When the Home Access Programme was first announced by Becta, in January 2010, there were six suppliers on the scheme, where parents could spend their grant cards. And Becta have recently announced an additional four suppliers. Which means that your parents have ten different suppliers they can turn to.
However, it’s unlikely that a parent who doesn’t have a computer is going to want to shop around ten different websites or call ten call centres, or visit ten shops, in order to decide which computer is best. Especially as many of the suppliers focus on gigabytes and gigahertz, rather than talking in language that first-time computer buyers will understand.
I’ve spent some time trawling through the different Home Access suppliers’ websites, and come up with my recommendation of the best Home Access Suppliers. Although there are ten suppliers, each offering between one and four base models, there are only seven different computers – although some offer a different software specification, or purchasable options.
Before I give you my recommendations, let me explain some of the reasons I’ve chosen them, which are important to parents choosing a first home computer for their children, to support their school work. I’ve given a great big green tick to specific suppliers for the following reasons:
Note that this is done by trawling through suppliers’ Home Access websites - I’ll try and keep it up to date as I see/hear of changes. It’s probably not foolproof or completely error-free, but the only way to not make a mistake would be to not write this blog post!
Quickly find all the other Home Access Programme posts on this blog
We have been developing Office 2010 for quite a while now – and many of you have been taking part in that by running the beta versions (at the last count, 7.5 million people have downloaded the beta version).
Late on Friday, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 reached their last stage in the development process – called Release To Manufacturing (RTM in geek-speak). That means that it is finished and ready to go, and the code is then released to be made into the final product – whether that’s creating the DVDs that you buy in a shop, or creating the download websites for our volume licence customers.
Making the physical disks takes a little longer than the download sites, so here are the dates when you will be able to get hold of Office 2010:
If you’ve missed it, here’s a brief overview of what’s new in Office 2010.
And here’s my view on the Top 10 reasons Office 2010 is good for schools.
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
Now that Office 2010 is so close to the release date, I thought it would be a good time to start sharing a little bit more about the improvements and changes that are most relevant to education. Of course, there’s a pile of written fact sheets and guides – which I’ll share soon – but I thought you might like to actually see it in action. So I’ve roped in a few colleagues to record short demos of the bits they think are most likely to appeal to teachers.
I think I struck lucky in the random draw, as I had to make a video of PowerPoint 2010. Here’s my video – eight and half minutes to try and whizz across some of the key new bits.
A brief look at what's new for teachers in PowerPoint 2010
This is the first time I’ve ever tried to record something like this, and it was very tricky. My first attempt was 20 minutes long, and the second attempt had more “Ums” than you’d believe. This version is attempt number 3. As my wife once said to me “You’ve got a face made for radio, and a voice made for writing”. Judge for yourself!
People are definitely getting concerned about the need to secure data in schools. On Tuesday, in the "When too much security means less security" post I mentioned that there are new stricter penalties faced by organisations for losing/disclosing personal data, with fines up to £500,000. And there has been some discussion about the need for encryption of teachers’ laptops on the EduGeek website.
One of the issues that I’ve found is that some head teachers believe that it is fundamentally an IT problem – and therefore the network manager gets given ownership for it. However, it really needs addressing at a whole-school level (and the IT team can arrive as the heroes who can provide a solution to the problem).
Last week’s TES might help. When you get into school on Monday, grab it (dated Friday 9th April) and make sure the SMT see the article on page 11:
Schools face £500k fine for data lapses
Penalties increase 100-fold for worst transgressions
Schools have been warned to check procedures for protecting pupil data after the information watchdog was given powers to issue fines of up to £500,000.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), previously only able to issue fines of up to £5,000, is planning to punish organisations which mislay or misuse sensitive personal information.
Although most high-profile data losses reported so far have been from government organisations, headteachers have been warned to ensure their policies are watertight.
And the very next thing you’ll want the SMT to read is Becta’s “Data handling security guidance for schools”
There’s plenty of supporting information on this blog on strategies and actions for protecting your data – start at the Information Security article for help.
Probably the very first step to take is to ensure that all of your file servers are kept in locked room.
The second is to make sure that your teachers’ laptops have encrypted drives, and that your staff use encrypted USB memory sticks for any sensitive data.
If you’re one of the many schools that already buys your Microsoft software under a subscription agreement (such as School Agreement or SESP) then you’re already licensed for Windows 7 Enterprise – which comes complete with BitLocker (allowing you to easily, safely, and invisibly encrypt every teachers laptop) and BitLocker To Go (which allows you to encrypt any USB memory stick). I think implementing this gets you a long way towards to meeting the guidelines (without any additional cost!)
Read the TES article
We're running a free Microsoft "Fun, Free Friday for Schools" at the Microsoft Campus in Reading on 11th June 2010.
A lively Q&A after the second Microsoft briefing at the NAACE Conference in Blackpool has led to the Microsoft UK team running a free event for schools on the 11th June 2010, called “Fun Free Friday”. It’s for any staff working with and within schools, so that they can find out all about the free software and resources that Microsoft produces that support teaching and learning.
The agenda for the event runs from 9:30am to 2:30pm with breaks to catch up with colleagues from other schools, and chat with Microsoft staff.
It’s for any staff working with and within schools, so that they can find out all about the free software and resources that Microsoft produce that support teaching and learning.
It will be a fast-paced and fun event, with 3½ hours of rapid demonstrations, featuring a dozen presenters and lots of different free Microsoft software programmes that schools can download and start using in the classroom, school office or IT suite.
Fast paced demonstrations To keep the pace moving rapidly, no demonstration will last more than 15 minutes, and although it won’t be a PowerPoint-free zone, we’ll keep to a limit of a maximum of 2 PowerPoint slides per presenter! Free software for every attendee During the day we will be demonstrating at least 20 pieces of software that can help you to deliver teaching and learning, and absolutely every single one will be free for you to download. Save money with Microsoft We know that you’d like to do more with ICT, but that budgets are tight. That’s exactly why we’re putting on this event – to give you inspiration and ideas to take back to share with everybody in your school. Ideas that will appeal to teachers, IT Co-ordinators and the senior leadership team.
Fast paced demonstrations
To keep the pace moving rapidly, no demonstration will last more than 15 minutes, and although it won’t be a PowerPoint-free zone, we’ll keep to a limit of a maximum of 2 PowerPoint slides per presenter!
Free software for every attendee
During the day we will be demonstrating at least 20 pieces of software that can help you to deliver teaching and learning, and absolutely every single one will be free for you to download.
Save money with Microsoft
We know that you’d like to do more with ICT, but that budgets are tight. That’s exactly why we’re putting on this event – to give you inspiration and ideas to take back to share with everybody in your school. Ideas that will appeal to teachers, IT Co-ordinators and the senior leadership team.
This free event is for advisors, classroom teachers, IT specialists, and school leadership teams. We’ve scheduled this event for the summer term 2010, in time for planning for next academic year.
Here’s the detailed timing of the day, so that you can plan your trip.
9:30 Registration 10:00 Morning sessions 12:00 Lunch and networking 13:00 Afternoon sessions 14:30 Close
9:30 Registration
10:00 Morning sessions
12:00 Lunch and networking
13:00 Afternoon sessions
14:30 Close
We won’t issue an itemised agenda, but some of the products you can expect to see on the day include SkyDrive, Windows Live Movie Maker, Windows Live PhotoGallery, Bing Maps, Photosynth, Pivot, XNA Game Studio, Visual Studio Express, Chemistry Word Add-In, Flashcards, Autocollage, Songsmith, Worldwide Telescope, Windows Live Writer, Maths Worksheet Generator, Office Moodle Add-In, Office Web Apps, Office Ribbon Hero, Bing Search, Microsoft Security Essentials, DeepZoom, Live Sync, Kodu, Digital Storytelling Curriculum Guides, Mouse Mischief, DreamSpark, Microsoft Robotics Studio, Live Family Safety Settings, Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum, Windows Live Translator, IE8 Accelerators, PhotoStory 3, Community Clips, Virtual Earth, pptPlex and Live@edu.
And continuing the free theme: if you arrive by public transport, there’s even a free bus from Reading Station to the Microsoft offices.
Book your free place now
The team over at the Microsoft Education Labs have been busy over the last few weeks. If you’re new to it, Education Labs was created by the Microsoft Education Products Group to build and release new product prototypes and useful add-ons, specifically for education use.
Following on from the Office Add-In for Moodle earlier in the week, there’s some further advice and support from the Education Labs team for Moodle that may be useful to you. If you’re either using Moodle, or considering it, then you may want to consider how you set it up. Because Moodle is an open source product, it’s often assumed that it should be installed on an open source server – like a Linux box. But the challenge with doing that for many schools is that it doesn’t therefore easily integrate with their existing ICT systems – for example, managing users and files on your existing school file servers.
However, there’s a more positive way to deploy Moodle, which is to install it on your existing infrastructure, rather than having to add additional complications. The most powerful bit of your infrastructure to add it to is your SharePoint – because it fills in some of the gaps of a conventional Moodle system. First, it helps prevent data loss. For example, if a teacher deletes a file by mistake and wants to get it back, you’ll easily be able to go into SharePoint and restore it from the recycling bin – rather than it being lost forever. Secondly, you can take advantage of versioning in SharePoint. If a teacher or student overwrites a file by mistake, it can be restored to a previous version from SharePoint. Finally you can use SharePoint’s search capabilities to search across the content of all of your content, whether it is in your SharePoint file storage, or in your Moodle system (currently there is no equivalent file search capability in Moodle). Perhaps most importantly, teachers can get these benefits while continuing to use the Moodle user interface they are accustomed to, meaning no new training.
So if it makes so much sense to run your Moodle on top of your SharePoint, how do you do it? Well, we’ve published a white paper that explains how to set up SharePoint as the file system for Moodle. It doesn’t need any special code – if you have SharePoint and Moodle, it is a matter of configuration.
You can download the full white paper here (click on the Read It link) which can help you plan your strategy.
Quickly find all the other Moodle posts on this blog
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.
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
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