The UK Higher Education Blog

Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V was a game changer

Tim Bush — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:58:33 GMT

The arrival in 2009 of Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V was a game changer for schools. This release of Windows Server included virtualisation built-in, for free. It means that if you’re already using Microsoft technology, you can work within that without adding a new layer of infrastructure and training. As Microsoft puts it, “If you know Windows, you know virtualisation.”

The cost savings

Just how much could be potentially saved? At Microsoft we’ve recorded one or two striking examples. Servers typically cost £3000 each to replace, for example, often on a rolling annual programme.

We talked to three schools about this. Two were reducing from 20 servers to 5, the other from 20 to 6. All three separately calculated annual savings of about £7,000 a year in hardware replacement costs alone.

By the same token, many schools will significantly reduce the cost of contracted IT support. On top of this there are energy savings, because not only do fewer servers use less electricity, but they also cost less to keep cool. Again, the schools tell similar stories, of annual energy savings in the region of £8,000 to £10,000 – good for the school’s environmental impact as well as the budget. Do some simple math, come up with a global sum, and it seems that, at the very least, a virtualisation project will pay for itself quite quickly.

With the project successfully implemented, it will continue, year on year, to make a real impact on the whole-school budget. To give just one specific example, Steve Gillott, Head of ICT at Wootton Bassett School in Wiltshire, describes reducing his school’s servers from 13 to 3. “ It came to a point where we needed to replace the hardware anyway, so money was earmarked for that”.

After seeing a demonstration of Hyper-V by Microsoft Partner Clarity-IT Solutions we decided that the additional benefits of virtualising our server infrastructure was a much better investment than buying replacement servers. The cost savings in the first year alone paid for the virtualisation project.”

It was a decision that saved the school over £38,000 in that first year and continues to save £14,500 a year on
electricity and support contracts.

But does it work?

School network managers were originally cautious about virtualisation. The cost savings looked attractive, but there was a gut feeling that by abandoning the notion of one separate server box for each key function, you were doing something risky. One of the early adopters of Microsoft’s virtualisation solution, the highly experienced Alan Richards of West Hatch High School, ran a year-long small-scale test before he was convinced. Indeed Alan, as you’ll see in his excellent major contribution to our recent Virtualisation eBook (available to view or download below), still recommends a test project. Not so much to make sure the basic technology works, but to be certain of exactly what’s needed for the particular school.

Now, all the doubts about functionality and reliability have gone away. From its launch in 2009, Microsoft’s
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology, has been proving just how efficient and cost effective it can be. Plan properly and carefully, follow the key principles, take the right advice, and what you end up with is a virtualised environment that’s better than the system you had before – easier to manage and easier to change as your school’s needs change, and users aren’t subjected to irritating down time.

For Alan Richards at West Hatch it’s that improved service that really counts. “ It’s obviously nice to save money, but the main reason for the change is to ensure reliability and sustainability for the school. Alan’s right, but it’s also true that by moving in a planned way to a virtualised environment with Hyper-V, the network team is effectively presenting the school with a considerable financial bonus that continues year on year.

Virtualisation with Microsoft® Hyper-V

View more presentations from Microsoft Education UK

Microsoft UK Education Webcasts: New Dates Added!

Tim Bush — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

Further to our recent Education Desktop webcast, the next on our series of Live Webcasts have now been scheduled. Details are shown below. We hope you can join us!

System Center 2012 – An Overview

March 6th, 11am-12pm

System Center 2012 can transform your IT Infrastructure, from your Desktops, to your Data Centre and out to the Cloud. Join this session, presented jointly by Microsoft and a Microsoft System Center Partner to understand what System Center 2012 can do for you. This session will provide a good overview of the capabilities of the suite and also provide a “what’s new” update if you are aware of previous versions. You will also have chance to get your System Center questions answered by a Specialist.

https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/microsoft1/Registration.aspx?pageName=4k1xkfk0jldm71b8

SharePoint 2010 – An Overview for Education

March 27th, 11am-12pm

This session, presented by Dave Coleman, SharePoint MVP – will cover the key features of SharePoint 2010 –highlighting key education scenarios. Whether you are completely new to SharePoint or have experience with previous versions, this session will give a great recap, and provide a “what’s new” in this current release. You will also have the chance to get answers to any of your burning SharePoint questions.

https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/microsoft1/Registration.aspx?pageName=z9g4c4lktqqztkdr

Deploying Windows 7 – from Planning to Deployed
April 17th, 11am-12pm

This session will give you an overview of the key steps needed to plan for and deploy Windows 7 effectively.

There are a whole range of free tools and utilities from Microsoft that enable you to remove huge cost out of the deployment process. Including:

· How to simplify assessing your current PC estate for suitability

· Checking your application compatibility – and reducing the impact of any that aren’t compatible

· Application deployment methods to reduce your workload

· Capturing and migrating existing user data

· Automating deployments – from light touch to zero touch installations

The session will be relevant for IT managers in schools, colleges and universities

You will also have chance to get any of your deployment questions answered by a Microsoft Specialist.

https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/microsoft1/Registration.aspx?pageName=g44771637dlklvz2

End of Support for Microsoft Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003

Tim Bush — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:55:56 GMT

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Office 2003 will be reaching end of support in April 2014. We want to help you avoid the risk of running an unsupported version of Windows & Office, and to assist with your IT planning for 2012.

With this in mind, the objective of this Blog Post is to highlight the potential risks involved with the upcoming end of support of these products and to outline the options available to mitigate these risks.

What is the situation and potential risk?

Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will no longer be supported from April 8, 2014 onwards. After this date, Microsoft will not provide any public support for these products, including security patches, non-security hotfixes or incident support.

Running Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 in your environment after their end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as:

Security & Compliance Risks - Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to security risks. This may result in an officially recognized control failure by an internal or external audit body, leading to suspension of certifications, and/or public notification of the organization’s inability to maintain its systems and customer information
Lack of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) & Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Support – A recent industry report from Gartner Research suggests "many independent software vendors (ISVs) are unlikely to support new versions of applications on Windows XP in 2011; in 2012, it will become common". And it may stifle access to hardware innovation: Gartner Research further notes that in 2012, most PC hardware OEMs will stop supporting Windows XP on the majority of their new PC models. See Creating a Timeline for Deploying Windows 7 and Eliminating Windows XP SP3, June 2011.

What are the available options?

1. Upgrade - This option affords customers the best return on investment by deploying a modern PC with Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010. Whether you’re a small business or the largest corporation with offices worldwide, moving to a modern PC with Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010 offers your business the ability to improve productivity for your employees and increase operational efficiency through improved PC security and management.

To help customers with the migration/deployment process, Microsoft and our consulting partners offer several options including proof of concept (POC) and production pilot programs, available through Microsoft Consulting Services or one of our Certified Service Partners, to help you achieve a successful upgrade to Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010.

2. Purchase a Custom Support contract through Premier Support to stay on unsupported products – If, for any reason, you decide to remain on Windows XP SP3 or Office 2003 after support ends, you have the option to purchase Custom Support. As a condition of buying a Custom Support contract, you must have a Premier Support agreement and we ask our customers to have a migration plan in place. The cost of Custom Support is significantly higher than regular support, and rises annually due to the rising costs of supporting a legacy product.

3. Do nothing – Microsoft recommends customers avoid this option for it can put you at risk of potential security and compliance issues.

Where can you find more information?

Full details on Microsoft product support lifecycle is available at: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
Full details on end of support for Windows XP and Office 2003 is available at: www.microsoft.com/endofsupport
Full details on Microsoft Consulting Services that can help you design, deploy and support your Microsoft solutions are available at: http://www.microsoft.com/services
Full details on Microsoft deployment guidance, training and free deployment tools for your IT Professionals at: www.microsoft.com/springboard

How can we make our blog more relevant to your needs?

Tim Bush — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

I have a bit of a favour to ask. I want to ensure that the information we share via our blogs is relevant to your needs and continues to add value.

With this in mind, would you mind taking a minute out to give me an indication of what kind of content you would like to see more of over the coming months by completing the short poll below? We will always look to mix up the content types that we share on the blogs, but if there is a particular type or style of post that you enjoy most, let me know and I can work on ensuring that I post more of this kind of material.

Click Here for Poll Online Survey
Conjoint Analysis
| Polls
| Mobile Surveys

| Feedback Tab
View MicroPoll

Thanks in advance, and if there are any specific topics you would like us to address via the blog, please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Tim

Faculty Connection Registration - Want to stay informed of the latest technology and educational trends?

Tim Bush — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:01:30 GMT

Want to stay informed of the latest technology and educational trends?

When you become a verified Faculty Connection member, you gain access to benefits such as the latest technology news, faculty only material, and more.

How do you become a verified member?

Just send a email from your UK Academic email address, including your Job title and institution to ukfac@microsoft.com

We want you to be assured that Faculty Connection is a community of your peers, so that's why we ask all members to complete this initial step. We will then send you a Faculty Connection verification code to allow you to register to this resource.

We want you to stay connected to the UK Faculty Connection program and by subscribing to the Faculty Connection resources, including the Linkedin Group and dedicated newsletters, we can keep up-to-date on the latest information about new curriculum resources, research projects, software tools, workshops, etc.

If you have not subscribed to the Faculty Connection newsletter simply send us a email to ukfac@microsoft.com requesting your validation code and then click the Register button at http://www.microsoft.com/faculty

It is easy and quick.

Need to Check your Subscription?

Not sure if you have already subscribed to the Faculty Connection newsletter? Click the Check Subscription and review your profile.

Instructions:

Sign in with your Windows Live ID
If you see Faculty Connection Newsletter in the Your Subscriptions column then you are all set
If you don’t see the Faculty Connection Newsletter in the Your Subscriptions column select it from the list of Available Communications and click Subscribe
Click Save

That’s all there is to it!

Originally posted on the Microsoft UK Faculty Connection Blog

Learning Without Frontiers 2012: First batch of videos now available

Tim Bush — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:11:09 GMT

The folks at Learning Without Frontiers have made the first batch of videos from the 2012 conference available online. The remainder of the videos will apparently be released in batches over the coming weeks.

As discussed in my recent posts on the conference (check them out here and here if you missed them), Learning Without Frontiers was one of the most thought provoking conferences I have attended in some time.

I am not going to post every video shared from the #LWF12 team, but thought it might be useful to add a couple of the videos to the blog. I will post additional sessions that I found particularly interesting to the blog when available.

In the meantime, the stand out sessions from the initial batch of videos are as follows:

Virtualisation with Microsoft®Hyper-V (New eBook)

Tim Bush — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:39:21 GMT

We’re conditioned to assume, especially in education, that a cost-saving measure will threaten the quality of what we’re able to offer. That being so, the news is more than welcome that in many schools, colleges and universities, information technology professionals are turning that assumption on its head. They have found a proven way not only of saving significant sums of money for their institutions, but of doing so while delivering better and more effective ICT for staff and students.

Already the questions are forming. How is that done? Can any school do it? Exactly what cost savings are in the offing? Is the end product really good enough for us?

Our latest eBook, titled ‘Virtualisation with Hyper-V’, attempts to provide you, a decision-maker in a school, college or university, with the information you need to make informed decisions about how to save money within your institution. One of the solutions, and the key focus of this eBook, lies in server virtualisation using Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

Within this eBook, we’ll tell you what Hyper-V is already doing for real UK schools, and arguably more importantly, in broad terms what it could do for your school.

The content covered within this eBook is structured in two parts. Part 1 provides a non-technical introduction to the concept of server virtualisation. Part 2 presents a more technical guide to help you implement a virtualised environment.

This eBook has been co-authored by Alan Richards, West Hatch High School, and Gerald Haigh. The full eBook can be viewed and/or downloaded below.

Virtualisation with Microsoft® Hyper-V

View more presentations from Microsoft Education UK

The Microsoft Education Desktop (Webcast)

Tim Bush — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:30:00 GMT

What does the modern education desktop from Microsoft look like today? This webcast talks about how Windows 7, Office 2010 and Learning Suite, to name a few, come together to provide more engaging learning experiences for learners, while also saving costs.

Furthermore, if you are responsible for managing the desktops within your institution, this webcast shares some insight into MDOP with adds significant value and removes cost from the process of managing the desktop environment.

Finally, while not specifically a licensing orientated session, an overview will also be given on the CAL Suites.

The Microsoft Education Desktop

View more videos from Microsoft Education UK

If you have any questions about the Modern Education Desktop from Microsoft, please leave your questions in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to view the webcast and if you have any ideas for future topics, we would love to hear them. Again, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Tim

Hosting your Moodle on Windows Azure

Tim Bush — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

Moodle hosting in the Cloud via Windows Azure

There are two projects currently available for hosting Moodle on Windows Azure, both on CodePlex (Microsoft's open source project hosting site, which hosts over 200,000 projects currently):

http://moodle2azure.codeplex.com/ This is a port of Moodle 2.x Course Management System to Azure platform.

http://moodleazure.codeplex.com/ Enable Moodle 1.9.9 to run on Windows Azure and SQL Azure

Both of these projects are on CodePlex, there's a community of support on the site for advice as you start to implement and use them there are a number of other moodle associated codeplex projects and a whole forum on the Moodle community website for Windows users

Originally posted on the UK Faculty Connection Blog

Microsoft Student Tech Clubs

Tim Bush — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

There are many ways to learn technology around the world. We realise that sometimes the way students can master professional tools is on their own time with their friends.

Microsoft goal is to support them with the access to tools, training and a platform to connect.

Student Tech Clubs are communities of students, problem solvers, challenge seekers, people who love to discover everything they can do with the latest technology.

The program is there to help students to start and run a Student Tech Club at their institution or to help support existing student computer societies.

Tools like surveys, member administration, newsletters, invitations to events, event calendar, support materials created by Microsoft Product Groups, access to speakers and resources are some of the features they can take advantage today using this initiative.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Student Tech Clubs at your school or campus, please see the following presentation which contains all the information and advice.

How To Start Your Student Tech Club

View more presentations from Lee Stott

Originally posted on the UK Microsoft Faculty Connection Blog.

Using a BlackBerry with Office 365

Tim Bush — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:07:00 GMT

Originally posted on the Live@edu blog.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could use your BlackBerry to access Office 365? Well, now you can! Yesterday RIM officially announced that BlackBerry Business Cloud Services was available for Office 365 customers.

Key features:

Wireless synchronization with Microsoft Exchange Online email, calendar and organizer data from a BlackBerry smartphone
BlackBerry® Balance™ technology, which presents a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry smartphone while keeping the content separate and secure
An intuitive web-based console for IT administrators to provision, manage and secure BlackBerry smartphones from anywhere
Online access to employee self-service smartphone security functions, allowing users to easily reset a device password or remotely lock or wipe a device in the event of loss or theft

The service is available today in over 50 countries. Customers can go to www.blackberry.com/cloudservices to get started.

Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference - Core Points and Conclusions (Part 2)

Tim Bush — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:39:11 GMT

Part 2 of my Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference summary.

Last week I attended the Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference. My post yesterday introduced my initial 3 (of 5) core points gained from the conference. My final 2, and a short conclusion, are presented in this post. As mentioned yesterday, this only skims the surface and I would highly recommend viewing the video content from the conference when it is made available on the conference website. Some amazing content was presented!

Point 4: Conrad Wolfram (Wolfram Research Europe)

Conrad Wolfram, the founder of Wolfram Alpha , spoke about, with some passion, the subject of Math(s). He argued that there is currently 2 subjects relating to maths. Maths in society, that is more popular than event, and maths in education, which is more despised that ever.

Maths in education is currently mostly about calculation. In digital age where most people have access to powerful computers in their back pockets, this approach is out-dated and unappealing to most students.

Maths is important for a number of significant reasons. It is the foundation for most technical jobs and also encourages logical thinking. Furthermore, maths is ultimately about asking the right questions and knowing how to find the right answer.

Pure calculation and making students into 3rd rate computers is not going to develop students who can do and offer these things. Maths is bigger than that!

The current efforts to improve math education is not working. Conrad argued that better deployment of the wrong subject (pure calculation) is not the way forward for maths curriculum. Instead, maths, even at an early stage, needs to be made more relevant. Working out by how many friends you are separated on Facebook, for example, is going to engage more students than the current approach seen in maths education.

Conrad went on to say that computers are dumbing maths down and needs a radical overhaul to ensure its relevance and value moving forward.

Its hoped that initiatives such as the Wolfram UK Programming 2012 Challenge will help raise awareness of these requirement and help inspire the changes needed.

Point 5: Mark Surman and Michelle Levesque (Mozilla.org)

Mark and Michelle gave a very interesting talk on the topic of making as learning, or more specifically, web making as learning.

In an effort to inspire and build the next generation of web makers, Mozilla have been pairing film makers and other members of the creative industries with developers to create unique digital first versions of their movie content.

The web is like Lego, building blocks that are designed to be pulled about and used to create new things. Mozilla's project is all about embracing the concept of the web being like Lego and encouraging folks to remix!

I love the analogy of comparing the web with Lego and will be watching their efforts in this area closely.

Conclusion

All in all, and as mentioned in the opening to this post, Learning Without Frontiers 12 was an amazing conference. Great speakers, inspiring ideas and an opportunity to be exposed to new and often conflicting perspectives made LWF12 one of the best conferences I have attended for some time.

That being said, though, I am not sure that it took full advantage of the opportunity to address the future of education. There is no doubt that the conference had the opinions and ideas needed to start making a difference. I can't help but think, though, that delegates will have left Olympia wondering how they can take some of the ideas they heard and start making a difference in their schools, colleges or universities. The conference lacked the practical elements required to drive change and, with the odd exception, was very heavy on the theory. I appreciate that this is the aim of the conference, but its time to stop talking and actually start doing.

It seems like the will is there and there is pockets of great work being carried out, although I think the community needs to now come together to start mapping out the practical next steps needed to stimulate and drive a Napster like shift in the education sector.

All members of the community, from government to newly qualified teachers, now need to embrace the challenge that is presented to us and be bold enough to define what the future of education looks like.

I hope that Learning Without Frontiers, as custodians of this community they are building, considers what happens between now and the next conference to encourage the practical realisation of the ideas presented at the conference.

I am passionate about this topic and look forward to playing my part in the future of learning.

What do you think? What do we need to do next? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Bring Some Game To Your Coding Lessons

Tim Bush — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Originally posted on the UK Microsoft Faculty Connection blog

Visual Studio is a ideal tools for schools, colleges and Universities for inspiring future developers, to enhance the experience Microsoft has released Visual Studio Achievements, with the achievements students talents and learning are recognized as they perform various coding feats, which unlock achievements and earn badges which can be shared and displayed on social network profiles and web sites.

Some examples of individual achievements include Regional Manager (have more than 10 regions in a single class), Close To The Metal (use 5 preprocessor directives), Stubby (generate method stubs 10 times) or Interrupting Cow (have 10 breakpoints in a file). All in all, there are 32 achievements awaiting to be unlocked, all of which are listed here. Here's what the 6 different badges look like:

The Six Categories of Achievements

Learn More About Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a powerful tool with tons of features, many of which you may not know about. Earning some of the badges may result in learning about features you didn’t even know existed!

Download It Download Now

How It Works

With the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, achievements are unlocked based on your activity. Your code is analysed on a background thread each time you compile. In addition, the extension listens for certain events and actions that you may perform in Visual Studio, reporting progress on these events to the server. When you unlock an achievement, Visual Studio lets you know visually with a pop-up displaying the award. Each time you earn a badge, a unique page is created with your profile picture, the badge and a description. Students can then automatically tweet about achievements they earn and/or share them on Facebook.

Get Visual Studio for FREE via DreamSpark

Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference - Core Points (Part 1)

Tim Bush — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:12:58 GMT

Last week, I attended the Learning Without Frontiers (#lwf12) conference in Olympia. Aside from Olympia now starting to feel like my second home after spending the early part of this month there at the BETT 2012 show, the conference was arguably the most inspiring and motivating I have attended since Thinking Digital a few years ago (FOTE gets a mention here, also).

Much like Herb Kim of Thinking Digital, Graham Brown Martin and his team have done a brilliant job at curating an amazing line-up of speakers to address the core theme of the conference: The Future of Learning.

With the underlying theme of trying to create an environment that can stimulate a Napster like shift in education, speakers such as Microsoft's very own Anthony Salcito, Noam Chomsky, Ray Kurzweil, Ellen MacArthur and Conrad Wolfram, to name a few, presented some inspiring and often controversial views and ideas about how to transform education.

To recap the content from all of the presentations would probably qualify me for the longest blog post in the world award. For the sake of brevity, though, I will try and summarise the 5 core points from my perspective, made from a selection of speakers across the 2 days. This only skims the surface and I would highly recommend viewing the video content from the conference when it is made available on the conference website.

Also, if you attended the conference, it would be great to hear what you thought where your core points and ideas presented at the event. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. I look forward to continuing the conversation over the coming weeks.

This blog post covers part one of this summary, with part 2 to following tomorrow.

Point 1: Anthony Salcitio (Microsoft)

I am not just highlighting some core points made during Anthony's presentation because he is VP for Education at Microsoft. I personally felt that Anthony's presentation was both thought provoking yet practical, and the fact that Sir Ken Robinson referenced it during his summary means I can't be far off the mark.

Anthony spoke about a number of pragmatic and game changing ideas, but his thoughts around the fact that technology should be used as a service to teachers and students and not be the core focus, really stuck with me.

Technology to support teaching and learning should be at the forefront of our agendas moving forward. Technology, combined with great teaching, is what is going to drive change and improve attainment for students in the future.

Technology and bad teaching is going to add little value and has very little scale at a time when learning is no longer a linear process. Students now come to class with content already pre-wired. It is the teachers role to make that content come alive and add meaningful context and discussion. Technology, when used effectively by great teachers, can give real scale and impact.

The paradigm of learning has changed and simply digitising the old methods of teaching and content delivery is not going to provide the Napster like change the conference was trying to unleash.

The personalisation of learning and creating an emotional connection to this learning is what is going to create the transformation needed.

Anthony, during his presentation, discussed a number of different methods and techniques that can help transform and enhance the emotional connection to learning. Gaming, and the gamification of learning, was a core element of this.

Jane McGonical, in her brilliant TED talk 'Gaming can make a better world', discusses some of these ideas and was referenced by Anthony is his talk. The video is well worth taking the time to view below.

Games based learning requires and builds skill as the game develops, and the gamer creates an emotion connection with the game. With points and reward built in to the game, games based learning essentially creates a new category: the incentivisation of learning.

When gamers play a game, at the beginning they die a lot. Yet they slowly become an expert at the game as they play more often and learn more about the environment and dynamics of the game.

This approach to learning could have a massive impact and is in stark contrast to the traditional methods of teaching and learning that focused on content, retention and assessment.

We must not forget, though, that students and teachers are the future. Not technology.

I have probably done a really bad job at trying to highlight some of the core points from Anthony's presentation, but will post the video from LWF12 to the blog when its available. I will definitely be watching it time and time again!

Point 2: Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, in a recorded introductory video to the conference, discussed some fairly controversial ideas regarding how to positively change the future of learning. I didn't agree with all of them, particularly his views around the impact that technologies such as the internet has had on society. That’s maybe something for another blog post, though.

Noam's opening remarks covered a fairly wide range of topics, but ultimately focused on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

He discussed that we need to create an education system that encourages creative exploration, independence of thought and the ability for people to push the boundaries forward. He argued that we wont get the economic and technical gains society needs without graduates that can achieve this.

Noam went onto talk about that significant changes to how the education curriculum is structured are needed to support this goal. He discussed assessment, in particular.

Noam felt that tests can be a useful benchmark, but beyond this doesn't tell you much. You can study for a test and then 3 weeks later you have forgotten everything. In this sense, assessment managed in this manor is just a set of hurdles and is relatively worthless. Searching and enquiring is more significant than passing tests.

Noam felt that an education system that rewards discovery and independent thought, not standardisation, was needed to build the foundation for a strong economic future.

How do you feel about some of these ideas?

Point 3: Ellen MacArthur

Ellen gave a motivating talk about her experiences of sailing around the world and the lessons she learnt.

Sailing solo around the world presents some very unique and dangerous challenges. With a boat that is built for speed, rather than safety, luxuries such as sleep and 'turning off' for a few hours are soon a distant memory when you are 2,500 miles from the nearest port. Extreme concentration and the full awareness and management of the resources available to you are key to survival. On the boat, the battery is like a heart beat and 5 seconds is all it takes for disaster to hit. What is available on the boat is all you have and the management of these is key!

When Ellen successfully completed her goal, she thought back to the finite resources on the boat and drew comparisons to the earth. Much like on her sailing adventures and the resources on her boat, what we have available on the earth to sustain future generations are also finite.

This led to Ellen leaving professional sailing and launch the Ellen MacArthur foundation that aims to focus on one thing - all our futures.

Societies use of natural resources have spiked since WW2 and are clearly fundamental to life, today. These are finite, though, and will eventually be used up. So if these can be eventually used up, what does society do? Use less?

If this is the case, what are we aiming for as a society. To do less? If so, how do we inspire young people?

Ellen argued that we need to think differently when it comes to manufacturing the things that we need and use in the future. Designing for disassembly, that would allow for products to be broken down and used to produce the next car or carpet tile, would offer the environmental protection the earth needs combined with new economic opportunities.

A system level change is needed, though. In the case of the automotive industry, for example, consumers would purchase miles rather than a car. You would essentially lease the miles and then give it back to the automotive company to breakdown into the next car. Bold steps, but arguably necessary given the facts presented by Ellen during her talk.

A practical expression of this ideology is something called the circular economy, which promotes a continuous circle of production and recycling/re-production of goods.

With the mission to re-think, re-design and build a better future, the foundation is working closely with governments, businesses and, most importantly, young people to encourage a generation to see things differently and safe guard the future of our environment.

Part 2 of this Learning Without Frontiers themed post will follow tomorrow.

SkyDrive and Office Web Apps

Tim Bush — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:30:00 GMT

For schools, colleges and universities looking for a powerful tool for their students to help them better collaborate on group projects, SkyDrive and Office Web Apps is the ideal solution.

Those looking for a web based solution often think about Google Docs. While tools such as this may work well for simple tasks, they may not have the features you need to create professional documents. You can also have formatting issues when you move between these apps and Office.

You could also use a “file cloud” like Dropbox, but these tools aren’t really designed for collaboration, and they don’t let you work simultaneously with others on a document.

Faced with these choices, many people decide to work independently and email files back and forth. This makes it hard to know if you’re working on the latest version of a document, and sometimes you can run into attachment limits. It also can take a lot of time to piece together different Word documents or PowerPoint presentations from multiple email messages.

With SkyDrive, you have a better option. Students can store all their files in one place, so everyone can access the latest version. They can also use free Office Web Apps for basic editing from any browser.

More specifically, SkyDrive and Office Web Apps allow you to more easily manage the following:

SkyDrive and Word let students work together on the same document from different computers
Let everyone in the group work on the same presentation file – even at the same time – from any PC, Mac, or just a web browser with the PowerPoint Web App
Easily share the presentation and let everyone see it the way it was intended to look by uploading the file to SkyDrive and viewing it with the PowerPoint Web App
Access and collaborate on files in almost any web browser even if Office isn't installed on that computer
Spend more time actually working on a spreadsheet or model and less time reformatting or organizing it
With OneNote, keep notes synced across all of your computers and even your Windows Phone or iPhone
Easily open and print your documents from the library or computer lab at school

SkyDrive and Office Web Apps make sharing easy. Learn more about how your students can start embracing these powerful tools, also offered as part of Live@edu, today.

Microsoft’s best kept secret for Higher Education

Ellie G Jones — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:21:00 GMT

Recently, Premier teamed up with Microsoft Services to discuss Microsoft Premier Support and how it’s helped universities save money, simplify their deployments, and avoid costly downtime while helping students, faculty and staff to be more productive using Microsoft technologies. During that session we had a great discussion with London Southbank University and how they’ve utilised Microsoft Premier Support in their environment.

You can watch the video South Bank University Premier Presentation 15th Dec 2011 and hear about London Southbank University’s experience of working with Premier Support, in particular:

· Their experience of a business critical situation and the resources applied by Microsoft to solve it promptly.

· How they reduced organisational risk following a co-ordinated programme of Premier Support Risk Assessments and Health checks

· How they saved money through migration assistance for Live@edu Policy

What is Premier?

Premier Support is a flexible offering that can be tailored to your requirements. It includes three distinct categories of support:

Service Management: A Technical Account Manager will be your single point of contact to help optimise your existing IT environment and mitigate risks for business critical solutions built on Microsoft technology.
Proactive Services: workshops and assessments to plan successful deployments, migrations and new technology integrations. Focus on alignment with Microsoft proven practices and skills transfer into your support organisation. A proactive approach will build value and reduce IT costs.
Problem resolution services: for the peace of mind that unplanned outages will be fully managed by your Technical Account Manager and rapidly resolved by Microsoft experts.

The result?

Seamless support for both your cloud-based and on-premise IT environments, minimising your risk of integration issues or service interruptions. Faster issue resolution, keeping costly downtime to a minimum. And a single point of contact for both strategic and operational support.

Want to learn more? Join our Lync Meetings in February and find out how Microsoft’s Premier Support could deliver tangible value to your University.

Dates and Times of LMs

The URL’s for these LMs are as follows:

Friday 10^th February 2012

Introducing Premier Support for Education Customers – 11:30

Delegate Registration Link here

Tuesday 14^th February 2012 – 15:00

Introducing Premier Support for Education Customers – 15:00

Delegate Registration Link here

In the meantime, you can find out more here.

Cool new devices for schools at CES

Tim Bush — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:01:02 GMT

Originally posted on Anthony Salcito’s Education Insights Blog.

I’m back in the office after a quick trip to Las Vegas for CES. I love to walk the show floor each year to see all the new gadgets, not just because it’s fun to tinker with new technology, but because I like to get a first look at the new innovations that could be most useful when applied in education. There are a lot of new Microsoft products that are available to schools now or very soon. Surface 2.0 has just shipped, the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) and a Kinect for Windows sensor are coming on February 1st, and Nokia phones built on Windows Phone are out now.

Our hardware partners are building some cool PCs and Windows 7 runs super-fast and super-long on them. They’re building rich input devices, with mice, keyboards, and pen inputs – some go from a laptop to a tablet in just seconds -- satisfying those students who want the best of both tablets and PCs in one. There are also a lot of new form factors designed to appeal to students that are lightweight with rich screens, and that are very flexible with support for gaming and use things like voice and touch commands to enable a very immersive experience. Ultrabooks were the star of the show. You can see the latest Windows 7 devices here and in the embedded video below.

I am really excited about all the choices schools have when it comes to determining what device they want to bring into their institution. As we know 1:1 learning is going to become more rampant with the shift to digital content and the need to make sure kids are prepared for college and career. We’ve learned a lot about technology’s effectiveness in schools and in 1:1 programs in particular, and I encourage school leaders to think holistically about the learning environment before they jump to buy technology for technology’s sake. I met with JP Sa Couto and Critical Links at CES. They help schools think about all aspects to create the most effective learning environment. They have done a lot of research and investment in looking at everything from the school furnishings to lighting to looking at ethnographic studies to literally determine how a device best fits into a school.

Schools want devices for different activities….reading digital textbooks, taking notes, creating presentations and papers, the ability to plug in an array of peripherals and 3rd party solutions, and centralized IT management and security. And as data-driven education improves, schools need to be able to analyze what students and teachers are doing with the technology and link the outcomes to assessments and personalized lesson planning through business intelligence and learning management systems.

There are a lot of great new tablet PCs and laptops designed especially for education that can withstand the rigors of heavy use during the school day, including getting thrown in backpacks and dropped on the playground.

At CES, Lenovo was showing off the newly released Lenovo Classmate + . It’s a rugged PC laptop that converts into a tablet, sports a drop resistant exterior, spill proof keyboard, reinforced steel hinges, 10.1 inch touch display with pen (optional HD), 10 hour battery life, multiple USB ports and VGA or HDMI output to monitor. The Lenovo X130e is also a good choice for K12 schools made rugged with rubber “bumpers” and reinforced hinges to take a long school day.

Dell’s Inspiron Duo continues to win praise from students and teachers alike because its innovative flip hinge design makes it very easy to go from touch to type in seconds. The 10.1 HD multi touch screen, student sized keyboard and rugged design make it the perfect device for schools that want a HD tablet and a laptop in one device.

For university students who want a computer that’s light, fast, durable and stylish, ultrabooks are all the rage. The video below showcases the latest hardware from Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony.

Interesting Opportunity for Academic App developers to win some great prizes

Tim Bush — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

The Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone is now available as a reward with the Windows Phone UK Developer Reward Programme.

By simply joining the UK Developer rewards programme Educators and Students can get rewarded with loads of other fantastic prizes for building Windows Phone App and publishing it on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The programme concludes (Sunday 5 Feb 2012). So There is no better time to start building and publishing your Windows Phone app. It’s incredibly easy with 5 simple steps:

Build your original & unique Windows Phone App and publish on the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Register yourself on this website (www.my-rewards.com/wp).
You will be awarded with one point when we have evaluated your app in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Redeem your points for a range of fantastic prizes and gadgets. When you have earned a point, you are automatically entered into the weekly prize draw with an awesome line up of bonus prizes.
Build more Windows Phone Apps and get the chance to earn more points to redeem bigger and better rewards!

So download the tools form DreamSpark and Register and start building & publishing your Windows Phone apps today.

Once you started building apps why not get involved and Make a Difference

Enter to compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012 Windows Phone Challenge and create software that can really make a broad impact in the world.

Get started on your solution today.

Get your questions ready! Join Windows Phone Challenge Captain Jukka Wallasvaara on 22 February at 15:00 GMT or 23 February at 05:00 GMT via Live Meeting and ask him about competing in the Windows Phone Challenge. Follow these instructions to join Live Meeting. The Live Meeting sessions will be recorded and posted on this page under the Helpful Links. Find out what time it is your country/region.

Originally posted on the Microsoft UK Faculty Connection Blog.

Teched Europe 2012 Registration now open

Tim Bush — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:16:35 GMT

Come to TechEd Europe, unplug from your day job, & dive into the thousands of learning & networking opportunities

In addition to over 400 sessions with Microsoft and industry speakers, TechEd offers you face-to-face connections with thousands of your peers who share your challenges. TechEd is the forum to gain the expertise and insights that will help you get the most from your IT investments.
TechEd offers 4 days to:

LEARN in-depth about the latest technology trends and how you can leverage these effectively in your business
DISCOVER the future of Microsoft’s products, technologies, solutions and services directly from Microsoft’s leaders with news, announcements, and demos
NETWORK with Microsoft and industry thought leaders, and fellow delegates that share your technology interests and business challenges
PLAN the features and architecture to support your business goals and product roadmap

Need Even More? Attend a Pre-Conference Seminar

By arriving a day early on Monday, 25 June and registering for the special Pre-Conference Seminars you will get in-depth training and insights on the Microsoft technologies and products that power your business. Select from 10 different topics taught by John Craddock, Kate Gregory, Steve Fox, Mikael Nystrom, Kent Agerlund, Alberto Ferrari, Richard Hundhausen, and more!

Register NOW for TechEd Europe (limited number of academic tickets available for students and educators)

Originally posted on the Microsoft UK Faculty Connection Blog.

OneNote and SharePoint 2010: Online Collaboration and Social Independent Learning (part 1)

Tim Bush — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:59:30 GMT

First in a series of guest posts from Adrian Edgar, Independent Education Consultant. Director of ICT and SMT at Culford School for 7 Years.

Last week I was lucky enough to be part of the Microsoft Education team at BETT 2012. I spoke on the subject of using OneNote 2010 and SharePoint 2010 MySites. In this blog post, I’d like to recap some of the key points and show some of the great ways we have developed use of the software.

OneNote addresses the three core aspects that underpin effective learning. Pupils can capture their thoughts quickly and record their work. This could be typed notes, pictures, drawings or indeed, written notes. As long as pupils get in to the habit of using their OneNote notebook as their central portfolio, collecting and organising work becomes second nature. Rarely can you say that a piece of software aids organisation in such an effective manner.

Finally, and the most important aspect is the ability to simply share work and collaborate. This could be two or more pupils discussing work, but it is just as likely to involve the other key players in the process. Teachers and Parents can be given rights to read or contribute to the notebook and if you link this to a SharePoint library or SkyDrive share, the opportunities are endless.

Rather than focus on the core aspects of OneNote I’d like to discuss the fantastic way we can integrate the use of SharePoint Libraries, Outlook scheduling and tasks in order to help pupils plan and organise their time.

The first part of the process is to share the notebook and then grant contribute rights. In this example, I’m going to use SharePoint 2010 My Sites.

Create a shared library
Assign permissions
Grant collaboration rights

Create a shared library in SharePoint 2010

First step is to create a new document library under the students My Site pages

1. Start by making sure you are in the My Content section before you begin the process

2. From My Sites, click on Site Actions and Select New Document Library

3. Follow the instructions to complete each section as shown below

4. Click on Create to complete the process. You should see the new library created on the left hand tool bar. The new document library should open and display the library toolbar ribbon

5. It’s at this stage you can assign the correct permissions to the library

Assigning Library Permissions

Now that we have our new homework library, I’m going to make sure the correct people have permission.

Once you have created your new library it should open with the Library Tools ribbon as shown. If not, simply look for the ribbon tab on the left next to Site Actions and click on Library.

1. Look for the Library Permissions icon on the far right. Click on this icon.

2. More than likely, this library will inherit permissions from the level above. Simply click on the Stop Inheriting Permissions button and agree to the dialogue box.

3. Now you can remove all the permissions you don’t need and add your own.

Be careful when you do this. Make sure you keep your permissions to the library. The example below uses a fake student called Lucy Jones.

4. Tick the boxes next to the permissions you want to remove and then click on Remove User Permissions.

5. Now you can add permissions for the teacher to contribute to the library. This will assign permissions to any document uploaded to that library.

Granting Collaboration Rights

The final stage of this section is to assign collaboration rights to the teacher. For this example we are going to use the name, Mrs T Green.

1. With the same Library Permissions ribbon open, confirm that you can see the indicator stating that the library has individual permissions. If not follow step 2 above.

2. Click on Grant Permissions on the Permission Tools ribbon. The dialogue box below will open.

3. In this example I have allocated Contribute permissions to Mrs Teresa Green. I could have also used any of my Active Directory groups and assigned permissions to all staff.

4. Scrolling down the page, I have the opportunity to personalise a message explaining the permission I have granted.

5. Click OK to complete the process. The SharePoint server will email your welcome message.

In the next part of this post I will show you how to go one stage further now and set up a sharing collaboration process between teacher and pupil.

In the meantime, the slides from the OneNote session at BETT 2012 can be viewed/downloaded below.

BETT 2012: OneNote & SharePoint: Anytime, anywhere collaboration

View more presentations from Microsoft Education UK

Building School Networks for the Future - with System Centre and Hyper-V

Ellie G Jones — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:00:00 GMT

One of our (many) friends over at EduGeek has recently done some work with Marine Academy Plymouth taking over their systems in May 2011. We have now a series which charts the process of systems modernisation from analysis, to planning, then implementation before finally evaluation. This first article will deal with a summary of that analysis; and the ones which follow will cover Stuart Wilkie’s (IT Manager) decisions and how he put them into practice.

Marine Academy Plymouth is the UK’s first Marine Academy. It’s a state-funded specialist secondary school with three sponsors - University of Plymouth , Cornwall College and Plymouth City Council

The Marine theme is not just about Marine Science. One of the common questions (and EduGeek had a few at a recent open evening), is why “Marine Academy”? You immediately think, do I need to grow fins, have a boat, swim even…? Well actually it’s none of those things. All the careers that we currently pursue from a land-based concept can feasibly be accessed in association with the sea and marine. Careers in areas such as engineering, tourism, medicine, catering, building and agriculture – just to start with!

Marine Academy Plymouth’s focus is to help to prepare and develop the students’ career opportunities, for today’s traditional jobs and for those that we don’t yet know about, we will achieve this through a commitment to high standards and to sustainability.

“A modern, reliable, environmentally friendly computer system is key to the Academy in so many ways. Everything we do here has to embody our ethos and beliefs and ultimately empower the learners of tomorrow.”

Standardisation and a stable platform are the key to the success and development of any system – at least that’s what the experience of time tells me.

The systems at Marine Academy were a bit of a mix at the start with a wide variety of hardware manufacturers as well as specification. Dealing with the inequality of accessibility would be key to ensuring the consistency of the learning experience.

The system itself consisted of surprising few servers for the scale of the clients – all 600+ of them! The server platform was powered by two DCs, Exchange, Capita SIMS (Student Management System) and ISA all of which relatively new. There were also a selection of older servers performing legacy file sharing and testing roles such as WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) and the free imaging and management platform “FOG”. The problem was the DCs were also the DFS, directly connected to the SAN , contained all the User Data (everything from Home folders to Profiles and the traditional Staff and Student shared folders) and the legacy servers were exactly that – legacy. There was no redundancy within the system, and the ability to perform any maintenance, or failure, would render parts of the network inoperable.

The majority of the teaching staff had been issued with laptops, a throwback to the Government “Laptop for Teachers” scheme. There was a wide variety of sizes and specifications. A quick glance at these, and their age/condition presented an issue. Consistency of delivery for one, and secondly, Devon and Plymouth as Local Authorities were insisting on implementation of encryption of all mobile devices which left school and college sites.

Largely, the desktop fleet was in a good way. Marine Academy has 6 main ICT Suites plus clusters for Technology, Science and Arts. ICT Suites had largely been refreshed the previous year with high not being realised due to downgrading to the older Windows XP Operating System. The administrative and support workstations had also received the same refresh which was slight overkill based on their use. The remainder of the machines comprised of large fleets of either “custom build” dual core machines, older Celeron small form IBMs or RM All in Ones. The majority of classrooms had a single workstation installed to be used with the Interactive Whiteboard and AV facilities available which fell into one of the latter two ranges.

Returning to the headline intentions, consistency of learning experience, reliability, stability and core to the Academy ethos, sustainability, the question lies, how could it be done?

Key development intentions:

More power was required to bolster the Server Platform to give the failover and resilience, as well as the flexibility to develop.
Security of Laptop Fleet for Curriculum Planning and Delivery, and a decision on the future of laptops or workstations for the “teacher point” in classrooms
Workstation modernisation, in those areas which had been “left behind”
Consistency of learning/delivery experience, by ensuring that no matter where learners were working – their settings and files followed them, and the environment they were working in was always the same.

Coming up in the second article in the series, there will be details of how we designed the new server system, what choices we made and why plus the start of the implementation process… so stay tuned!

Stuart’s “alter-ego” is TheScarfedOne and as well as being the IT Manager at Marine Academy Plymouth, he fits in being part of the staff team at Edugeek.net, with whom Microsoft have a close relationship. Edugeek.net is the community for ICT Support and Development in Schools, with a worldwide following. His blog can be found at here

BETT 2012: Thoughts on Openhive and VLE’s

Tim Bush — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:26:33 GMT

Guest post from freelance writer, Gerald Haigh. Gerald writes regularly for the Microsoft Education blogs.

On the final Saturday of BETT 2012, I found myself among old friends on the Capita stand. Having followed the SIMS story since the earliest days, I thought I’d kept up with most of what they’ve been doing over the years. I have to say, though, that I hadn’t taken enough notice of their cloud-hosted SharePoint powered management learning environment, ‘Openhive’, which was added to Capita’s portfolio when they acquired Synetrix in 2009.

This year, though, my attention was grabbed by the fact that ‘OpenHive’ was moved to the main Capita stand, and it was made possible to see its possibilities aligned with all the developments emerging in the SIMS management information system.

There’s a lot going for ‘Openhive’. It’s modular, which means it can be tailored to a school’s needs and budget, and it uses ‘Silverlight’ to produce an attractive and easy user interface. The result is a resource that’s highly flexible.

One school might choose simply to use the Openhive Portal, providing a customised and school branded single sign on front end for all the school’s ICT services. Another, though, might go for a complete ISP service, with mail, parental reporting, video and instant messaging. Or, of course, any step in between (The interplay between ‘Openhive’ and the mass of data held by SIMS, is of obvious importance here).

This flexibility is important. So often, teachers and school leaders have been thrown off-balance by the arrival of a complicated VLE, sometimes imposed from above. As a result, it’s often suggested that schools should consider retreating to a simple starting point, looking to using bespoke web tools as and when they were needed. At the same time, though, the enormous potential of SharePoint for collaboration, communication and content handling has been obvious, particularly to that intrepid band of teachers and network managers who have succeeded in harnessing SharePoint to the needs of their schools.

Not everyone wants to do that, though, or has the necessary skills. That’s why the development of commercial SharePoint based environments such as Learning Possibilities’ LP+4, Civica’s ‘CloudBase” and Capita’s “Openhive” itself, are so important, each developed with the emphasis on how students, teachers, leaders and parents engage with school work.

They do, though, need to be carefully approached and adopted. That’s why James Cross, eLearning Consultant with ‘Civica’, describing how they introduce ‘CloudBase’ to schools says,

“We go into school, really get to know the staff, and essentially become an extra member of staff.”

The “Openhive” approach is the same. Keith Jones, Capita’s Openhive Programme Manager, describing the level of support that’s provided for adopters, says,

“We say to schools, ‘You can’t buy a VLE in June and expect it to be in action by September. It takes a while to understand it and all staff and others, including governors, have to be involved.”

The point he makes, and it’s a crucial one for all school ICT projects, is that the adoption process should consist of making the product work for the school, and not be about changing school processes and policies to fit the product.

There’s so much going on now as partner businesses and developers pick up Microsoft software, such as SQL Server, SharePoint 2010, Live@edu and Office 365, and tailor them to the needs of learners. At the same time there’s the rapid advance of Cloud technology and the ‘School in a Box’ concept. It all makes for plenty to watch out for and report on in the coming year.

BETT 2012: Microsoft @ BETT Pictures

Tim Bush — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:49:13 GMT

A selection of pictures documenting our presence at BETT 2012 have now been added to the Microsoft @ BETT 2012 Flickr Group.

If you took any pictures of our stand at BETT, it would be great if you could add them to the group. Its a public group and Flickr makes it really simple for you to add your pictures with only a couple of clicks. Look forward to seeing your shots!

Some of my favourite pictures from the show are definitely when Prince Andrew, Duke of York, visited our stand and the cool Photosynth that Lee Stott from the DPE team put together!

Thanks again to all those who visited our stand at BETT 2012. If you have any ideas about how we can make our involvement at the 2013 event even more relevant and valuable, leave me your thoughts in comments below.

Tim

BETT 2012: Not long now!

Tim Bush — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:43:40 GMT

With BETT 2012 now less than 24 hours away, we are busy putting the finishing touches to our shiny new stand. Lets just say its work in progress…

If you are attending BETT 2012 and are planning your visit, some of our blog posts, that include references to a lot of the presentations, products and services we are showcasing on the stand, might be useful. A full list of posts are shown below:

A full overview of our theatre presentation schedule can be found on our Microsoft at BETT 2012 microsite. We hope to see you on our stand (D30/D40)!

BETT 2012: Using motion capture technology

Tim Bush — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:01:41 GMT

Extract from today’s feature in the Guardian on how technology is revolutionising classroom learning.

The use of technology in schools marks an increasing convergence of the classroom with children's home lives.

Gareth Ritter, a teacher at a Willows high school in Cardiff, has begun using motion capture technology to harness his pupils' enthusiasm for playing games.

In Ritter's music lessons, children wave a conductor's baton to move icons of instruments to the right place in an orchestra, represented virtually on a computer screen.

The same technology can be used to teach biology or foreign languages, by having students virtually moving parts of the human body to the right place or matching up lists of words in English and French, Ritter said.

"A lot of the kids in my school play Call of Duty. If they fail a level they won't give up, they'll keep doing it. We've got to bring that [enthusiasm] into the classroom.

"One young lad [I taught] was a boy soldier in the Congo. I could see he had a passion for music. Now he's going to study music at university. Technology has changed his life – it's switched him on."

The use of interactive technology in the classroom has been accompanied by a move towards more flexible testing in exams that can be tailored more closely to individual pupils. The exam board AQA revealed last year that it was planning trials of an interactive exam that would generate harder or softer questions according to how a candidate performs.

As part of the gaming in education showcase area on our stand at BETT 2012, Gareth will be showcasing how Kinect has helped revolutionise teaching and learning within his classroom. Come and watch him demo his innovative application on stand D30/D40.