Ben Nunney, who writes the UK Live@edu blog, has just finished updating the Live@edu Implementation Guide. It covers a wide range of advice and guidance that is helpful as you plan to move your email services to the free Live@edu service, based in our cloud datacentres in Dublin. (This link will tell you more about what Live@edu is)
The guide is specifically written for IT managers and others who are responsible for the university IT infrastructure. Some of the guidance that you’ll find include:
If you’re planning a deployment, or your curious to see just how much control you still retain when you move to an outsourced mail service, then Ben’s guide is incredibly helpful.
Download the Live@edu Implementation Guide
Thanks to some research I’m doing on behalf of a university in North East England, one of my colleagues in the US passed on details of the University of Kentucky and the project to implement a unified communications platform. This has surfaced both a Microsoft and Gartner case study.
In summary the Gartner study shows how the university implemented a Unified Communications solution to:
The Gartner case study is stated as being explicitly for the UK, which is interesting to note. Naturally, the technology deployed is my current favourite – Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. In the UK, getting on for forty universities now have the software licences to deploy OCS across their campus which means that these could already be achieving the savings, efficiencies and enhancements that is written about in the case studies. In addition to this, those universities could also federate to enhance communication and collaboration with other HE institutions, research partners/funders, employers and students.
Gartner’s assessment is here: http://www.enablingtechcorp.com/Portals/0/case_study_university_of_ken_165580.pdf
Microsoft’s write up is here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/d/d/7dde979d-2cd7-4104-a4da-5274a763d130/UofKentucky_OCS_Final.doc
When I wrote about the Ultimate Steal, I said it was for university students and staff with a .ac.uk email address. There’s also a requirement that if you’re a Higher Education student, you must be enrolled in an undergraduate or postgraduate level course. And although that was straightforward for most students, it turned out to be quite tricky for Open University students. With the nature of their studies, it sometimes turned out to be difficult to work out whether somebody was actually doing a degree or not!
So this year, after some negotiations with our dear lawyerly-friends, we have made a leap and extended the offer out to ANY registered Open University student who has one of their ‘open.ac.uk’ email addresses and also to all OU staff.
Which means that, if you’re an OU student, regardless of which course you are on, and how many modules you’re currently studying, you’re eligible for the Ultimate Steal
If you've ever been lucky enough to get to Tech·Ed, you'll know that some of the best technical presenters are there, presenting some of the most useful technical content for IT managers. Each year over 100 people from UK educational institutions travel out to it (this year, it was in Berlin), but I know that many, many more people want to attend, but simply can't get sign off for the costs.
What is fantastic is that all of the main sessions are recorded and are now available free online. So this is the site to visit if you want to know all about DirectAccess troubleshooting, or Failover Cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2 - or you simply want to watch a keynote, or learn about our views on authentication and passwords, or get an industry view on the latest hacking techniques (and what you can do to defend against them).
You can find the videos and PowerPoint slides on the Tech·Ed site. And you can search by subject, rating, speaker etc. And even download them as a WMV or MP4, so that you can watch on your commute.
Recently, I've had a few conversations with Universities looking to use MOSS as their main Internet site Content Management System and in particular around the area of accessibility. In general, sites needing to meet AA standards require some development effort to help them on their way. In my role as the Higher Education Business Manager, this has been a fairly frequent conversation up and down the country. Of course, there are some excellent sites which have already been deployed in SharePoint that meet many accessibility criteria such as:
http://www.nhs.uk
http://www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk
http://www.wise-woman.net
These are wonderful examples of how a rich Enterprise Content Management system in all its glory is delivering superb web content to practically any audience.
In recognising that organisations wishing to deploy MOSS for portal, Intranet and Internet scenarios will need to consider accessibility Microsoft reached an agreement with HiSoftware to develop the Accessibility Kit for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. For more information on this, and its phased availability, please refer to the SharePoint blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/09/05/pre-announcing-the-accessibility-kit-for-sharepoint-aks.aspx
It's coming soon and I'm sure will be of interest to anyone considering MOSS for their Internet sites.
Thanks
I’ve indexed all of the different product guides for the new Office 2010 applications. There are two separate documents for most of the products – the Overview version is a short two-page summary, and then there’s a detailed Product Guide which goes into much more detail.
The Overview document is ideal for a quick staff introduction, to stick on walls, and for leaving around the IT rooms on campus – as well as for summarising the key points to help you to decide when you should consider upgrading your campus computers.
The detailed Product Guide is really useful for preparing training materials, or handouts to staff when you are starting to deploy Office 2010. It may help to enthuse them to use some of the new things where Office will help in their teaching and research - and to get them over the “Oh no, things have changed” reaction. Some of these Product Guides have more than 100 pages, so there’s no shortage of details. I also like the fact that they talk about new things that Office 2010 can do, and then show screen shots of the difference it makes.
Product
Overview
Product Guide
Download
Word 2010
Excel 2010
PowerPoint 2010
OneNote 2010
Outlook 2010
Publisher 2010
Access 2010
Not available
InfoPath 2010
SharePoint Workspace 2010
Office Web Apps
You can’t have failed to miss the offer we’ve been running for university students and staff – Office Ultimate 2007 for £38.95 – on www.theultimatesteal.co.uk
You may have missed the looming deadline – it closes on Wednesday night next week – so there are just five days to go
We’ve seen a rush of people mentioning it on blogs and forums suddenly, because it appears many students still haven’t heard of the offer. And we’ve also seen a burst of traffic from universities which have just announced the offer for the first time to their students. You may feel in an awkward position about promoting this – after all, we are selling something. But on the other hand, the deal for students and staff goes away next week, and after that point they will find the alternative to be (a) lower functionality and (b) more expensive – eg Home & Student from the shops.
If you do want to tell your students about it, then this post gives you some words & images.
Of the universities that have promoted it to their students (including Bristol – Kent – Stirling – Queens University Belfast Salford – QMU Edinburgh – Bradford – Middlesex – Loughborough) my favourite two are:
www.theultimatesteal.co.uk
With the recent announcement of the Kinect SDK there will, I am sure, be some great examples of interesting uses of Kinect within education appearing over the coming weeks.
In the meantime, I thought I would share the following videos of the Kinect in action. Impressive stuff!
Have you come across any interesting examples of the Kinect in action? It would be great if you could share what you have found in the comments below.
Also, how do you think Kinect can be best used for teaching and learning?
Furthermore, if you work in HE and are interested in the Kinect SDK, why not sign up to our launch event (21st June) to learn more.
Tim
Time to start being nice to the people that sign off your professional development budget? (I know, you always are…)
Tech Ed (also previously known as IT Forum) is in Barcelona again this year on the 3rd to the 7th November, and the agenda and registration information has just been released.
Tech Ed is the premier Microsoft technical education conference just for IT professionals. For five days, you and 5,000 of your peers will learn how to architect, plan, deploy, manage and secure a connected enterprise from Microsoft experts and industry leaders. You’ll get the chance to meet new people, get new ideas and be a part of the experience, including: Breakout Sessions: More than 190 technical sessions cover the latest Microsoft-based products. Interactive Sessions: Interactive Sessions are small and informal and provide you with an opportunity to interact with speakers, to ask questions and discuss topics. They can be a chalk-talk, based around a whiteboard or even an extended walk-through of a demo or product feature presented at an earlier Breakout Session. Interactive Sessions are 30-75 minutes in length and delivered in theatre-style format in rooms seating a maximum of 80 people. Self Paced Hands-on Labs: Evaluate products from Microsoft and our most important industry partners. Panel Discussions: Panel Discussions are lively debates with a mix of industry experts and Microsoft product team members on stage answering your questions. Panel Discussions are 75 minutes in length and delivered in theatre-style format in rooms seating 140 to 700 people. Instructor-Led Labs: Led by Microsoft product team members and industry experts and supported by MCTs. Hands-on product evaluation using individual desktop workstations in sessions running for 75 minutes in length - on a first-come first-served basis. Product Demos: Fast-paced demos that provide an overview of products and technologies delivered during the Lunch break in theatre-style format in rooms seating 140 to 700 people for up to 45 minutes in length. Connections with the community: 5,000 IT professionals to meet. 5,000 opinions to consider. 5,000 wits to engage and experiences to share. Add Microsoft product team members and industry gurus to the mix, and you'll see why a Tech·Ed EMEA IT Professional crowd is like no other. Take a look at some of the things we blogged from the conference last year
Tech Ed is the premier Microsoft technical education conference just for IT professionals. For five days, you and 5,000 of your peers will learn how to architect, plan, deploy, manage and secure a connected enterprise from Microsoft experts and industry leaders.
You’ll get the chance to meet new people, get new ideas and be a part of the experience, including:
Take a look at some of the things we blogged from the conference last year
Each year, 80+ delegates from UK universities attend the event – a number which has been increasing year-on-year. Which means that there’s a community of like-minded colleagues that you can share information with. Some of the MS UK Education team will be there too, and as usual we’ll be hosting a social evening, and a specific education session during the conference (Any ideas for what you’d like us to cover? That’s what the “Comment” button is for)
Many universities bring along 3 or 4 of the team – the agenda is so wide, and so deep, that it often makes sense to split up and go to different sessions, and then meet back up to compare notes.
When you register, you can save over €1,500 (and with the Euro the way it is, that’s a bigger saving than last year!).
Register using our specific Academic registration code (DLACMM9M) and you’'ll only have to pay €695 Euros. (With the Euro the way it is, that’s a little more. But that’s for five days of conference and training!)
Anyway, find out more on the Tech Ed site, and register here
See you in Barcelona!
(Oh, if you’re one of those people that would prefer to go the Tech Ed Developers conference instead, which is a week later, then you too can have a discount code of DLACBF4J. But you won’t get any of the joy of meeting up with education team, as we’ll all be tucked up back in the UK again)
I’ve just heard that the first ever Microsoft SQL Server Data Management Conference is being held in London on Tuesday September 29th. Although it is not an education-specific event, there is a good agenda with excellent presenters that could be of use to you if you are running complex databases. It’s obviously useful for IT managers, and information managers, database administrators and architects will find real value to add to their knowledge of how to get the most out of SQL Server.
The agenda focuses on some of the major data management challenges that we know SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition is more than ready to handle: high-performance and scalability, robust security, virtualisation, data warehousing and business intelligence.
The cast of presenters includes: Donald Farmer & Mark Linton from the SQL Server Development team Mark Whitehorn, independent consultant and author on databases and data management An array of Microsoft technical expertise on SQL Server, data management and Business Intelligence The agenda includes specific topics on using SQL Server in heterogeneous data environments (i.e. Oracle) and SQL Server as the data platform of choice for business critical applications such as SAP. It also includes a closer-look at the SQL Server 2008 R2 functionality in a presentation by Donald Farmer from the SQL Server development team.
The cast of presenters includes:
The agenda includes specific topics on using SQL Server in heterogeneous data environments (i.e. Oracle) and SQL Server as the data platform of choice for business critical applications such as SAP. It also includes a closer-look at the SQL Server 2008 R2 functionality in a presentation by Donald Farmer from the SQL Server development team.
The full agenda, which includes a choice of tracks for the afternoon, is available on the website
The event is free, and given that effective database management is top of the list for many organisations, you may want to book your place as soon as you can.
You can book directly on the Microsoft events website, or register by phone on 0870 166 6670 (quoting event reference 4125)