Browse by Tags

Gerald Haigh, Microsoft’s freelance writer,  recently spent some time with Paul Hynes, Programme Lead for New Technology at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) to find out how SSAT’s work with their schools and the way they are helping schools to take advantage of IT Academy, following...

This year's BETT is generating plenty of new announcements from us, and here's yet another one. On Tuesday we announced the availability details for Windows MultiPoint Server 2011, which will be available from March this year. In a nutshell, Windows MultiPoint Server allows you to plug multiple screens...

So the budget cuts have arrived – and the pressure is on to save money in schools. And ICT leaders in schools around the country are going to need to hone their skills to justify the investments they are bidding for. Since late 2009 I’ve been working to look at how ICT can help save schools...

We're in the final throws of organising BETT (the lorry is loaded, and the final can of orange paint is in!), but I thought I'd take a couple of minutes out of my day to correct a little bit of confusion that's appeared in the press today - just in case you're worried by it. ZDNet ran a story today about...

Last week I spoke to a group of schools about money saving strategies ( based on this info ), and I do plan to shortly record the whole presentation, so that I can share it. But when I got to the bit about making sure that you do something about desktop power savings, there were a few in the audience...

I've just heard about another free event, on Friday 5th November, focused on cost saving with ICT. Although it isn't specifically education focused, I think that there will be a lot of readers that would appreciate a whole day full of network management tools ( oh, and a lot who could imagine nothing...

Over the last few months, I've been focusing on cost savings with ICT - you'll have seen many of the posts . But talking about saving money with ICT, and actually doing it, can be two different things. For example, knowing that you should be virtualising your servers to reduce cost is fine, but it would...

After last week's post about saving money by printing less, I asked Gerald Haigh if he could have a chat with Ian Stuart at Islay High School, to get an update on their project, first reported in the Guardian a couple of years ago. They too were aiming to reduce their printing costs. Gerald picks up...

How much does your school spend on reprographics - paper, toner, printers, photocopiers, and the staff to run them and keep them running? I'm sure that the average secondary school is spending more on reprographics than they do on their whole ICT budget. Mike Herrity, at Twynham School, found out his...

Identifying ways that you can contribute to budget savings in your school is important to me. Which is why I've written 35 separate ICT Money Saving articles on this blog. The definitive article, Top ICT Money Saving Tips , identifies a series of strategies to save a secondary school up to £350...

Dimension Data are running an event here at Microsoft HQ on 3rd November, which will provide practical steps to saving money with ICT. So the budget cuts have arrived – and it appears that for the moment, the biggest cuts are in schools’ capital budgets. Firstly we saw the Harnessing Technology...

We’re supporting the team running “ Project Genie ”, which is all about making climate change meaningful to pupils in primary schools. In the pilot programme, the schools that took part saw energy use savings of up to 40% – which is pretty significant when you consider that most schools spend more on...

I’ve just finished reading a story in Computing about the Co-op saving money on IT , when they cut their Microsoft licensing bills by at least £1.5 million, by changing the way that they implemented technology. Having written so much about cost-saving recently (including the “ Stop buying so much software...

Virtualisation again. Just to remind you if you’re still not up with it, virtualisation is shorthand for replacing your bank of network servers with just a few, more powerful ones, each housing a number of virtual servers. And why has it suddenly become a talking point? Because although the principle...

I was suprised to discover I hadn’t blogged this before. So if you’ve renewed an anti-virus subscription for your home computer since last October, when this was launched, then I’m sorry! We have launched a free anti-virus programme, Microsoft Security Essentials , which is for Windows XP, Windows...

The Microsoft worldwide case studies site always throws up some interesting things to read. But a couple of weeks ago I noticed that a new case study of a UK school had been published by our services team, in partnership with Dell. It’s from Lodge Park Technology College, in Northants, and tells the...

So, if you’ve been following the Top ICT Money Saving Tips, how much money could you actually be saving, using my Switch-Stop-Save strategies? I thought I’d go back and find out. Save £400,000 over 3 years If you’re not already doing some of the things in this list, then a secondary school...

Part thirteen 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 contain 14 Top ICT Money Saving Tips. So there’s one more to come after this one Last summer, I wrote a blog post called “ What...

Part twelve 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 contain 14 Top ICT Money Saving Tips. So there’s more to come after this one If you don’t spend all of your time obsessing about...

Part ten 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 So far I’ve talked about saving your school budget directly...

Part nine of the series of Top 10 ICT Money Saving Tips for schools , based on my BETT 2010 presentation When the DCSF issued their " Securing our Future " Discussion Guide ( download the PDF version ), it was accompanied by dire headlines in the papers warning of the need to save £750 million...

Part four of the series of Top 10 ICT Money Saving Tips for schools , based on my BETT 2010 presentation. So far, the first three money savings tips could save a secondary school over £100,000 over three years (and a primary school £20-£25,000). And this tip doesn’t shirk at saving money either, but...

Part three of the series of Top 10 ICT Money Saving Tips for schools , based on my BETT 2010 presentation. My next tip is to think about the energy usage of your computers in school. According to the latest research from BESA , primary schools have an average of 50 computers per school, and secondary...

Part two of the money saving tips, based on my BETT 2010 presentation Yesterday, I covered saving money by server virtualisation. Today, let’s go outside of the server room and consider all of the computers right around you school. With the rapid growth in the number of computers (an average...

At the BETT Show in London in January 2010, I have the luck of telling the story in our theatre called “Top 10 Money Saving Tips”. Of course, I had a few weeks to prepare, and a lot of help from individual schools who looked at their use of ICT and pointed out how it had helped save their school money...