community

· I have seen the Microsoft IT Academy advertised but I can’t see how it would benefit our school

· We aren’t really delivering many IT subjects, so how would it help us?

· The budget is very tight so can we afford it?

A member of The Governing Body

· Our school should be seen as progressive and modern

· We must be able to meet budgets

· We have a wider brief in the community

· We have a responsibility to students and parents

A Parent

· I expect my children’s school to be progressive and aligned to industry and the labour market

· Can the school help to develop my IT skills?

· Will my children have a clearly defined progression route if they choose IT as a subject

· Is it a quality controlled progam and will it lead to sound industry work skills

A Student

· I expect my school to be progressive and linked to real life employment skills

· I want more from IT than just hardware – perhaps some excitement with new technologies

· Are there creative programs that might help me be employed?

· Could I explore a wide range of technologies?

The Curriculum Manager

· Is the supply of materials cost effective?

· I need a comprehensive solution to reduce the overhead for the teaching staff

· Are there programs of learning and certifications at all levels

· Will the curriculum be just for the IT tutor or can we use it throughout the school?

The IT Tutor

· We teach user and technical skills

· Can we deliver globally recognized certifications?

· Will the curriculum save me time and money?

· Can I get qualified myself?

The Science (or any other) Tutor

· We use spreadsheets to record information, so will it help my students?

· I need to know what IT skills my students have at the moment

· I could possibly improve my class room delivery if I used the newer features of presentation software

· I need to understand new technologies to develop learning solutions with my students

The IT Manager

· We are upgrading our technology and I need to refresh the IT skills of our team

· Could I become a Microsoft Certified Trainer?

· Could we develop cost reductions through the use of new technologies?

· We must keep current!

A Teaching Assistant

· I need to maintain and improve my skills to develop my career

· Can I reach a basic level of IT literacy so that I can build on these skills?

· I now have to use e-mail

· It would be good to achieve academic or vocational qualifications

The School administration office

· I have been asked to produce marketing material to promote our IT capability

· We mainly use Microsoft Office programs and we need to understand about databases

· How can we check the IT Skills of new entrants?

· It would be good if there was a clear progression route in IT skills

The Facilities Manager

· If all my team used e-mail we could share calendars

· I came in to this role for my service skills, but now I find I need to multi-task and be fully IT literate

· I have already completed a vocational course, perhaps there are IT certifications or similar qualifications

· I have been asked to look at the cabling, so it would be good to understand networking!

The Vocational Tutor

· My students need to be work ready – some will need advanced technology or IT user skills

· Is there mapping between Microsoft certifications and vocational Units?

· It’s the fundamental skills that the students need before they enter the workplace or the next steps in education

· It would be good if there was a basics course and perhaps some understanding of everyday technologies

The Community Team

· We can make best use of our resources by spreading our skills in to the community and adding value to the school from those contacts

· Our charter expects us to make the campus available for all

· We have excellent contact with parents and relatives, many who need basic IT literacy skills so that they can use our web site/portal/e-mail

· Are there opportunities to generate revenue and goodwill?

Here the solutions/answers to some of these questions

Within UK Academia, there are large areas of crossover, and opportunities which exist for innovative use of the ITA membership.

This list just represents a starting point and helps address the concerns and question raised by the stakeholders listed above!

Mapping Professional Curricula and certification to course and awards

Please see the following QCF Mapping of Microsoft Certification/Courses to Related Awarding Body and Qualifications

Get Help Implementing a Microsoft Certification Program

Now is the time to implement a Microsoft Certification program to help your students validate what they’ve learned. Your local Microsoft Academy Service Partner (MASP) can help.

Your local Microsoft Academy Service Partner (MASP) can help you establish a Microsoft Certification program that’s right for your institution. Whether you want to become a testing center to help students get certified on campus or promote the benefits of Microsoft Certification and refer students to another testing location, your local MASP can help you turn your plans into reality for more details contact our Education MASP Mike Evans, Director – ITSkillsman, www.itskillsman.co.uk

The spring 2012 release of Windows Azure has many great new features and capabilities including new services focused on helping customers build or bring their applications to the cloud in their own unique way. These new services include: Windows Azure Web Sites, Virtual Machines, and Media Services.

These new services, along with several other enhancements, pricing updates, and availability in new countries went live on June 7th. for more details see the following presentation from Scott Guthrie and special academic trials and pricing at http://www.windowsazure.com/education

As your aware from my previous posts, I attended Microsoft TechEd Europe, the premier IT Conference with a  number of the UK IT Pro team and spent the week in Amsterdam, talking to, Academics Developers and IT Pros from the academic sector, whilst supporting Microsoft TechNet and Microsoft Virtual Academy programs at the Geek Lounge and learning more about this new wave of products that are on the horizon.

During this week there will have been 350 sessions for IT Pros and Developers, there were nearly 600 UK IT Pros and Developers in attendance:

Keynote Day 1 -  from Brad Anderson, Jason Zander & Scott Guthrie

It was clear from the demos that Microsoft is the only company to deliver the cloud OS.  We have the knowledge, the people and the ability: Our Azure service now provides the equivalent of all the worlds computing power from 1999!  We serve half a billion Live IDs a day!   The key note was full of amazing demos and the power of Hyper V was clearly demonstrated with the  hypervisor technology "Hyper-V" demonstrating a maximum throughput of 1 million operations per second in a VM. That's three times faster than VMware.

There were some great press reviews see http://www.itworld.com/software/282465/7-key-takeaways-teched-europe-day-1 so please do watch the keynote http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2012/KEY01

Keynote Day 2 – Day 2 moved onto Windows 8 for the Enterprise. 

Antoine Leblond talked to the benefits of Window 8 for business.  His demo of Windows-to-go received a round of applause.   He talked about the shift from desktop to mobile and that next year he expected to see more tablets sold than desktop PCs.  There were also demos showing that Windows 8 is still going to be a great experience on desktop machines.  Again the keynote was full of excellent demos so please watch the keynote here http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2012/KEY02

The rest of the week has been spent attending sessions, discussing technologies and changes to the future of Windows along with the opportunities of Azure within education.  

I would encourage you to ask your teams who attend the event about their experiences and get them to share the buzz and insight to the weeks learning which they received, if you weren't fortunate enough to attend the sessions then feel free to watch the presentation at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Europe/2012/

We are excited to announce the launch of a new Courseware Marketplace for both IT Academies and Microsoft Learning Partners on July 31^st 2012. 

The new Webshop will make available the ability to customise and order digital content to IT Academies for the first time.

Some of the new features will include:

· One stop shop – for all printed and digital content, including digital discounts

· Customisation – ability to modularise and customise specific courseware from our entire catalogue

· Collaboration – share and highlight amongst classes and for yourself

· E-Reader – access content online and offline including your course notes

· New Technology – Metro Windows 8 App at Windows 8 launch

To find out more about the new features and how they can help you save costs and time as well as deliver great new technology courses and experiences for your students, sign up to one of our free webinars below.

• July 4, 2012 11:00am CET- Central European Time (register now)
• July 18, 2012 1:00pm CET - Central European Time (register now)
• July 25, 2012 11:00am CET - Central European Time (register now)