Last week I wrote about some of the resources available if you’re running any kind of Internet safety teaching your school. And I mentioned that on we had 100 volunteers out in schools on European Safer Internet Day, delivering training for pupils, parents and staff. And that over the last year the volunteers had trained 12,000 young people and 2,000 teachers on online safety.

What I forgot to say was how you can get a free-of-charge volunteer to come along to an event for pupils or parents at your school.

The first choice would be to book through the Think U Know website, where schools can register to receive a “Protect” volunteer. They will put you together with a CEOP trained and CRB-vetted volunteer from Microsoft, Visa or O2.

If you specifically want a Microsoft volunteer, then the best thing to do is to email my colleague Karina Gibson, who manages all of our Internet Safety Volunteer programmes. She’ll do her best to find a local Microsoft volunteer, and if she can’t she’ll help you connect with a volunteer from the main programme.

Quickly find all the other Internet Safety posts on this blog

We’ve just released the Language Interface Pack for Windows 7 in Welsh. It’s free as a result of the collaboration between Microsoft and Welsh Language Board. As the press release makes clear, we pay for the work, and the Welsh Language Board provide the translators through the Cymen translation company of Caernarfon. They then get busy translating big swathes of Windows 7 into Welsh for us.

You can read the announcement from the Welsh Language Board for more details.

Download the Welsh Language Pack for Windows 7

I’m told that this page contains the download (well, it certainly looks Welsh, doesn’t it!)

There's a complete How to Install with Welsh Language pack here

We have plenty of other things in Welsh too – like Office 2007, Office 2003, Digital Literacy Curriculum and SharePoint ar gael in Gymraeg. And there are 48 other languages for Office here

Things you didn’t know about Welsh?

• The longest place name in the United Kingdom, and one of the longest in the world, is
  Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave).
• Welsh is spoken by about 25,000 people in the Chubut Valley, a colony of Welsh immigrants in the Patagonia region of Argentina.
• To secure communications without using complicated cryptography, Welsh regiments serving on peace missions in Bosnia (now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina) simply used their native language.

Each month the TechNet and MSDN teams over in the US host a wide range of webcasts on technical subjects. And, of course, next week’s half-term holiday might give you a chance to catch up on some professional development.

As they are held on Pacific Coast time, they first one of the day is normally timed perfectly for the school day – at 4pm, after the stamping of tiny feet has left the corridors.There are others, later on in the evening, which are also good, but I know that you’re going to need a burning interest in something to turn up for a 9pm webcast.

You can find this month’s webcasts on this page (all UK times), and also look at the future ones.

Key February Webcasts

Here’s the ones I think might be useful for network managers in UK schools. Unfortunately the appropriate February ones all look like 7pm ones. Mind you, maybe you need an excuse to skip out of Corrie.

Office and Outlook – helping you delegate effectively
Wednesday 17th, 7pm Microsoft Office System Webcast: Effective Delegation (Level 100)
This one’s all about managers delegating tasks to their teams. Probably should watch this before your head teacher does!

SharePoint 2010 and social networking
Thursday 18th, 7pm Momentum Webcast: Social Computing with SharePoint 2010 (Level 100)
Ideal to understand how the new social networking features of SharePoint work, to help you plan for their use within your school.

Exchange 2010 scalability
Thursday 18th, 7pm TechNet Webcast: Getting the Most Out of Exchange Server 2010: Performance and Scalability (Level 300)
This looks at the product team’s guidelines on scalability and performance, and what tools are there to help in Exchange 2010.

Windows 7 deployment
Monday 22nd, 7pm TechNet Webcast: Everything You Wanted to Know About Windows 7 Deployment in 90 Minutes (Level 200)
Described as a “whirlwind tour of the tools and methods used to deploy Windows 7”, from manual, to automated light-touch and zero-touch installations.

What does Level 100/200/300 mean?

I can’t find an ‘official’ definition, so here’s my scale:

• Level 100: If you can logon to a webcast, then the content won’t go over your head
• Level 200: There’ll be some technical content, but the majority will be in plain English
• Level 300: Propeller-Heads only. Personally, I only get about 30% of the Level 300 session
• Level 400: As Steve Ballmer would say, “Developers, Developers, Developers”

From today, if you’re running Windows 7 RC (Release Candidate) - ie the pre-release version from last summer - then your computer will start to remind you that you really, really need to get on with upgrading to a fully released version of Windows 7. I know that quite a few IT people in school installed it on their own netbook or laptop. And some of those have been too busy since last August to get around to putting the released version on.

So, if you’re running the released version of Windows 7, you’re good. But if you’ve left upgrading too long, then you need to pay attention to it.

If you don’t, your friendship with the Release Candidate is going to be a bit like a failing relationship in your personal life:

• From 15th Feb it’ll start by nudging you and dropping hints – like a little message here and there.
• From 1st March, things will be a little frostier – every two hours you’ll get the silent treatment (well, a controlled shutdown) and when it is talking to you again, it’ll claim to have forgotten everything you’ve said (ie it won’t save your work when it shuts down).
• And then finally from the first of June it’ll be terminal decline – painting your wallpaper black, announcing “This copy of Windows is not genuine” on your desktop, and refusing to talk to your friends (or at least, your Windows Update server)

More details, and advice about making the switch, on the Windows Team blog

This won’t be news to you – it was all covered in depth when we gave you the download for the RC. Just a nudge to get on with it before 1st March

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 has got a potential to save just under £400,000 over the next 3 years. And a primary school could save just over £100,000 over 3 years.

How can that be true, when the average school doesn’t spend that much on ICT? Well, let me go back to what I said when I started this blog series:

	The reason for doing this…was that we all know that there’s a bit of a budget crunch going on – and 80% of network managers in a recent survey reported that they’d had their ICT budget cut. But I’ve come across many examples of where a bit of spending on ICT had saved a heap of spending on another part of the school budget. So I had one really simple goal: To help the ICT team in school to explain to the leadership team how they can help out the rest of the school

So the savings below aren’t just in your ICT budget, but also in the electricity bill of the school, and the staffing budget, and your phone bill. All things which could be reduced by putting into place some of the advice. And really helping you to have the right conversation in the school – about the way that ICT can save money elsewhere in the school budget. As you get down to the detail for next year’s ICT plans, then I hope this list is helpful in drawing up priorities for your strategic ICT development.

Specific ICT cost savings

I based my assumptions on large-ish schools, who are reasonably technology rich - mainly because that’s probably the closest match to you, as a blog reader. (I’ve put my barebones assumptions at the bottom of the table.)

All of these savings are based on money that could be saved over the next three years, and in most cases, they are based on costs from a real school used in the original blog post.

• For Secondary schools I assumed 1,000 pupils, 400 computers and 13 servers.
  The ‘average’ secondary school would have 860 pupils and 300 computers.

• For Primary schools I assumed 100 computers and 4 servers.
  The ‘average’ primary school would have 240 pupils and 50 computers.

I read earlier in the week that Becta have had more than 180,000 enquiries for the Home Access programme, and have sent out 132,000 application forms for the free grant.

Quick summary: Disadvantaged children (think: who qualify for Free School Meals) in KS2 and KS3 can get a free computer and broadband connection, fully funded by a Home Access grant card. Parents apply for the grant on 0333 200 1004 , receive a special Barclaycard, and can then go and spend it on specific approved computers with specific approved suppliers. And it’s England only.

There are only 270,000 computers/grants available, and the scheme is allocating them on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you’ve not yet sent anything out to your parents yet, then now’s the time to get moving. If it keeps going at this rate, all the grants will be gone by the middle of March.

Where to get more details on Home Access 

• More details on the scheme at the Home Access website.

• Go here for a list of approved suppliers, and website links.

• Sign up for access to Becta’s marketing materials here

A word of advice for your parents: Each supplier chooses what computer they supply. Whilst some are providing free computers with Windows 7 and Microsoft Office, some others are providing computers with only Windows XP and Open Office. My recommendation is to send your parents to one of the following suppliers:

• Comet – because they are the only ones where you can go into the store, see their range, and take it away with you that day.
  And every Comet computer has Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2007, as well as the Home Learning Package, which includes theDigital Literacy Curriculum

• XMA/T-Mobile – because you can place your order in their high-street T-Mobile shops, and they’ll deliver to you at home within 10 days. 
  And every XMA computer has Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2007, as well as the Home Learning Package, which includes the Digital Literacy Curriculum

• Misco – because they’re the only supplier currently with a desktop. You can only order from Misco over the phone, although you can find details of the products online.
  And every Misco computer has Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2007, as well as the Home Learning Package, which includes the Digital Literacy Curriculum 

Act now

I know it’s nearly half-term, but I’d recommend getting something out right now to the children who qualify for free school meals, urging their parents to call the grant line (0333 200 1004) to register for the application form. Before they run out of grants.

So here we are the very last part of the series of Top 10 ICT Money Saving Tips for schools, based on my BETT 2010 presentation.  It’s taken me a while to get all of these written down, because although I know the story behind each of these money saving tips, to actually structure it in a way that makes sense on the web takes longer than telling it as a 20-minute story at BETT. But hopefully it has all made sense so far. So on to the very last one.

My last bit of advice is to make sure that you’re buying our software in the most cost effective way, by using the right licensing scheme. We have lots of different ones, and possibly the worse thing to do is to walk into your nearest software shop to buy software off the shelf. You’re likely to pay too much for it, simply because most places can’t or don’t want to supply the Academic licences – which is the absolute cheapest way for a school to buy. So here’s my handy step-by-step guide to make sure you’re getting the best deal

Subscription Licences

This is easy - if you buy your software under subscription, then that means you should be buying a School Agreement, or using the SESP pilot programme. More on this here. The upside of subscription is that it is normally the lowest cost upfront, but you do have to pay an annual subscription fee.

Perpetual Licences

This is where you buy the software licence once, and you can use it forever

Of course, there’s small print, eg sometimes the licence is linked to the specific computer, other times you can transfer it to a replacement computer in school. But normally it’s forever (hey, that must be why it’s called perpetual )

We have two main Academic perpetual licence schemes – Select and Open.

It is always cheaper to buy a SELECT licence, so it’s worth exploring it…

• Select Licence
  This is normally the best deal of these two types, but there's a catch to be aware of (wouldn't you know it!). Select licences are designed for customers who normally buy lots of software - typically people with 250 PCs or more. In the rest of the world this isn't much of a problem, because local or central governments buy in bulk, on behalf of schools. But here in the UK, each school has complete choice - so you mostly buy individually. Secondary schools are normally large enough to buy Select licences, and most do. But for primary schools, it is normally difficult to reach the minimum purchasing quantities, so what you should do is identify whether you are able to join up into somebody else's Select agreement. For example, if your local authority education team have one (what's called a Master Select Agreement), which you can then buy through (but make sure it is the Academic licence they buy, not a normal government licence, which costs more). This could save you quite a bit of money.
  There are other organisations that have these master agreements, like the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), so if you're an affiliated member, you can buy through their agreement.

• Open Licence
  This scheme is normally more expensive than Select, but is handy if you want to just buy a single bit of software quickly, with a copy of the disks etc, and you don't have a Select agreement already in place. For example, if one member of staff needs a copy of Microsoft Project to help plan the new Sports Hall, and you need it now...

Take a look at our main Education website for more information on the Select licensing scheme

Our Education Licensing Partners

While we’re here, let me also explain the different types of partners you can buy Academic licences from

• Education Large Account Resellers (or EdLARs)
  Stop. Just before you think "I'm not a large account" and skip this bit, read on!
  These partners are our largest education partners, and they can sell you any of our Academic licence types. We call them "Large Account Resellers" because they are our largest resellers, not because you have to be "large account" to buy from them. So even the smallest primary school sh/could get a quote from them!

• Authorised Education Resellers (or AERs)
  These tend to be partners that are either much smaller, or where education customers are just a small part of a bigger business. They can only provide some of the Academic licences I've mentioned above. So you can get a School Agreement or Open Licence from them, you can't get a Select Licence (which is the lower priced of the two perpetual licences).
  I can hear you thinking "So, if AERs can't always sell me the lowest cost perpetual licence, why would I buy from them?". Good question.
  Well, back to the example of a small primary school - you may prefer to deal with a bigger company, because you think that's how you get the best value; or you may prefer to deal with a local company, just around the corner, because you think that's how you get the best service. So if you wanted a couple of computers, with the software installed for you, and an agreement that they'll pop around and fix any problems, you could got to a local company, who is a Microsoft AER, and will supply you with Academic licences under the Open scheme. It might cost a little more, but you may be willing to pay for that to get a local supplier. It's your choice.
  You should always check that you get the licence paperwork - for example, the original software CD and the licence key - when you buy an Open Licence, and especially if the software has already been installed for you. If you don't get this, you'll have no proof that you own the licence for the software you are running on those computers.

Finding the right partner

The UK Education website contains the lists of partners.

EdLARs all work nationally, so there's a page with all of their contact details (there's 19 to choose from)

AERs tend to work more locally, so you can search in your local area by county or town, or by company name. (And there’s over 500 to choose from)

I just had a look at the statistics for visitors to this blog, for UK Schools. It was prompted by the edugeek.net website sharing with me that about a quarter of their visitors are using Windows 7. The answer appears to be over a quarter now. The table is the last fortnight’s visitors.

Although I don’t believe that it means that a quarter of all school computers are running Windows 7, it is representative of network managers. And they’re probably already planning whether they are going to roll out Windows 7 to the rest of the school at Easter or in the summer.

Quickly find all the other Windows 7 posts on this blog

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 does Windows 7 run on?”, which took a very early look at what computers people were running Windows 7 on. And the answer appeared to be that it coped with older hardware much better than previous versions of Windows. (Like me, I’m sure you’ll remember the days when a new version of Windows meant you needed to upgrade your own computer too).

And a little later in June, PC World created an article with the headline “Windows 7 Hits a New Low”, which made exactly the same point (my heart sank when I saw the headline, until I read the article and realised it was actually being positive about Windows 7).

So the message was clear – Windows 7 was going to allow you to sweep up lots of older equipment and get it all onto the same version of Windows. Something that’s a big win for a network maanger

Then the forums on thewindowsclub.com got going, and started dragging old computers out of cupboards to have a go at installing Windows 7. My favourite is the one that started the whole thread off – a Pentium 2 266MHz processor with 128MB of RAM had somehow managed to run it, with a Windows Experience Index of 1.0 (I guess it got 1 because the scale didn’t start at zero!).

Now, there is a minimum specification for Windows 7 system requirements, which is 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and at least 16 GB of hard disk, and I can’t recommend you straying below that. But it certainly seems to be the case that with Windows 7 you are likely to be able to use quite a lot of your older equipment in school.

The management time saved by having every computer on the same version of Windows, combined with some of the ways Windows 7 saves energy, means that there a few good reasons to think about making the move sooner rather than later.

And there’s money to be saved by not having to buy new computers, as well as reducing your power bill, and saving your time.

Index to the whole series of Money Saving Tips on this blog

According to the BBC News this morning:

	Blocking pupils' access to unsuitable websites does not encourage them to take responsibility for their safety online, Ofsted inspectors say. "Managed" online systems were more successful than "locked" ones at safeguarding pupils' safety, they said. In a report, Ofsted said the area most in need of improvement was online safety training for teaching staff. The report was published in E-safety Week, which aims to raise awareness of some of the dangers of technologies. Ofsted inspectors visited 33 primary and secondary schools, a special school and a pupil referral unit and found e-safety was outstanding in five, good in 16, satisfactory in 13 and inadequate in one. The five schools judged outstanding for online safety all used managed systems to help pupils become responsible users of technology. Where the provision for e-safety was outstanding, the schools had managed rather than locked down systems

Key Findings

In the report, they identified a number of key findings, which included that outstanding schools shared responsibility for e-safety across the school, and that pupils in the schools that had ‘managed’ systems had better knowledge and understanding of how to stay safe than those in schools with ‘locked down’ systems. They also noted that pupils were more vulnerable overall when schools used locked down systems because they were not given enough opportunities to learn how to assess and manage risk for themselves.

The weakest aspect of provision in the 35 schools visited was the extent and quality of their training for staff. Typically, it didn’t involve all the staff and was not provided systematically. Even the schools that organised training for all their staff did not always monitor its impact systematically.

Recommendations

In addition to three specific recommendations for the DCSF, working with Becta, CEOP and local authorities, Ofsted also identified 7 recommendations for schools. (Is it me, or is that a little unfair – just 3 recommendations for the whole government, and 7 for each school?)

Ofsted said that schools should:

• audit the training needs of all staff and provide training to improve their knowledge of and expertise in the safe and appropriate use of new technologies
• work closely with all families to help them ensure that their children use new technologies safely and responsibly both at home and at school
• use pupils’ and families’ views more often to develop e-safety strategies manage the transition from locked down systems to more managed systems to help pupils understand how to manage risk; to provide them with richer learning experiences; and to bridge the gap between systems at school and the more open systems outside school
• provide an age-related, comprehensive curriculum for e-safety which enables pupils to become safe and responsible users of new technologies
• work with their partners and other providers to ensure that pupils who receive part of their education away from school are e-safe
• systematically review and develop their e-safety procedures, including training, to ensure that they have a positive impact on pupils’ knowledge and understanding.

You may want to download Ofsted’s full report “The safe use of new technologies (PDF)” and send it on to the right senior manager in your school.

For some help in identifying good curriculum e-safety resources, a great starting place is the Think U Know website, which has specific teacher resources for each age range.

Quickly find all the other Internet Safety posts on this blog