Yesterday in discussions about what content goes onto this blog, and the others I write, I promised somebody I’d write a list of Microsoft team blogs that I’d recommend reading. The discussion was started by the question “Does your blog contain everything that’s relevant to education and Microsoft?”. And the answer is definitely “No” – I only have the bandwidth to write about the bits I think are really important or really interesting to people interested in Microsoft news on education IT. There are lots of other related blogs that focus on specific products or technologies.
Saying I’d write a list turned out to be easier than doing it, but here is, finally, a list of blogs that you might want to consider reading/subscribing to.
Firstly, in addition to this one, there’s five key UK specific blogs, written by members of the Microsoft education team here in Reading
Then there’s some worldwide ones, written outside of the UK
There are thousands of blogs written by either Microsoft teams, or individual employees, so if you’re looking for something specific, the best way is to search on the Microsoft Communities page (which maintains a list of 1,686 blogs today – but that’s still only a small proportion of the total)
Search the blogs list to find others
Overnight the full released version of Office 2010 appeared on the Volume Licensing Service Centre, and I’ve already seen a few comments from people who’ve been busily downloading it.
As well as Office 2010, we’ve also released SharePoint 2010, and I was really chuffed to read a blog post from the team at Twynham School, as they celebrated implementing the final version yesterday. I believe that they are the first school in the world to roll out the released version of SharePoint 2010, and partly this is because they have been involved in our official TAP (Technology Adoption Programme). As Dave Coleman, the Twynham Systems Manager says:
Dave’s promised that they are going to make a demonstration site available shortly, so that you can see what they have done with it (which is typical of Twynham’s attitude towards sharing the lessons from their work).
They are also running a free event on 14th May 14th June at our campus in Reading, all about SharePoint 2010, and they and other early adopter schools are talking about their experiences. You can register for the event by emailing Mike Herrity at Twynham School.
Find out more about, and book for, the Twynham School SharePoint 2010 event
There’s a new press release on the it’s learning website. it’s learning are a Becta approved Learning Platform provider, and have recently signed an agreement with us to offer their customers our cloud computing services, via our Live@edu service. That means that if you are an it’s learning customer, you’ll be offered a range of internet-based services which fully integrate with the it’s learning platform – such as cloud-based email through Outlook Live, and online versions of SharePoint and the Office Web Applications. With Outlook Live it means that students can get their email through a browser, on their mobile phone, or through Outlook.
I think over the next few months you’re going to see more announcements about this kind of partnership – where a specialist supplier of services, like learning platforms, integrates hosted services from Microsoft (like email) within their service. It means that we take on the task of running a mega data centre, supporting standard tasks, whilst the specialist supplier concentrates on customising a complete system for a school, college or university. Learning platforms are a really good example of why this model works – it’s good to have email fully integrated into the learning platform, but it’s not good (or necessary) for every supplier to build their own version of an email system. So instead, they can provide that function in a fully integrated way (ie invisible to the user) through an external service. The same thing is happening in local authorities and individual schools, where they continue to run their own core ICT infrastructure, but move some services to an integrated cloud-based system, like Live@edu.
Here’s the detail of the it’s learning announcement:
On the 12th April 2010 Microsoft and it’s learning, an international learning platform provider, signed an MOU to jointly provide products and services that will transform teaching methods and advance next-generation learning. The agreement represents the first Education Partner Alliance where the Microsoft cloud computing services are adopted to develop a fully cloud based, integrated offering to the education sector.
The Partner Alliance means that Microsoft Outlook Live, SharePoint Online and Office Web Applications will be integrated into the it’s learning platform through the Microsoft Live@edu service. This means it’s learning can now deliver the best suite of online communication tools to improve productivity and collaboration in education. Students and teachers will be able to securely upload, easily share, and collaborate on Office documents from anywhere with internet access, including mobile devices.
Dylan Jones, Managing Director, it’s learning UK said “it’s learning has chosen Microsoft’s cloud services for education allowing current and future customers to benefit from Outlook Live and Microsoft’s web applications. We took this decision because students and teachers are familiar with Microsoft’s rich, high-quality communications products which will keep up with their changing needs. Microsoft not only provides the leading platform, but is also a fantastic partner for it’s learning because it is an enterprise company which has experience with large organisations and has a strong heritage in working with local authorities and Regional Broadband Consortia in the UK and internationally.”
Steve Beswick, Senior Director of Education, Microsoft Ltd said “We are delighted that it's learning have decided to integrate the Microsoft platform and partner with us to provide future customers the best learning experiences. As students become increasingly tech-savvy at a younger age and demand more technology services from their schools, we believe that our technology offers the familiar, rich solutions and flexible platform that will best support their learning and help them develop the skills needed by today’s employers.
Find out more about it's learning and their learning platform
I’ve indexed all of the different product guides for the new Office 2010 applications. There are two separate documents for most of the products – the Overview version is a short two-page summary, and then there’s a detailed Product Guide which goes into much more detail.
The Overview document is ideal for a quick staff introduction, to stick on walls, and for leaving around the staff room and IT rooms – as well as for summarising the key points to help you to decide when you should consider upgrading your school computers.
The detailed Product Guide is really useful for preparing training materials, or handouts to staff when you are starting to deploy Office 2010. It may help to enthuse them to use some of the new things where Office will help in their lesson delivery - and to get them over the “Oh no, things have changed” reaction. Some of these Product Guides have more than 100 pages, so there’s no shortage of details. I also like the fact that they talk about new things that Office 2010 can do, and then show screen shots of the difference it makes.
Product
Overview
Product Guide
Download
Word 2010
Excel 2010
PowerPoint 2010
OneNote 2010
Outlook 2010
Publisher 2010
Access 2010
Not available
InfoPath 2010
SharePoint Workspace 2010
Office Web Apps
This event is recommended for experienced network managers, as it will focus on network management technologies, and is not specifically for education. However, I know there’s quite a bit of interest in the System Center Essentials, so there will definitely be content that’s useful to schools.
The chances of persuading your senior management team to let you fly over to Vegas for the annual Microsoft Management Summit is pretty slim. So last week’s event went ahead without many UK delegates.
Fortunately, the UK team have put together a “Best Of…” event, where you can get all of the best content from the summit, packed into a full day’s agenda on Tuesday 18th May in central London. And unlike the Vegas event, which cost $2,000+, this event is free.
Best of Microsoft Management Summit UK 2010 will provide the best possible opportunity to learn about the latest IT Management products, solutions and technologies from Microsoft and how to apply them in your organisation. With a number of significant management product releases and announcements planned from Microsoft in the coming year, including some early Beta releases, this is an opportunity you won't want to miss!
This 1-day event will provide you with an understanding of the latest technical updates on Desktop, Datacenter and Cloud management features and solutions from Microsoft. The event will share expert knowledge and information, covering current System Center products as well as Windows platform management solutions for virtualization of servers, desktops and applications.
The agenda includes:
Find out more, including the full agenda, and reserve your free place
The Computing at School Working Group is an informal group that aims to promote the teaching of computing at school. The membership is broad, and includes teachers, examiners, parents, university faculty, and employers – and the Microsoft Research group in Cambridge are one of the backers. The focus is specifically on computing as a subject rather than ICT generally, so it focuses most of its work on supporting specialist ICT/Computing teachers, by providing them with teaching material and training, as well as encouraging the developments for GCSEs in computing.
They’ve just announced details of the free Computing at School 2010 Teacher Conference on 9th July 2010 at the University of Birmingham. They’ve got an good line-up of speakers already:
And probably the best reason to find out more (or pass on the info to your IT teachers) is this one quote from an attendee last year:
The conference free to attend, and this year there are also small bursaries available for those who need assistance with travel expenses and overnight accommodation.
Find out more about the 2010 Teacher Conference
The RNIB have announced that their Windows 7 and Vista Explained books for blind and partially sighted users are now available to pre-order, and will be shipped by the end of May. It's a step-by-step guide to Windows 7 and Vista from a non-visual perspective,and is specifically written to empower blind and partially sighted computer users with whatever access technology is being used.
It may be useful for you because it has been written for trainers and people supporting users with sight loss, as well as blind and partially sighted computer users.
It’s available in the following formats:
Book
Images (sold as separate volumes)
Order a copy from the RNIB Online Shop or contact RNIB on 0303 123 9999 to place an order.
There is also an updated (and free) Microsoft Accessibility Guide for Teachers, which you may find useful
The RNIB website also gives a handy list of Accessibility Resources from Microsoft too:
On Friday, when I offered to send out packs of Office 2010 Overview sheets, I also offered a goodie bag for the first person to send me the correct answers to my ridiculous Fortune Cookie competition. Congratulations to John Duggan, who was first to get the full list of correct answers into my email inbox within an hour. And honourable mentions to Peter Dean from Birmingham, James Schlackman from Reading, John Doyle from Swindon , Steve Gillott in Wiltshire and Thom McKiernan from Wellingborough – they all got the answers right, but just didn’t have the same emailing speed that John managed.
The correct answers were:
A-2
Your genius comes in many forms
B-5
You are a model of efficiency
C-1
You really make contact
D-6
You are the author of your own success
E-4
You can take it with you
F-3
You look great
John’s goodie bag will go in the post today. I’ll see if I can think up an equally ridiculous quiz for next week.
Part four of our mini series. Each day one of the Education team has made a short video on one of the Office 2010 programmes, explaining new features that might appeal to teachers.
Today it’s the turn of Nicky Singh – who’s our Schools Business Manager for the north of England. And his chosen subject is Excel 2010.
A Quick Look at Excel 2010
After over 7,500,000 downloads of the beta version of Office 2010, there’s a good chance that somebody in your school will have been running the new version of Office for a while. And they may be able to summarise the key things that are new in each of the Office applications. But just in case they can’t, or you haven’t got anybody handy to ask, then we’ve got some packs of Office 2010 Fact Sheets here – a simple two-sided sheet, one for each of the main applications in the Office 2010 suite.
They’re sitting ready on the desk here, so drop us an email and we’ll pop an envelope in the post.
I think that a writer who normally writes Fortune Cookies wrote the headlines on each of the fact sheets– see if you can match up which headline goes with which software.
A
1
B
2
C
3
D
4
E
5
F
6
The goodie bag for the first correct set of answers I received went to John Duggan