May, 2008

Last week the Education team hosted a SharePoint Showcase Event at Microsoft in Reading. The idea was to present a different partner solution for SharePoint every 12 minutes! A bit like speed dating. The format seemed to be popular, at least from the feedback we got on the day! With 23 partner presentations there was inevitably a great variety of solutions to see and if a particular presentation wasn't particularly relevant, the next one would be along shortly.

For those of you that couldn't attend the partner presentations are gradually being posted on a SkyDrive at:

http://cid-2fbbe67743d5177d.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/SharePoint%20Showcase%20May%202008?uc=6

Enjoy, as many of them are walkthroughs and screenshots of actual products.

This might only make sense, if you read yesterday's post, because I'm going to continue the theme.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Here's another conversational ice-breaking-list, of free Microsoft software to help with teaching and learning. Just in case you weren't sure what we do to help learning. Yesterday I gave you a baker's dozen. Today, one extra - fourteen free things:

1. Learning Essentials, a free add-on for Office, that contains a set of tools to help teachers and students. Things like curriculum templates, and toolbars for Word, PowerPoint and Excel to help students and teachers get started on projects and stay organised during them. Students get tools, templates and tutorials to help them get past "Blank Page Syndrome", language tools and templates, and tips and tutorials for managing projects and producing high-quality work.
   Download it for free from here
   
   
2. Save as Daisy XML, which is a free-add in for Word, which helps you to make your learning resources more accessible for visually impaired students. DAISY is a global standard for rich, multimedia text resources which is used extensively by organisations such as the RNIB
   Download it for free from here
   
   
3. SteadyState is a free tool for PC management in schools - and simplifies the setup of managed desktops and things like kiosk-PCs. You can read more about it on wikipedia's SteadyState entry, but in a nutshell, it allows you to force a PC to return to a specific configuration every time it reboots, and restricts what users can do. Ideal for libraries, or where you need public access PCs.
   Download it for free from here
   
   
4. SkyDrive is an online service that gives you 5GB of free storage on the Internet. The main thing I love about it is its simplicity - by simply dragging files onto SkyDrive, I can store them in my own personal folder, or share them with others (which is exactly what I do when I share presentations etc on this blog). No more memory sticks! It's much easier for staff and students to be able to transfer files between home and school, or between different computers on and off your school network.
   Sign up for it free here
   
   
5. Free Maths add in for Word, which helps students to write complex equations and adds graphing tools to the Word 2007 ribbon.
   Download it for free from here
   
   
6. Get busy with robots in your D&T lessons, with the free Microsoft Robotics Studio. It's built by a team that are seeking new ways to engage students with the idea that programming is cool and valuable (and if current predictions come true, we're going to have a shortage of suitably skilled people in the workforce very soon!). You can read more about the work here, or just...
   Download it for free from here
   
   
7. Why not throw caution to the wind, and start creating your own SCORM learning packages, with the free Learning Content Development System (LCDS)? Now this might be a little techie, but organisations like Becta insist that SCORM is the way to go, and that schools should start to use SCORM standard content, so that it can be loaded into different learning platforms. We actually use LCDS to create our SCORM packages for all of our internal learning materials (with 100,000 employees to train across 100+ countries, e-learning's big in Microsoft).
   Download it for free from here
   
   
8. Help keep your students safe on the Internet, by using the free Know IT All resource packs, for teachers. It's designed to help you teach e-safety principles to 11+ year olds, and you can also order copies of a free DVD for distribution to parents and students.
   Find out more, and request free Know IT All DVDs for Teachers, here
   
   
9. Explore CodePlex, which is where we release lots of free software under the Community Source licence. There's the Community Kit for SharePoint, with templates for a school website, and others focused on things which are starting to be used in new models of learning, such as creating wikis & blogs. You can also find the free SharePoint Learning Kit there.
   Download whatever you want for free from here
   
   
10. Don't forget Windows Movie Maker is free, and in almost everybody's copy of Windows. After watching The Apprentice last week, I know I too could make an "Atishu" advert, with just my camcorder and Movie Maker. It's great for making an interactive version of the World War II timeline that every Year 6 pupil creates (ask my daughter!). If you just need a way to get your teachers trained and enthused, use this page to help.
    Download the latest free version for Windows XP
    
    
    Take a look at some of the free downloads from Microsoft Research. The researchers there spend their time dreaming up new ways of using and interacting with technology, and there are some real finds amongst their downloads, which can help you to teach, or to just engage students in discovery. You can explore the full Microsoft Research website for your own pick of free software downloads, or take a look at my top three examples
    
    
11. The WorldWide Telescope was released recently, allowing students to explore the skies from their classroom. 
    Download the free WorldWide Telescope here
    
    
12. HD View is a new way of creating high resolution images from a collection of others - good for geography and other subjects where images are manipulated or analysed.
    Download HD View here for free
    
    
13. InkSeine allows you to interact with your Tablet PC, or conventional PC with a digitiser, in new ways Download InkSeine for free here 
    
    
    And finally, my favourite freebie
    
14. Lastly, how about downloading PhotoStory 3, which is free and brilliant. It helps you to co-ordinate images and music, and turn it into an impressive slideshow, with special effects, narration, titles, captions, and then publish them for viewing on a computer or TV. (Also ideal for the Year 6 World War II timeline!). My description simply can't do it justice, so here's an example Photo Story output.
    Download it for free from here

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

If you’re looking for nostalgia, take a look at the Life of Brian script – which doesn’t start with the question you think.

I was talking to a teacher at the weekend, and when he heard that I worked for Microsoft in the Education team, he asked “What has Microsoft got to do with education?”. Well, that set us up for a long conversation.

It also left me wondering – how many other people in education don’t know how involved we are with the education system? Do they just see Microsoft as ‘the Windows and Office people’.

So, in no particular order, here’s a quick baker's dozen things that we have been doing, all related to learning

1. Partners in Learning (PiL), which has invested about £2,500,000 into joint projects in the last three years, aimed at enhancing the use of technology within learning. All of this has been in conjunction with government agencies like the Training & Development Agency for teachers, the Scottish Qualification Authority or the Welsh Assembly Government. We’ve also been working with Futurelab too, and all of these partnerships have resulted in initiatives such as the next 5 things:
   
   
2. Enquiring Minds, a joint research and development programme led by Futurelab aimed at developing ways in which schools can develop curriculum and learning methods appropriate for the needs of young people in 21st Century. The programme aims to place students at the centre of their own education, encouraging more personalised and enquiry-based learning, in line with recommendations made in the Gilbert Review of teaching. Browse the Enquiring Minds website for more information on the programme, and find out how you can get involved.
   
   
3. Free curriculum resources, developed as part of the programme, available here, also available on a free DVD
   
   
4. The Gateway Project – a ‘virtual’ school environment created to allow schools in England, France and Spain to work collaboratively on a shared curriculum. Developed in partnership with the TDA to support the teaching of Modern Foreign Languages in primary schools. The programme also helps support teachers’ continued professional development (CPD) around technology integration into teaching.
   
   
5. Know IT All – resources for trainee and practicing teachers, developed in conjunction with Childnet, the TDA and Becta, to support teachers in dealing with e-safety issues in the school environment. The initiative helps teachers to better support and educate children around a wide range of e-safety issues in line with the Government’s ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda. Take a look at the resources available on the Know IT All website, which also includes resources for parents.
   
   
6. The Educational Evidence Portal (EEP), developed in partnership with DCSF, Becta, CfBT, DIUS, TDA, NfER, LSC, HEA and others. It makes it easy to find educationally relevant research. For example, if you want to find out what research and evidence there is about the use of interactive whiteboards in classrooms, then EEP searches the partners’ websites, and produces a highly focused set of reports and reading materials, all based on UK education projects. If you want to see the true power of it, take a look at what Google gives you for “interactive whiteboards”, and then do the same search on the EEP portal.
   
   There’s an excellent annual report for PiL, available here, which describes some of the work going on worldwide.
   
   
7. Away from PiL, the Digital Literacy Curriculum, launched last month in partnership with learndirect, UK Online Centres and OCR.  The Digital Literacy Curriculum is available free-of-charge to everyone wanting to improve their digital literacy skills, and is available through many learndirect centres, Microsoft IT Academies or local UK online centres. By linking with OCR, it also means people can achieve a recognised qualification.
8. And coupled with the launch, Microsoft will provide one of its largest software donations in the UK, to around 500 UK online centres, worth between £3-6 million in the next year.
9. We offer the Gwricwlwm Llythrennedd Digidol in Welsh too – funny, my spelling checker doesn’t like that!
10. Oh, and we’re also converting the Digital Literacy Curriculum into free SCORM packages, so that you can load it free onto your school’s learning platform for students and staff.
    
    
11. In the field of e-Safety, we work in partnership with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP website) and Get Safe Online (website). Each year, volunteers from Microsoft give their time to schools and other community organisations to give talks and lectures about online safety for children.
    
    
12. As a partner to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, we've provided sponsorship to help 100 schools achieve Specialist status, which unlocks further funding for them from the government.
    
    
13. And finally, how about the work we're doing with schools and local authorities to help them to create new models of learning. Such as Bowring Community College in Knowsley, who are one of 12 schools worldwide which are part of the Innovative Schools Network (website) - their video tells the story better than I can. We're also working with local authorities on new models of learning as part of the BSF programme, and with individual schools to help them to find new ways to support learning using data visualisation (you can get a sneak preview of this on Alex Pearce's blog)

A couple of weeks ago, Becta were reported as saying that pupils’ learning would be harmed if Office didn’t support Open Document Format (ODF). So hopefully they’ll be smiling this morning, now that we’ve announced that Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will provide native support for ODF.

Now, don’t get me started on whether I agree with Becta’s statement about pupils’ learning , because I don’t really think that students have as much difficulty with software as we adults do! But back onto the subject…

You can already save files from Office 2007 in 20 different formats – of which, my favourite three are:

• Office Open XML – which is the new standard format for Office files, and I use most often because it automatically understands all the fancy new stuff in Office 2007 – like SmartArt & the improved picture formatting in PowerPoint.
  
• Office 2003 format – which I use to share files with people using older versions of Office. And some people can’t read these files because their desktop Windows is so locked down that they can’t install the Office update, which is a free download for Office 2000/XP/2003 to open these files.
  
• PDF – just a couple of times, I’ve saved documents in PDF format – mainly Word documents. Whilst I know other people publish their PowerPoint presentations as PDFs, I don’t do it. It’s more open to share the native PowerPoint files so that you can use & modify them yourself. It’s always a bit frustrating when somebody else’s brilliant slide is only available as a PDF image…

There’s already a convertor to convert files between Open XML and ODF – we’ve worked with the SourceForge.net community to make this available. And a free plug-in for Office 2007 which adds the “Save as PDF” option to the menu.

What’s been announced today is that the Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will have native support for Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1, PDF & XML Paper Specifications (XPS), when it is released in the first half of 2009.

This is all part of working more closely with the interoperability groups who are working on interoperability between document file formats – like the DAISY format for accessible publishing (DAISY blog post)– and with organisations like the Interop Vendor Alliance (website).

I guess you’re asking yourself what this means for you and your school? Well, if you’re keen to use ODF, you’ll get a menu item next year that will add “Save as ODF” (and until then you can use the other ways above). So if your students don’t have MS Office at home, they can read the files with another application - but as Open Office & Google Apps already support .doc format, you’ll probably not need it in many circumstances.

Of course, if your students don’t have Office at home, then perhaps you might want to let them know about our education partners (Software4Students, RM and Pugh), that offer discounted prices specifically for students, which brings the cost of Office 2007 down to under £36.

There’s more detail of this announcement on our PressPass site

Today was ‘SharePoint Partner day’ at our offices – we invited 21 different SharePoint partners to present to about 100 schools – which meant a whirlwind of presentations. In all, there are now 95 educational software applications which have been integrated into SharePoint and the Microsoft Learning Gateway, so we had a lot to cover!

21 partners x 12 minutes each= a lot of PowerPoint

I don’t know what I’d done to deserve it, but Mark asked me to kick off the day with my “New World of Learning” presentation, which talks about some of the changes in the workplace, the world of technology, and students’ lives. And he gave me bonus time – I got a massive 20 minutes to do the whole story!

Here’s the slides I used, and just below the link to the video. (

I’ll see how many of the 21 partner presentations I can get, to share here too)

Finally, you can download the excellent video of the US students below. The version I used is an edited version of the original, which I'd twinned up with KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I see". The download below is sound-track-less, so it's time to hone your Movie Maker skills!

The video is from the Digital Ethnography project at Kansas State University, and the full video is on their web site.
If you liked it, the other video they produced which I'd recommend is their (more technical) Web 2.0 video "The Machine is Us/ing us".

As part of the Partners in Learning programme, we develop training and curriculum materials for teachers, which are then made available free of charge. It includes a range of professional development resources, curriculum and learning materials designed to support teachers in developing further skills, from ICT and using ICT in the delivery of their lessons to investigating new approaches to teaching and learning.

Some of the materials available include:

Materials for ICT teachers , such as materials to create a student-run IT Hep Desk, a network course for KS4 and ‘Code Rules’ to support computer programming.

Materials for teachers using ICT in other curriculum areas, including the “101 Ideas for Teachers”, Know IT All for e-safety, and the resources from the Hampshire/TDA Cross Curricular ICT project.

Michael Fullan’s “Leading Change" for managers and school leaders

You can find it all on our Curriculum section on the UK Education website

A while ago Mark wrote on this blog about the work that Microsoft were doing to develop a DAISY XML translator. The DAISY Consortium was set up to help those with visual impairment (or ‘print disabilities’) to access digital content easily, and enhance their use of the materials. We’ve been working with DAISY to develop a Word plug-in which allows Open XML documents to be translated into DAISY XML, which has become a globally accepted standard for digital talking books – for example, it’s used by the RNIB’s Talking Book Service.

DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information System, which lets you work with digital content in many ways, synchronising audio with display output, generating braille versions, or allowing text to speech conversion.

The free Word Add-In has now been released, and adds a “Save as DAISY XML” option to the Word menu. The convertor is released as an open source project, and can be downloaded from the Open XML Community site. The beauty of this software is that it makes a specialist facility available within the core of Office – offering a broader reach for solutions that help visually impaired learners. It makes it easier for all staff in a school to be able to prepare materials in a way that could be used by all learners.

The Save as Daisy XML function works with Word 2007, Word 2003 and Word XP