We held a meeting today, with 18 college Principal’s and IT Directors, which was both a briefing session, and an opportunity for discussion about the changes going on in the FE sector currently. It was a much more informal, and interactive, meeting than last week’s full FE Briefing, and had a mix of Microsoft speakers, as well as Cathy Ellis from Becta, Paul Wakeling from Havering Sixth Form College, and Tim Jackson & Anne Haynes from Sparsholt College.
The slides (but obviously not all the discussion that accompanied them!) are all available to download from here.
If you’re a college principal (or you’re running IT in a college, and want to persuade your Principal to join you next time we have one of these discussion days, then drop an email to Amanda Bicknell. (Amanda is our Business Manager for Further Education in the UK).
The beauty of saving power, is that you’re also saving money. And in the case of laptops, that applies to home use as well as use on campus. So there’s an incentive for staff to want to manage their power use more effectively. So maybe this article will be of use for your internal IT newsletters too?
The Windows team, over at windows.microsoft.com, have released a new video on “saving power on the go”, which is all about using the power settings on your laptop to stretch out your battery life, and reduce the power use. The video is a very simple walkthrough of what you can do (designed for normal people, not geeks!) and then there are also a series of short articles on:
Conserving battery power
Change what happens when you close your laptop
Power plans: frequently asked questions
Sleep and hibernation: frequently asked questions
A short list of hints on conserving battery power are:
Quickly find all the other Money Saving Tips on this blog
Every day is a day closer to the Office 2010 release (due on 12th May for volume licence customers, and June for consumers). And I know of quite a few UK education institutions that are widely using the free Office 2010 beta in teaching already.
If you’re preparing for a rapid roll out of Office 2010, or even if you’re just looking for more information to help you consider your plans, then you’ll be interested in the free ebook from the Microsoft Learning team. It’s called “First Look- Microsoft Office 2010”, and over it’s 186 pages it talks you through some of the most significant enhancements in the Office suite. I’m impressed with the collaboration that Office 2010 encourages, and have got very used to doing things like broadcasting PowerPoint over the internet, and the options to save my files to my SkyDrive on the web, rather than on my local hard disk.
I’ve been using Office 2010 for over six months now, and there are key bits of it that I would definitely not be able to do without now. This ebook does a very good job of explaining all of that, and helping you and your academic staff to get ahead.
My advice? Download it now and pass it around.
Quickly find all the other Office 2010 posts on this blog
Our technical team have put together a fantastic week of technical events from 12-16 April in London. Despite hosting them in a cinema, most of them were full within hours of announcing them, but if you’ve got the chance to get to one, I’d recommend adding your name to the Wait List for the events – because you may get a chance to attend if there are dropouts, and the team will also let you know about the recordings available afterwards.
The subjects to be covered are:
You can find out more, and register yourself onto the Wait List on the techdays website. At the moment, there are still places available for the Friday, and the rest are Wait List only (check current availability here)
If you’re developing software, then there are still places available for some of the developer events – run in parallel, in another London cinema.
We’ve just issued the third edition of our accessibility guide for education, and it’s available as a download from our accessibility site. The site also includes a number of accessibility video case studies.
The Accessibility: A Guide for Educators has been updated to include information on Windows 7 accessibility features, and current assistive technology product recommendations.
This guide provides information about accessibility and accessible technology to help teachers ensure that all students have equal access to learning with technology, specifically:
Download the Accessibility Guide for Educators
Huddle.net is a web-based collaboration system, which is designed to complement existing learning management systems or virtual learning environments by providing additional tools such as file sharing, task management, discussion forums and live collaboration. It recently won the Microsoft SharePoint SocialFest competition, because of the way that it sits alongside SharePoint – for example, to allow you to widen collaboration to people outside of your own college. With Huddle for SharePoint 2010, you can invite external teams to collaborate with you inside your SharePoint environment.
You can use it to connect with students, tutors, partners and suppliers outside of your own network – or with other colleges. Huddle for SharePoint 2010 allows you to enable your users to invite external teams to collaborate with them inside your SharePoint environment. They can publish documents to or from Huddle workspaces, manage authentication and synchronise their data with other, unconnected SharePoint sites. And your SharePoint users can access their files through Huddle's online, mobile and social networks. It’s clever because it takes your existing college SharePoint, and adds more powerful collaboration to it.
The team at Huddle are holding an event here at our offices in Reading next month, where you can learn more about our Cloud strategy, the SharePoint 2010 introduction, and the Huddle integration. Here’s the details from the Huddle team:
We would like to cordially invite you to the preview of the Huddle SharePoint Connector, which aims to revolutionise the way education organisations use Microsoft SharePoint externally. Huddle for SharePoint means companies can now work securely and easily with people outside of their institution through their existing SharePoint installation. Our connector also joins up separate instances of SharePoint allowing external users to use either their own SharePoint site or Huddle to work together. This concept has recently won a global Microsoft design competition.
Jointly with Microsoft we will be hosting a free event on Wednesday 14th April 2010. The agenda will be:
9.30am - Coffee and registration
10.00am – Welcome
10.15am – Microsoft: Cloud Computing Strategy
10:45 - SharePoint 2010: A Platform for Learning
11.15am – Coffee
11.45am - Introduction to Huddle & SharePoint integration
12.45pm - Customer case studies
1pm - Lunch and depart
The event will take place at Microsoft's offices at Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading RG6 1WG. The spaces are limited, so please let us know as soon as possible if you are able to attend by e-mailing .
If you’d like to attend, then email Pauline at Huddle directly, and she’ll add you to the attendee list.
Today was the date for our Further Education Briefing 2010, and around 90 colleges came to our London headquarters to get an update on latest news from us, as well as hearing from other UK colleges on their projects and plans.
I’ve put a brief note on each of the individual presentations below, so that you can see what was covered, and download the associated slides. There’s also a link at the bottom of the post to download all of the slides from my SkyDrive.
Amanda Bicknell kicked off the day with an overview of the pressures on Further Education colleges today. There’s plenty of doom and gloom on budgets generally, and IT budgets in particular (5% of people in the room expected a standstill IT budget next year, whilst the rest expected a decline). And one of the results of that is that many colleges are keen to understand what their ICT resources can do to help with organisational efficiency – and helping to transform the learning process. Download Amanda’s introduction slides here.
The next session was a look over the horizon at the future, with me telling a story of how people may work in the future, and the technology and learning implications. I used our ‘Productivity Vision’ video, which looks at the workplace of 2019, and then continued by deconstructing the technology behind the video – to look at what exists now – either in research labs or in real life - and how the components might build to get to the vision described for the future.U nfortunately, I can’t share the whole presentation (I used a multimedia, interactive piece of software to present it), but I can share the short video that I used as the introduction, which is the starting point for the story I told.
You can view the video on our Officlabs Envisioning website, and you can also watch a video as Ian Sands, Director of Envisioning, steps through the video scene by scene and describes in greater depth the story behind the people and technology on display.
A number of people asked me after my presentation about the interactive tool I’d used for it. And the secret is pptPlex, which is an add-in for PowerPoint 2007. It allows you to build amazingly interactive presentations, and also allows you to move around a storyboard in a completely non-linear way
Chris Rothwell gave a brief overview, and then a fast-paced demonstration of Office 2010 – including the Office Web Applications. One of his early statements was that there’s a growing tension between end-users and IT departments, where users want more freedom, and IT teams are managing risks and controls. He demonstrated how users can collaborate more effectively (As he put it, “In the workplace today, it's not about what 'I' produce, but about what 'we' produce together”). He also announced that OneNote will be included in every Office 2010 suite - which is good news for education and students. In the past it has not been standard in the lower-end education versions, which has created a barrier to its widespread use. Download Chris’s slides here
James Nicholls then covered SharePoint 2010. Most of his session demonstrated our internal use of SharePoint 2010, but there are some introductory slides. You can download James’s slides here.
About half of the room had already heard of Live@edu already, and about 10% had already implemented in in their college. It allows colleges to outsource their email and collaboration support for students (and staff, if you wish), and we then run the service (at no-cost) in our data centre in Dublin. You can find out more (and register for a test domain) on Live@edu, then go to www.microsoft.com/liveatedu) You can download Chris’s Live@edu slides here
Alan Brown told an engaging story about the Canterbury College IT strategy, talking about how they outsourced their college email service to our Live@edu service. Interestingly one of the key money savings that Alan described was the use of SkyDrive to reduce their in-house storage needs – and also helping them with their virus protection (because the data has to pass through all of the firewalls and end-point protection systems, rather than simply plugging in USB sticks) You can download Alan’s slides here.
Alan also mentioned the marketing materials available to help his college promote the service to students. Here’s the link to the resources.
Chris Rothwell (presenting for the third time of the day) gave a brief overview of the different ways that our projects with the Open Source community can benefit colleges, including details on our Moodle webparts for Live@edu Download Chris’s Open Source slides
I gave a brief introduction to some of the work we have been doing with schools on cost savings, where had identified a potential to directly save almost £400,000 over 3 years by effective IT provision. The details are in the slides, and the request was for colleges who want to model something similar to contact me by email to take part. Download the Cost Saving slides
Graham Bell, one of Microsoft’s desktop virtualisation specialists, gave an excellent summary of our desktop virtualisation tools. There’s a range of tools, collectively called the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack, which provides a set of management tools which can save £50-£60 per desktop device per year in running costs. It also massively simplifies the management of applications – reducing the roll out time and cost for upgrades or new applications. Graham mentioned the Warwickshire County Council education case study, which you can read here. Graham’s slides are here.
James Mortlock, Director of IT at Salford City College talked about their use of Office Communications Server. It was originally started as a project just within the IT teams across the college, but then realised that the benefits of being able to use an integrated voice/instant messenger/video/desktop sharing system were so significant it could have a big impact on college. They are implementing across 800 staff and 5 separate telephony systems, so it is a big project due for completion in July 2010. The total cost of implementation is £35,000, and will save a minimum of £23,000 a year. Download James’s slides here
The last session of the day was on the Microsoft IT Academy programme, by Gareth Scahill, from Prodigy Learning. They are our UK delivery partners for the IT Academy programme. Download the IT Academy slides here.
All of the slides from today are available in the folder below (or use this link)
Hopefully, you already know about The Ultimate Steal, which is our special student offer on Office 2007. It allows your students to buy Office 2007 Ultimate for just £38.95 – as long as you’ve issued them with a .ac.uk email address. And because it is the Ultimate edition, they will get absolutely the whole Office suite in one neat package*.
So students can complete their work quicker, make it look nicer and organise it more easily.
Since 5th March, any student or member of staff (we tell by asking them to register on the site with their ‘ac.uk’ email address) has had an added bonus because they are entitled to get a upgrade to Office 2010 when it is released (it comes as a digital download).
If you’ve got students who want to buy Office, but are waiting for the next version, then all of their worries are over!
We’ve been running this special offer each year for the last 3 years now, and although students have become increasingly aware of it, it may be worth reminding them – either from placing a link on your intranet, or letting them know by email or in your newsletters.
ps You can also pick up Windows 7 with a student discount from The Ultimate Steal site too.
* They get the latest versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, as well as Outlook, Publisher, Access, Groove and InfoPath. At £38.95, it’s about 90% off estimated retail price. But you’ve got to have a student or faculty email address with a .ac.uk domain from a UK higher or further education institution.
The booking deadline is approaching for our Further Education Briefing day, which this year falls on 19th March in London. If you haven’t registered yet, then it’s worth taking a look at the agenda, as we’ve built it to make sure that you can get lots of value from the day – whether it is learning about new products that will be covered by an existing Campus Agreement, or it is thinking about the ways that you can use your ICT strategy to save money across your college.
Microsoft will be holding our annual Further Education Briefing on 19th March 2010 at our London offices in Victoria. The agenda for the event runs from 9:45 to 3:00 with breaks to catch up with colleagues from other colleges.
As well as getting the latest news on Microsoft’s product roadmap, there will be the opportunity to hear from other colleges and to hear how they are responding to the economic pressures that all colleges are feeling. Of course, this current academic year is full of launches of new Microsoft products, and we’ll be able to use the day to bring all of this into context – explaining the value and relative importance of some of the key new product launches still to come.
The event will be suitable for senior managers, whether or not they are involved in IT strategy on a day-to-day basis.
09:15 Registration and coffee 09:45 Welcome and Introduction 10:00 Looking ahead a decade: The future vision of work 10:40 Office 2010 11:05 Break 11:20 Microsoft SharePoint 2010 11:45 Live@edu 12:10 Lunch 13:00 When budgets don’t meet aspirations - Customer case study 13:25 Linking Moodle to your Microsoft infrastructure 13:35 Introduction to “Cost saving and Revenue Raising” 13:40 Virtualisation to reduce costs 14:10 Office Communications Server 14:40 The Microsoft IT Academy 15:00 Summary and close
09:15 Registration and coffee
09:45 Welcome and Introduction
10:00 Looking ahead a decade: The future vision of work
10:40 Office 2010
11:05 Break
11:20 Microsoft SharePoint 2010
11:45 Live@edu
12:10 Lunch
13:00 When budgets don’t meet aspirations - Customer case study
13:25 Linking Moodle to your Microsoft infrastructure
13:35 Introduction to “Cost saving and Revenue Raising”
13:40 Virtualisation to reduce costs
14:10 Office Communications Server
14:40 The Microsoft IT Academy
15:00 Summary and close
Amanda Bicknell, the Microsoft UK Further Education Business Manager will lead the day, introducing experts from Microsoft and case studies from our customers.
We’ll be holding the briefing at our offices in Victoria, and there will be plenty of Microsoft colleagues available for discussions.
You can book your place online now
I was suprised to discover I hadn’t blogged this before. So if you’ve renewed an anti-virus subscription for your home computer since last October, when this was launched, then I’m sorry!
We have launched a free anti-virus programme, Microsoft Security Essentials, which is for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, and comes with lifetime updates. It’s simple to install and very easy to use. And free.
The “free” bit is restricted to home users, because we don’t believe that this is the right solution for campus-wide anti-virus protection. You need a centrally managed anti-virus solution, where you can force settings so that all of your machines are updated automatically all the time, and that your users can’t switch off updates. For campus use, there’s Microsoft Forefront, which is a cost-effective managed protection system (free trial here)
Here’s the official blurb:
Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.
Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.
Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.
If you’ve got students who are bringing in files on a memory stick, or uploading things to your systems, then it’s in your interest to help them get protected, to reduce the risk of virus infections on your campus computers.
Here’s a banner and link that you could put onto your website or intranet:
And there’s also an image that you could use for your noticeboards for staff or students.