By now you'll have heard all about Office 2007, and you'll hopefully heard about what it does, perhaps seen it, and you may even have used it. One question I'm asked is "What does it mean for schools?"
In addition to the main UK Education website's section on Office 2007, there's also now a new brochure (below), which includes an overview of how it helps from both a teaching & learning and administration & coordination perspective. My favourite section is the middle-page spread which contains screenshots showing what some of the main new features can do - like easy colour coding of spreadsheet cells, and the new SmartArt. And it also contains a case study from Stoke College in Essex - the first school in Europe to use Office 2007 across all of their systems.
If you'd like us to send you copies of the brochure, just pop us an email, using the Email link in the header of this page.
When did Stoke College deploy Office 2007? Harold Wood Primary school (also in Essex) deployed it in December 2006.
Anyway, a lot of our schools would like to deploy Office 2007, but it is not officially compatible with SIMS yet according to Capita. So they are having to delay deployment despite having the licensing and tools already in place.
Hi "K",
Stoke College were the first we heard of in the UK, and when we asked our European colleagues about their early deployments, they didn't have any earlier than Stoke. Hence the tag First to deploy in Europe.
David Moss @ Stoke deployed in December 2006, as a pilot (you can read his story here).
I'd love to hear of other schools that deployed, and their experiences (use the Email tab at the top of the page).
Ray