If a great ‘learning platform’ is part of your answer, then you’re going to be interested in the event coming up in November, at our HQ here in Reading.
Daniel Tennent, of Micro Librarian Systems, is bringing his roadshow to town. And from everything that I’ve seen over the last year, as they have worked on developing a range of fascinating new technologies, it’s going to be a great day.
The focus of the day will be on MLS’ primary and secondary school library management solutions, and they’ll be launching a hosted solution for primary schools.
But the bit that will attract even the most ardent technologist will be the “Glimpse of the Future – the Wow! session”, which promises more than a normal technology update session, but also a chance to see how Microsoft Surface might appear in your school, a session on Silverlight for Mobility and a look at the hot-topic of Business Intelligence.
To make sure it doesn’t just look at everything from a technology perspective, Daniel’s also bringing along two of his customers to talk about their experiences.
Because of the range of subjects, this will be a useful day for primary and secondary schools, as well as staff from Local Authorities and BSF teams.
It’s all going to be in a packed day on 17th November. More background, a full agenda and venue details are all in the invite.
To register, give Pete Underwood a call at MLS on 0161 449 9357, or send him an email
To complete the day, a range Learning Platform partners will be there with demo pods during lunch, so that you can ask your own Learning Platform provider about integration with your current system.
The team that bring you Office, now also bring you an Office for Education site – with a pile of tips and templates for using Office 2007.
Much of this is aimed at parents and children – with things like Academic Year photo calendar and Crabby’s back-to-school tips for parents, but there are some really nice templates that others around your school community could find useful such as the:
* Have checked and the PTA Agenda Template doesn’t look like any PTA meeting I’ve ever been to before. The ones I’ve been to have run to the following agenda:
For years I’ve eagerly looked forward to the publication of the annual “ICT in UK State Schools” report from BESA (the British Education Suppliers Association), because it provides a valuable insight into what is happening across the majority of schools. It’s natural that we can only work directly with a small proportion of schools, and as a result many of them tend to be leading innovators. And, to be honest, it is possible to get a slightly distorted view of reality through that lens!
This year, BESA have made some of the research available publically on their website. Although you can’t see the full detail (unless you’re a member), you can now get some interesting average statistics. Things like average school ICT budgets:
Although you have to be a member to download the full report, on this page, you can download the summary report for absolutely nothing.
To the famous Diana Ross tune I’m Coming Out*
I’m BitLocker’d up, I want the world to know, Got to let it show, I’m BitLocker’d up, I want the world to know, Got to let it show…
I’m BitLocker’d up,
I want the world to know,
Got to let it show,
Got to let it show…
I don’t know why it took me so long to get started. My new laptop has a TPM chip in it, and even though it doesn’t contain any customer data on it, it deserves to be encrypted. And so, this morning I went into Control Panel and set BitLocker encryption. It was an incredibly easy process. To demonstrate, here’s the four things I had to do:
And for four hours, this message moved across my screen while I continued working
And that’s it. I’ve now got a fully encrypted laptop, with an encryption system certified by the CESG (The Govt’s National Technical Authority for Information Assurance).
Having read that last week’s data loss could be up to 1.7 million people’s records (is anybody keeping a count?), then I will sleep easier..
(And if you just want to BitLocker an USB memory stick, to protect some data being transported, read Jerry’s BitLocker instructions here)
* Note to self: If Diana Ross song leads in wrong direction, I might have to disable comments on this post!
“Fun with Statistics” doesn’t sound like a bright Monday morning blog post subject, but bear with me a while.
The minimum cell space allocation for each prisoner to avoid torture or degrading treatment, as recommended by the Council of Europe "European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” link
The teaching space allocation for a secondary school pupil, according to BB98 (the non-statutory guidance used for school design), based on a 1,000 pupil school. The space allocation extends to a lavish 6m2 in total if you include all teaching, meeting, social and staff space (like the staffroom!)
And, if you’re in favour of silly statistical comparisons, then what about:
A couple of years ago, we worked with Childnet to make the Know IT All series available – a set of CD-ROM resources and matching website – to help teachers, families (and last year, trainee teachers) – to advise children about online safety. In the end, 1 million copies of the CD-ROM were snapped up by schools to hand out to parents at online safety evenings, and they haven’t been available for a little while.
So I was pleased when I got a note to say that they are now available again, with updates and new languages:
Childnet International is delighted to announce that the Know IT All for parents CDRom is available again – all 1 million copies of the earlier version were ordered and distributed in less than 6 months – and it has been updated to include fresh content on new and significant issues including social networking, cyberbullying and reporting. The summary of this award winning resource is now available in 9 languages with the inclusion of Welsh in this version in addition to new British Sign Language content for children.
You can see the resources online on the Childnet website, or order the CD in bulk quantities* by calling 0845 60 222 60 quoting reference 00308-2007CD0-EN
* Hmm, the website says it is only for “maintained schools”. I believe that children who go to private schools need online safety help too, so if you’re reading this from an independent school, perhaps give your local state school a ring and ask them to order some for you!