Top 10 ICT Money Saving Tips – 11 – Part Two of Saving Students Money

Part eleven of the series of Top 10 ICT Money Saving Tips for schools, based on my BETT 2010 presentation.
Good news, my counting was hopeless, and my Top 10 tips actually contains 14 Top ICT Money Saving Tips. So there’s more to come after this one

Thanks to those of you who’ve asked me to ‘get a move on’ writing up these. With so many other things which need doing, it’s important to get the occasional chivvy along, as it proves that somebody wants these tips!

Today’s tip is the second one for your students – it’s not going to save you money, but it could save some of your students a packet.

Free technical software for students

Under the DreamSpark scheme, schools can register with us, and then have the ability to give students free access to a range of technical software – programming tools, design tools and games development tools – for their own use at home. The idea is simple – if you’ve got Computer Studies or Design students, then they may want to use the same software at home as you use in school, but it tends to be quite specialist, and can be expensive.

The steps to get DreamSpark for your students are easy:

• Register your school on our website
• Verify your school (eg we ask you to fax us something that shows you do represent your school!)
• We then send you your student access keys – and they use these to download the software from the DreamSpark site for home use.
• Err, that’s it.

Of course, if you want the complicated version, then feel free to read our whole FAQ for the school scheme

So, if somebody in your school is a budding programmer, designer or robot builder, you can now make their day.

Find it all at: http://www.dreamspark.com/

I’m sure you don’t need reminding to forward this onto your ICT Co-ordinator in school!

Small Print: I knew you’d look for this! Some things worth knowing are:

• This is available to your students for home use, whether or not you buy this software for your school too
• You are responsible for distributing the access keys to your students – you don’t share any student information with us
• If you want to buy this software for your school, look at MSDN AA in Money Saving Tip #8 for the best way