A roundup of this weeks posts on the Schools Blog:
Which of this weeks posts did you find most useful? Let us know in the comments below.
Originally posted over on the Windows Phone Blog.
For the past few weeks I’ve been mentioning that you’ll soon need Windows Phone 7.5 installed on your phone to buy, download, or update apps from Marketplace. (This applies to both the phone and web storefronts, by the way.)
We’re now doing the final work needed to turn on this new requirement, so I thought it would be a good time for another friendly reminder. If you’re just tuning in, my earlier post has all the details on why we’re doing this. (In short, the new requirement is tied to a larger Marketplace improvement effort.) But the key takeaway is that if you like apps and games, you’ll soon need Windows Phone 7.5 installed to continue using Marketplace. Most of you already do.
If not, you’ll find a checklist and step-by-step instructions for installing Windows Phone 7.5 on Update Central. I’ll also be back with another reminder on the day the requirement actually kicks in.
Guest post from Gerald Haigh, Freelance Writer. Gerald writes regularly for the Microsoft Education Blogs.
Towards the end of April, I was invited to the home of Queens Park Rangers Football Club, Loftus Road. The event was the re-launch of the Club’s on-site Community Study Centre which forms part of the wide-ranging work across West London of the ‘QPR in the Community Trust’ . Microsoft, together with other friends of the QPR Trust, including Lenovo UK, now support the Centre with technology, software, expertise and a large amount of goodwill, hence the re-launch.
I didn’t know what to expect in advance, but it was a really excellent event – positive, relaxed, leavened by the presence of schoolchildren and other young people. It was also good to be reminded that Microsoft, a global organisation and very much a premiership player in its own field, can also be a responsive and relatively low-key friend and supporter of an urban community project that makes a real difference to the lives of some good and deserving people.
There was food, and some good speeches, and a video that underlined the sheer extent of the Trust’s work which includes classes and activities for the elderly, and a range of football-related coaching and recreational sessions. There’s a strong emphasis on inclusion, whether defined by age, mobility, ability or gender. Within that broad picture, the Study Centre itself is a compact classroom, under the stands, with space and laptops for about fifteen learners. As well as running catch-up and enrichment sessions for children from local schools, the Centre is home to an over-55 IT Learning Course and an employability course for 18 to 24 year olds that’s having success in getting people into jobs. That’s only part of the story, though, because the the Centre is very much a learning hub and a driver of outreach programmes that extend its reach many times over.
The Centre and its programmes are managed by a teacher, Jesse Foyle, who’s supported by a number of sessional tutors. Jesse points out that the link with football, and with the QPR brand in particular, is a strong motivator for bringing people to the various programmes.
‘It’s a major drawing point for people who might might not be motivated towards other programmes,’ says Jesse Foyle. ‘They’re more comfortable here.’
On the evening of the launch the Learning Centre was being used by children from Greenside Primary in the nearby heart of Shepherd’s Bush, who were exercising their literacy and ICT skills to research the lives and careers of their favourite QPR players. (One girl, looking into the background of Argentinian midfielder Alejandro Faurlin, found herself being prompted from behind by the amiable Alejandro himself – a great first hand lesson in the reliability or otherwise of internet resources.)
Greenside’s head, Julian Morant, was on hand with some of his staff and though he was busy with the children, he was keen to be supportive of the Study Centre’s work, and I talked to him on the phone a day or two later, when he explained that the work at the Centre is part of a general before and after school curriculum enrichment programme.
‘The Centre is one of our key partners. We use it with our Year Six children with the aim of maximizing the impact on their literacy, numeracy and ICT in their final year. It plays a part in our transition programme as we prepare the children for moving on to secondary school.’
All Year Six children, he says, have the opportunity to take part.
‘We’re a very inclusive school, and our work with the Centre is accessible to all children whatever their physical or learning needs.’
Everything the children do at the Centre, he says, is curriculum related.
‘So in terms of maths work it’s an opportunity to use and apply their key number skills – measuring, data handling. And in literacy there’s writing for purpose and writing for an audience, which are very important skills at the upper end of Key Stage 2.’
And always, he emphasises,
‘Underpinning everything is the use of ICT as a tool for extending and applying knowledge and skills.’
The children, he says, enjoy their sessions very much – something that was easy to see on the evening I was there.
‘They’re keen on going, and attend regularly. They respond to the structure and the high expectations and clear learning objectives. They like to engage with each other and other members of the wider community. It’s part of their lifelong learning.’
The impact, he says, is clearly visible in the school.
‘It does make a real difference. The children are more confident, they can see the links between the skills and the application.’
The world of professional football attracts its share of criticism, and there are those who are quick to see the community projects run by the big clubs as little more than window-dressing.
All I can say is I’ve been to a few of these projects in recent years and always been impressed. In every case I’ve admired the serious intentions of the staff and seen how it’s possible to leverage the power of the football brand to the benefit of young people who are not always easily engaged by other programmes and initiatives. All of that is particularly in evidence at QPR, where there’s clear professionalism and genuine commitment. Much of that, undoubtedly, is down to the leadership – from Jesse Foyle at the Learning Centre, and importantly from the Club’s CEO Philip Beard and also from Andy Evans, CEO of the QPR in the Community Trust.
Philip Beard spoke at the launch about the Community Trust’s ‘Vision and mission’ and of his belief in the the importance of football as a motivator for young people. That kind of support from the top of the club is obviously highly significant.
Equally, the enthusiasm and dedication of Andy Evans, CEO of the Community Trust, is transparent. For him, the fact that the Stadium is in a deprived area of West London just adds to his sense of mission and determination to ensure that The Study Centre, and the many other Trust programmes can reach out into the City, taking learning, coaching, recreation and the sheer fun of sport to people who are more than ready to learn and take part.
‘We are willing and passionate,’ says Andy. ‘And we want to make a difference to the quality of life of the people in our immediate community, whether old or young. If we can contribute to their life experience then that’s something we should be doing,’
As I wrote at the start, Microsoft is a global player, involved in some huge and far-reaching endeavours. It would be difficult, though, to find something more worthwhile and rewarding than its participation in this life-enhancing enterprise in West London.
We’ve made a public big shift in our emphasis towards cloud-based services; but behind the scenes there have been very big changes going on for years to get ready for the day that cloud takes off right across the world.
I’m going to use ‘Cloud’ to represent all of the Internet services that users and institutions might be using. It might be a mix of desktop and web-based software, or an entirely web-based service. Either way, it’s something that involves a web-service as part of the IT delivery.
So here’s my summary of the cloud-based services that Microsoft do that may be directly relevant to education, and the essential differences. .
This is a set of resources, products, and management tools that allows you to run your own private cloud (or contract another organisation to do it for you), using the best practice techniques that we have developed for our cloud infrastructure. It enables you to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to deliver flexible/agile Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Capabilities like self-service portals let your end-users rapidly consume IT services by self-provisioning (and decommissioning) infrastructure on a shared server fabric, virtualised by Windows Server Hyper-V and managed by System Center. Departments are thus able to deploy their applications with a lot more speed and agility. This allows your own IT team to focus their time on solving business problems rather than worrying about keeping the basic infrastructure running. It provides a less complex, more agile and more efficient infrastructure, in-house. And there’s also a hybrid model, where you contract a service hoster to provider a ‘virtual private cloud’, perhaps as a top-up to your in-house infrastructure.
Well, because it is based on a set of best practice advice, you’ll find that the key components are being built into the products you already have – like Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V – and the Systems Management Server products. And in addition, we’re releasing free toolkits – like the Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center and the Dynamic Data Centre Toolkit for Hosters.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/private-cloud/default.aspx
The Office Web Apps are online companions for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Office Web Apps provide quick viewing of Office documents and basic editing capabilities. There are three methods of accessing Office Web Apps.
Individuals can access it on Windows Live using their Windows Live ID. For institutional use, every licence for Office 2010 under a volume licence scheme (such as a Select licence) includes an additional licence for Office Web Apps.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/office-web-apps/default.aspx
As part of the government’s drive to control the nation’s finances, public sector spending is being significantly reduced across the board. Funding for ICT is no longer ring-fenced. Yet schools express a belief in the importance of ICT, and are determined to ensure that students have the quality of access to technology that they need in the 21st Century.
In October 2011 a briefing by the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that after a decade of growth, ‘Public spending on education in the UK will fall by 3.5% per year in real terms between 2010-11 and 2004-15.’ http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5732
The impact of spending cuts on schools will not be even, and current school-level spending will be the least affected. However, there will be, and are already, visible school budget reductions.
At the same time, by contrast, we’re told by the latest annual research on ICT in schools from the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) http://www.besa.org.uk/research that schools are anxious to keep ahead of the game with technology, with more and more pupil-time engaged with ICT.
To support this, schools want better digital content, better training and better broadband. Demand grows across all fronts. The conclusion for school leaders and ICT managers is clear. If ICT is to work within reduced school budgets, while at the same time supporting rapidly increased use of technology for learning, then decisions must be driven by cost-effectiveness and value for money.
Our mission here is to help you make those good decisions, and reap benefits from the extensive efforts being made by Microsoft® to provide products for education which are both affordable in themselves, and also capable of contributing to across-the board spending.
To assist with this, and as part of our on-going series of eBooks, we have partnered with the Guardian to make our new 'Cost Saving in Education' eBook exclusively available within their Teacher Network until the end of September 2012. The eBook can be viewed/downloaded directly via the Guardian's Teacher Network download centre.
We would love to hear what you think!
Originally posted on the Windows Blog.
Ela Nguyen is an upcoming graduate of New York University and founder of Surviving College, a blog dedicated to helping students navigate the ins and outs of college. She is constantly on the lookout for nifty tools that will make a busy (and poor) college student's life much easier. A self-proclaimed interior design junkie, Pamela also runs the interior design blog, Redesign Revolution.
I can hear a collective groan throughout campus when a professor utters the phrase "group projects." You might recall the graphics and memes depicting the expectations versus reality when faced with a group project that is worth 50 percent of your grade.
Image 1: Snapshot of one of my marketing classes at NYU.
As a business student at New York University, I have had more than my fair share of group projects. Last semester alone, I had three back-to-back group presentations that followed up with group papers all in the span of two weeks. No fun. What I've learned is that doing collaborative projects where formatting is incredibly important - the combined power of Google Docs and Dropbox just wasn't cutting it. Attempting to create Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, budgeting reports, or 50-page-long papers via these avenues always ends up failing for me.
What are the problems I have with Google Docs?
Image 2: One of my PowerPoint slides on the desktop application vs. Google Docs conversion.
What are the problems I have with Dropbox?
Typically the way my group project collaborations have gone in the past has been like this:
And when you have to resort to emailing back in forth in groups of 4-8, you can't help but wonder if there's another option out there that can override these issues. Lo and behold: this is where Microsoft SkyDrive comes in.
Why I couldn’t resist signing up for SkyDrive:
Image 3: My same presentation on Skydrive’s PowerPoint Web App.
Frustrations, be gone! I can only rejoice about the hours saved with my latest PowerPoint presentation, now that I no longer have to format and re-format between Google Docs and Microsoft Office. Now, if only I can get my group project peers to make the switch…
Learning Suite is a set of education of tools that can be used to assist exciting and innovative teaching ideas. Learning Suite software is free to download for schools and teachers. Here’s how you can get creative with some of the Learning Suite apps.
Divide the class into small groups and assign a state or region in the world to research. Use Bing Maps to locate the area on the map.
Use Bing to research the history and interesting facts about the region, making sure to copy songs and digital pictures.
Microsoft Word or OneNote should be open during research for students to document notes, pictures and words cited.
Students can import the digital photos that were saved into Moviemaker. Have the groups make a movie on their region and include music related to the area.
Below you can see the whole set of tools that are included in Microsoft Learning Suite and how they can be used.
Microsoft Small Basic is, in my opinion, one of the really cool platforms for introducing programming to younger students. A FREE simple IDE, a simple subset of BASIC, and built in turtle graphics all resonate with me. And a number of teachers around the world seem to agree.
What is really great is that we have some Excellent curriculum support. This includes a complete set of PowerPoint presentation with notes for teachers . There are other resources available
Microsoft Small Basic puts the fun back into computer programming. With a friendly development environment that is very easy to master, it eases students of all ages into the world of programming.
Read the Small Basic FAQ
Download Small Basic from DreamSpark.com
Use the Getting Started Guide to start learning Small Basic
Use the curriculum to expand your knowledge
Read sample chapters from e-books to dive deep into Small Basic
Ask Questions in the Forums
Stay informed about Small Basic by reading our blog
Small Basic Curriculum Resources – Tutorials and Guides.
If you use this curriculum or anything else associated with Small Basic we would love to hear from you? Also any feedback about what we can do better or differently would be appreciated.
Originally posted on the UK Faculty Connection Blog.
To follow on from our recent post Cloud for education: Live@edu and Office 365 for education, the next post in this series includes a summary of Windows Azure and Microsoft Dynamic CRM.
Originally posted by Ray Fleming
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Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing operating system. This is essentially a set of services that developers, software vendors and systems integrators can use to develop applications and new business models. We host the servers in the cloud, running cloud versions of the same platforms that would normally run in-house – things like web servers or highly-available SQL servers. The developers use exactly the same tools as today to develop their applications (eg Visual Studio) on their own desktop/in-house machines, and then they can choose to deploy locally or onto Windows Azure in the cloud.
Because our job is to run an agile, efficient, secure and trustworthy central service through our worldwide datacentres, it means that the developers don’t need to worry about building and managing virtual machines, patching operating systems, and designing their own redundancy system. That’s the Azure team’s job.
The Windows Azure Platform also allows you to integrate your on-premise and cloud infrastructure.
It is based on a pay-as-you-go subscription, calculated on the volume of data/workload that’s used. In a sense it is very similar to a normal utility, like gas and electricity – you use as much as you want, and pay for what you use. And just like the electricity company, it’s our job to make sure the capacity is there when you want to use it. It also allows you to convert capital expenditure into resource expenditure – because you aren’t buying big fixed capital infrastructure – just simply renting the capacity you need, when you need it.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
This is a cloud-based customer relationship management service that can be accessed through Outlook or an Internet browser, and has rich integration with Office applications – Word, Excel and Communicator. It’s a comprehensive service which includes marketing automation, sales force automation, and customer service and support capabilities, as well as integrated workflow and business intelligence. In education, this is most likely to be valuable to independent schools, colleges and universities.
The beauty of this cloud service is that you can start a deployment in a small way, without having to build your own infrastructure, and then grow it as you need to. The cloud system is built on the same code as the on-premise system, so you can move between deployment options in the future.
It’s so easy that you can simply sign up for a subscription, using a credit card. But the majority of education customers will choose to work with a Microsoft partner here in Australia to get the system setup and configured for your needs – and there are already a bunch of partners who offer education products (eg student recruitment systems) based on Dynamics CRM.
http://www.microsoft.com/online/dynamics-crm-online.mspx
And yes, there’s a free trial (available on the link above)
As mentioned in the first article in this series Stuart had explained that he had a ‘’chasm of difference between the best and the worst machines’’ and as it would later turn out, not all machines were in the right place. There were some high end dual core recent purchases in 3 of the 6 ICT Suites (and these could also be found in administration and one tech room), the others having some older (but still dual core) custom build machines ‘’which were a bit temperamental” and the rest of the suites (and majority of the rest of the site) having Celeron 1.6 or 1.9 from IBM or RM. “So, a significant part of the estate could present us with a problem then” worried Stuart, at the start.
Add to this, a wide variety in specification and condition of laptops (which were used by teaching staff) the sheer amount of equipment that needed upgrading to ensure that the consistency goal would be met.
The number of ICT suites was going to remain the same for this year and with at least 18 months before the new build was going to be ready, somehow, explained Stuart “we had to maintain student access”.
A pivotal decision was to be the classroom workstations. By replacing the entire laptop fleet, and ensuring that all teaching staff had a laptop it would be possible to remove the workstations, therefore saving the expense. Furthermore, building on an existing relationship with Microsoft, and also via the EduGeek.net professional group, Stuart and his team were lucky enough to be able to start trialling Windows Thin PC which at the time, Stuart had no idea how important that trial would be.
Having been involved in the roll out of 160 encrypted new laptops in his role prior to joining Marine Academy, Stuart felt there was only one choice. One of the joys of the Windows 7 Operating System, the Enterprise Version, available to schools and colleges under the Microsoft Enrolment for Education Solutions (EES) and Schools/Campus Licencing Agreements, is that it contains the “Bitlocker” functionality.
“Encryption, right out of the box – every IT Managers dream”
Having completed a number of Windows 7 deployments before the settings side of things was relatively simple.
‘’Particularly as Microsoft now give you to tools to backup and transfer Group Policy Objects (GPOs)”.
There are lots of warnings about transferring GPOs between domains however there are supported ways of doing it - the links appear at the end of the article. The principal is to use the management console, take a backup and then remove the Default Domain and Default Domain Controller Objects. Importing these over the top on your target domain “will horribly break things” warns Stuart. There are tools then to edit the GPOs to change the domain referenced and also change the security groups or paths which may appear throughout (if you used security groups for filtering or applying various settings – eg folder redirection).
Settings all done and dusted (well, actually these were tested before the summer break on some of those high end ICT Suite machines) it was time to work out how to deploy over 400 machines. Stuart is known on EduGeek as one of the “System Centre Gods” for playing around and deploying Operating Systems and Applications, so this shouldn’t present much of an issue.
“This was now the 4th time round for setting up System Centre Configuration Manager (SCCM)”.
A complete rundown on how to set this up as well as reference “Task Sequences” are all on his blog over on EduGeek.net.
“Software is where SCCM gets interesting”, and the deployment goes to a whole new level at Marine Academy. For those not familiar with SCCM, not only does it deploy MSI’s (like a lot of IT teams in Schools do with Group Policies) but it also can deal with normal Setup executable’ or just groups of files (which usually need some scripting to sort out). “Cue less cursing of software houses” jokes Stuart!
Virtualising the servers was one step, but you can also use SCCM and a lesser known piece of kit called MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Toolkit) to take even more control of the application management process. MDOP contains a feature called AppV – which allows you to separate the application from the Operating System. The application is “installed” on the machine but it doesn’t interact with the Operating System and doesn’t have a Program Files folder.
“It exists in its own bubble. This is ideal if you want two versions of the same application on the same machine such as Adobe CS4 and CS5.5 on the same machine”
The ICT curriculum had already been designed for this year around CS4 and so it needed to be there, but Marine Academy wanted the new version and the ICT team wanted to get to know the new version too.
“It also allows us to get older software which is not compatible with Windows 7 to run on it - great for educational software too where there tend to be a lot of older version lurking about.’’
Creating AppV applications is pretty similar to creating MSIs through packaging. Anyone who has used Wininstall will recognise the process of snapshot, install, snapshot, package made. SCCM recognises these packages as special and allows you to do something called “streaming”.
So that’s really about it on SCCM. The great thing is under Microsoft EES you can get all you need to run this for very little in terms of cost. You need to buy the System Centre pack, which covers your server level products. All your CALS are covered under your Desktop Standard or Desktop Enterprise. In Stuart’ opinion, ‘’go enterprise if you can, as you may not want all the extra goodies in there now, but at least you can at a later date if you want.’’
Stuart is currently working on the final part of this blog series looking at the Remote Desktop to cover the Windows Thin PC machines and the purchase of the Wyse Terminals for the administration and support offices.
Backing up, Restoring, Migrating and Copying GPO's
Migrating GPO's Across Domians with GPMC
Sysadminlab
Migrate GPO's between Domains blog