Microsoft UK Schools blog

Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V was a game changer for schools (eBook)

Tim Bush — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:39:50 GMT

The arrival in 2009 of Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V was a game changer for schools. This release of Windows Server included virtualisation built-in, for free. It means that if you’re already using Microsoft technology, you can work within that without adding a new layer of infrastructure and training. As Microsoft puts it, “If you know Windows, you know virtualisation.”

The cost savings

Just how much could be potentially saved? At Microsoft we’ve recorded one or two striking examples. Servers typically cost £3000 each to replace, for example, often on a rolling annual programme.

We talked to three schools about this. Two were reducing from 20 servers to 5, the other from 20 to 6. All three separately calculated annual savings of about £7,000 a year in hardware replacement costs alone.

By the same token, many schools will significantly reduce the cost of contracted IT support. On top of this there are energy savings, because not only do fewer servers use less electricity, but they also cost less to keep cool. Again, the schools tell similar stories, of annual energy savings in the region of £8,000 to £10,000 – good for the school’s environmental impact as well as the budget. Do some simple math, come up with a global sum, and it seems that, at the very least, a virtualisation project will pay for itself quite quickly.

With the project successfully implemented, it will continue, year on year, to make a real impact on the whole-school budget. To give just one specific example, Steve Gillott, Head of ICT at Wootton Bassett School in Wiltshire, describes reducing his school’s servers from 13 to 3. “ It came to a point where we needed to replace the hardware anyway, so money was earmarked for that”.

After seeing a demonstration of Hyper-V by Microsoft Partner Clarity-IT Solutions we decided that the additional benefits of virtualising our server infrastructure was a much better investment than buying replacement servers. The cost savings in the first year alone paid for the virtualisation project.”

It was a decision that saved the school over £38,000 in that first year and continues to save £14,500 a year on
electricity and support contracts.

But does it work?

School network managers were originally cautious about virtualisation. The cost savings looked attractive, but there was a gut feeling that by abandoning the notion of one separate server box for each key function, you were doing something risky. One of the early adopters of Microsoft’s virtualisation solution, the highly experienced Alan Richards of West Hatch High School, ran a year-long small-scale test before he was convinced. Indeed Alan, as you’ll see in his excellent major contribution to our recent Virtualisation eBook (available to view or download below), still recommends a test project. Not so much to make sure the basic technology works, but to be certain of exactly what’s needed for the particular school.

Now, all the doubts about functionality and reliability have gone away. From its launch in 2009, Microsoft’s
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology, has been proving just how efficient and cost effective it can be. Plan properly and carefully, follow the key principles, take the right advice, and what you end up with is a virtualised environment that’s better than the system you had before – easier to manage and easier to change as your school’s needs change, and users aren’t subjected to irritating down time.

For Alan Richards at West Hatch it’s that improved service that really counts. “ It’s obviously nice to save money, but the main reason for the change is to ensure reliability and sustainability for the school. Alan’s right, but it’s also true that by moving in a planned way to a virtualised environment with Hyper-V, the network team is effectively presenting the school with a considerable financial bonus that continues year on year.

Virtualisation with Microsoft® Hyper-V

View more presentations from Microsoft Education UK

Safer Internet Day with CEOP - Free online safety resources and training programmes

Ellie G Jones — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Yesterday saw Safer Internet Day 2012 (SID) with CEOP. This has taken months of planning from the CEOP team who have worked continuously to ensure that, whilst your children are using the internet to complete homework, play games to relax or chat to friends through social networks, parents and teachers alike know and understand what actions to take to ensure they stay safe online.

From 6pm-9pm on 7th February, the CEOP team were on line via their facebook page answering any questions that came through from teachers and parents alike to give advice on best practices around internet safety and the challenges they face as their children grow up online.

Over the 3 hours, over 80 people contacted CEOP, with both queries and thanks for the work that has been put in to provide free resources and training programmes for teachers to deliver directly to young people in schools through the Think U Know website, including the the Keeping up with the Joneses short 50’s style trailer to get parents to think about their children’s online lives.

‘’Well done CEOP on your excellent work on internet safety very informative and easy to understand please keep up the good work.’’

Along with this, CEOP’s very own Jonathan Baggaley and with the help of others, produced ‘’The Parents and Carers Guide to the Internet’’, using a fun and interactive way to equip you with the tools to have those tricky conversations with children and young adults.

A big congratulations to the CEOP team. Overall SID was very successful, communicating key messages across with useful resources available to use for both parents evenings and in the classroom as part of a learning tool for everyone.

Microsoft UK Education Webcasts: New Dates Added!

Tim Bush — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

Further to our recent Education Desktop webcast, the next on our series of Live Webcasts have now been scheduled. Details are shown below. We hope you can join us!

System Center 2012 – An Overview

March 6th, 11am-12pm

System Center 2012 can transform your IT Infrastructure, from your Desktops, to your Data Centre and out to the Cloud. Join this session, presented jointly by Microsoft and a Microsoft System Center Partner to understand what System Center 2012 can do for you. This session will provide a good overview of the capabilities of the suite and also provide a “what’s new” update if you are aware of previous versions. You will also have chance to get your System Center questions answered by a Specialist.

https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/microsoft1/Registration.aspx?pageName=4k1xkfk0jldm71b8

SharePoint 2010 – An Overview for Education

March 27th, 11am-12pm

This session, presented by Dave Coleman, SharePoint MVP – will cover the key features of SharePoint 2010 –highlighting key education scenarios. Whether you are completely new to SharePoint or have experience with previous versions, this session will give a great recap, and provide a “what’s new” in this current release. You will also have the chance to get answers to any of your burning SharePoint questions.

https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/microsoft1/Registration.aspx?pageName=z9g4c4lktqqztkdr

Deploying Windows 7 – from Planning to Deployed
April 17th, 11am-12pm

This session will give you an overview of the key steps needed to plan for and deploy Windows 7 effectively.

There are a whole range of free tools and utilities from Microsoft that enable you to remove huge cost out of the deployment process. Including:

· How to simplify assessing your current PC estate for suitability

· Checking your application compatibility – and reducing the impact of any that aren’t compatible

· Application deployment methods to reduce your workload

· Capturing and migrating existing user data

· Automating deployments – from light touch to zero touch installations

The session will be relevant for IT managers in schools, colleges and universities

You will also have chance to get any of your deployment questions answered by a Microsoft Specialist.

https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/microsoft1/Registration.aspx?pageName=g44771637dlklvz2

Safety Internet Day - raising awareness with the BBC and CEOP

Ellie G Jones — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:57:00 GMT

The BBC’s Share Take Care campaign is part of its commitment to media literacy and online safety for young people. Working in partnership with The UK Safer Internet Centre to support Safer Internet Day (SID), (tweet #SID2012) the BBC’s campaign aims to raise awareness of the issues around safeguarding reputation online.

Helping to raise awareness, the BBC have bought together using Horrible Histories, a number of short light hearted video clips.

Horrible Histories - Lady Jane Grey
Be aware of what you download!

Horrible Histories - Guy Fawkes
Privacy Settings

Horrible Histories - Saxon Monk
Internet Video’s are Forever

As part of Safer Internet Day, this year, CEOP are launching the ‘Parents and Carers’ Guide to the Internet’. This informative 20 minute film is being shared widely by both CEOP and their many partners. You can view this and get up to date advice here

End of Support for Microsoft Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003

Tim Bush — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:55:31 GMT

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Office 2003 will be reaching end of support in April 2014. We want to help you avoid the risk of running an unsupported version of Windows & Office, and to assist with your IT planning for 2012.

With this in mind, the objective of this Blog Post is to highlight the potential risks involved with the upcoming end of support of these products and to outline the options available to mitigate these risks.

What is the situation and potential risk?

Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will no longer be supported from April 8, 2014 onwards. After this date, Microsoft will not provide any public support for these products, including security patches, non-security hotfixes or incident support.

Running Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 in your environment after their end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as:

Security & Compliance Risks - Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to security risks. This may result in an officially recognized control failure by an internal or external audit body, leading to suspension of certifications, and/or public notification of the organization’s inability to maintain its systems and customer information
Lack of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) & Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Support – A recent industry report from Gartner Research suggests "many independent software vendors (ISVs) are unlikely to support new versions of applications on Windows XP in 2011; in 2012, it will become common". And it may stifle access to hardware innovation: Gartner Research further notes that in 2012, most PC hardware OEMs will stop supporting Windows XP on the majority of their new PC models. See Creating a Timeline for Deploying Windows 7 and Eliminating Windows XP SP3, June 2011.

What are the available options?

1. Upgrade - This option affords customers the best return on investment by deploying a modern PC with Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010. Whether you’re a small business or the largest corporation with offices worldwide, moving to a modern PC with Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010 offers your business the ability to improve productivity for your employees and increase operational efficiency through improved PC security and management.

To help customers with the migration/deployment process, Microsoft and our consulting partners offer several options including proof of concept (POC) and production pilot programs, available through Microsoft Consulting Services or one of our Certified Service Partners, to help you achieve a successful upgrade to Windows 7 Enterprise and Office 2010.

2. Purchase a Custom Support contract through Premier Support to stay on unsupported products – If, for any reason, you decide to remain on Windows XP SP3 or Office 2003 after support ends, you have the option to purchase Custom Support. As a condition of buying a Custom Support contract, you must have a Premier Support agreement and we ask our customers to have a migration plan in place. The cost of Custom Support is significantly higher than regular support, and rises annually due to the rising costs of supporting a legacy product.

3. Do nothing – Microsoft recommends customers avoid this option for it can put you at risk of potential security and compliance issues.

Where can you find more information?

Full details on Microsoft product support lifecycle is available at: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
Full details on end of support for Windows XP and Office 2003 is available at: www.microsoft.com/endofsupport
Full details on Microsoft Consulting Services that can help you design, deploy and support your Microsoft solutions are available at: http://www.microsoft.com/services
Full details on Microsoft deployment guidance, training and free deployment tools for your IT Professionals at: www.microsoft.com/springboard

How can we make our blog more relevant to your needs?

Tim Bush — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

I have a bit of a favour to ask. I want to ensure that the information we share via our blogs is relevant to your needs and continues to add value.

With this in mind, would you mind taking a minute out to give me an indication of what kind of content you would like to see more of over the coming months by completing the short poll below? We will always look to mix up the content types that we share on the blogs, but if there is a particular type or style of post that you enjoy most, let me know and I can work on ensuring that I post more of this kind of material.

Click Here for Poll Online Survey
Conjoint Analysis
| Polls
| Mobile Surveys

| Feedback Tab
View MicroPoll

Thanks in advance, and if there are any specific topics you would like us to address via the blog, please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Tim

Learning Without Frontiers 2012: First batch of videos now available

Tim Bush — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:08:14 GMT

The folks at Learning Without Frontiers have made the first batch of videos from the 2012 conference available online. The remainder of the videos will apparently be released in batches over the coming weeks.

As discussed in my recent posts on the conference (check them out here and here if you missed them), Learning Without Frontiers was one of the most thought provoking conferences I have attended in some time.

I am not going to post every video shared from the #LWF12 team, but thought it might be useful to add a couple of the videos to the blog. I will post additional sessions that I found particularly interesting to the blog when available.

In the meantime, the stand out sessions from the initial batch of videos are as follows:

Virtualisation with Microsoft®Hyper-V (New eBook)

Tim Bush — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:03:34 GMT

We’re conditioned to assume, especially in education, that a cost-saving measure will threaten the quality of what we’re able to offer. That being so, the news is more than welcome that in many schools, colleges and universities, information technology professionals are turning that assumption on its head. They have found a proven way not only of saving significant sums of money for their institutions, but of doing so while delivering better and more effective ICT for staff and students.

Already the questions are forming. How is that done? Can any school do it? Exactly what cost savings are in the offing? Is the end product really good enough for us?

Our latest eBook, titled ‘Virtualisation with Hyper-V’, attempts to provide you, a decision-maker in a school, college or university, with the information you need to make informed decisions about how to save money within your institution. One of the solutions, and the key focus of this eBook, lies in server virtualisation using Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V.

Within this eBook, we’ll tell you what Hyper-V is already doing for real UK schools, and arguably more importantly, in broad terms what it could do for your school.

The content covered within this eBook is structured in two parts. Part 1 provides a non-technical introduction to the concept of server virtualisation. Part 2 presents a more technical guide to help you implement a virtualised environment.

This eBook has been co-authored by Alan Richards, West Hatch High School, and Gerald Haigh. The full eBook can be viewed and/or downloaded below.

Virtualisation with Microsoft® Hyper-V

View more presentations from Microsoft Education UK

Safety online–how much do you parents know?

Ellie G Jones — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:58:00 GMT

With technology continuing to grow and the fact that children and young adults use the internet everyday, whether it be in the classroom, at home getting their homework done before dinner or chatting to their mates whilst playing the latest game, the question has to be asked, do they know and understand their children’ online lives?

On 7th February, CEOP will be releasing ‘’The Parents’ and Carers’ Guide to the Internet at Safer Internet Day (SID), an entertaining and light-hearted look at what it takes to be an online parent. This will be available from 7am on thinkuknow.co.uk/parents and youtube.com/ceop.

About 2 weeks ago, Think You Know released a promotional pack which includes all the information you need to run an event for parents or activities for children ahead of SID. If you would like to download this, you can do so here, just click on the Key Stage area you are interested in.

And finally, Think You Know have launched a Keeping up with the Joneses' film, something to share with parents to get them thinking about how their children use the internet whilst ensuring they are kept safe online.

The Microsoft Education Desktop (Webcast)

Tim Bush — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:30:00 GMT

What does the modern education desktop from Microsoft look like today? This webcast talks about how Windows 7, Office 2010 and Learning Suite, to name a few, come together to provide more engaging learning experiences for learners, while also saving costs.

Furthermore, if you are responsible for managing the desktops within your institution, this webcast shares some insight into MDOP with adds significant value and removes cost from the process of managing the desktop environment.

Finally, while not specifically a licensing orientated session, an overview will also be given on the CAL Suites.

The Microsoft Education Desktop

View more videos from Microsoft Education UK

If you have any questions about the Modern Education Desktop from Microsoft, please leave your questions in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to view the webcast and if you have any ideas for future topics, we would love to hear them. Again, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Tim

Hosting your Moodle on Windows Azure

Tim Bush — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

Moodle hosting in the Cloud via Windows Azure

There are two projects currently available for hosting Moodle on Windows Azure, both on CodePlex (Microsoft's open source project hosting site, which hosts over 200,000 projects currently):

http://moodle2azure.codeplex.com/ This is a port of Moodle 2.x Course Management System to Azure platform.

http://moodleazure.codeplex.com/ Enable Moodle 1.9.9 to run on Windows Azure and SQL Azure

Both of these projects are on CodePlex, there's a community of support on the site for advice as you start to implement and use them there are a number of other moodle associated codeplex projects and a whole forum on the Moodle community website for Windows users

Originally posted on the UK Faculty Connection Blog

Microsoft Student Tech Clubs

Tim Bush — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:00 GMT

There are many ways to learn technology around the world. We realise that sometimes the way students can master professional tools is on their own time with their friends.

Microsoft goal is to support them with the accessss to tools, training and a platform to connect.

Student Tech Clubs are communities of students, problem solvers, challenge seekers, people who love to discover everything they can do with the latest technology.

The program is there to help students to start and run a Student Tech Club at their institution or to help support existing student computer societies.

Tools like surveys, member administration, newsletters, invitations to events, event calendar, support materials created by Microsoft Product Groups, access to speakers and resources are some of the features they can take advantage today using this initiative.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Student Tech Clubs at your school or campus, please see the following presentation which contains all the information and advice.

How To Start Your Student Tech Club

View more presentations from Lee Stott

Originally posted on the UK Microsoft Faculty Connection Blog.

Using a BlackBerry with Office 365

Tim Bush — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:06:25 GMT

Originally posted on the Live@edu blog.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could use your BlackBerry to access Office 365? Well, now you can! Yesterday RIM officially announced that BlackBerry Business Cloud Services was available for Office 365 customers.

Key features:

Wireless synchronization with Microsoft Exchange Online email, calendar and organizer data from a BlackBerry smartphone
BlackBerry® Balance™ technology, which presents a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry smartphone while keeping the content separate and secure
An intuitive web-based console for IT administrators to provision, manage and secure BlackBerry smartphones from anywhere
Online access to employee self-service smartphone security functions, allowing users to easily reset a device password or remotely lock or wipe a device in the event of loss or theft

The service is available today in over 50 countries. Customers can go to www.blackberry.com/cloudservices to get started.

Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference - Core Points and Conclusions (Part 2)

Tim Bush — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:38:11 GMT

Part 2 of my Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference summary.

Last week I attended the Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference. My post yesterday introduced my initial 3 (of 5) core points gained from the conference. My final 2, and a short conclusion, are presented in this post. As mentioned yesterday, this only skims the surface and I would highly recommend viewing the video content from the conference when it is made available on the conference website. Some amazing content was presented!

Point 4: Conrad Wolfram (Wolfram Research Europe)

Conrad Wolfram, the founder of Wolfram Alpha , spoke about, with some passion, the subject of Math(s). He argued that there is currently 2 subjects relating to maths. Maths in society, that is more popular than event, and maths in education, which is more despised that ever.

Maths in education is currently mostly about calculation. In digital age where most people have access to powerful computers in their back pockets, this approach is out-dated and unappealing to most students.

Maths is important for a number of significant reasons. It is the foundation for most technical jobs and also encourages logical thinking. Furthermore, maths is ultimately about asking the right questions and knowing how to find the right answer.

Pure calculation and making students into 3rd rate computers is not going to develop students who can do and offer these things. Maths is bigger than that!

The current efforts to improve math education is not working. Conrad argued that better deployment of the wrong subject (pure calculation) is not the way forward for maths curriculum. Instead, maths, even at an early stage, needs to be made more relevant. Working out by how many friends you are separated on Facebook, for example, is going to engage more students than the current approach seen in maths education.

Conrad went on to say that computers are dumbing maths down and needs a radical overhaul to ensure its relevance and value moving forward.

Its hoped that initiatives such as the Wolfram UK Programming 2012 Challenge will help raise awareness of these requirement and help inspire the changes needed.

Point 5: Mark Surman and Michelle Levesque (Mozilla.org)

Mark and Michelle gave a very interesting talk on the topic of making as learning, or more specifically, web making as learning.

In an effort to inspire and build the next generation of web makers, Mozilla have been pairing film makers and other members of the creative industries with developers to create unique digital first versions of their movie content.

The web is like Lego, building blocks that are designed to be pulled about and used to create new things. Mozilla's project is all about embracing the concept of the web being like Lego and encouraging folks to remix!

I love the analogy of comparing the web with Lego and will be watching their efforts in this area closely.

Conclusion

All in all, and as mentioned in the opening to this post, Learning Without Frontiers 12 was an amazing conference. Great speakers, inspiring ideas and an opportunity to be exposed to new and often conflicting perspectives made LWF12 one of the best conferences I have attended for some time.

That being said, though, I am not sure that it took full advantage of the opportunity to address the future of education. There is no doubt that the conference had the opinions and ideas needed to start making a difference. I can't help but think, though, that delegates will have left Olympia wondering how they can take some of the ideas they heard and start making a difference in their schools, colleges or universities. The conference lacked the practical elements required to drive change and, with the odd exception, was very heavy on the theory. I appreciate that this is the aim of the conference, but its time to stop talking and actually start doing.

It seems like the will is there and there is pockets of great work being carried out, although I think the community needs to now come together to start mapping out the practical next steps needed to stimulate and drive a Napster like shift in the education sector.

All members of the community, from government to newly qualified teachers, now need to embrace the challenge that is presented to us and be bold enough to define what the future of education looks like.

I hope that Learning Without Frontiers, as custodians of this community they are building, considers what happens between now and the next conference to encourage the practical realisation of the ideas presented at the conference.

I am passionate about this topic and look forward to playing my part in the future of learning.

What do you think? What do we need to do next? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Bring Some Game To Your Coding lessons

Tim Bush — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Originally posted on the UK Microsoft Faculty Connection blog

Visual Studio is a ideal tools for schools, colleges and Universities for inspiring future developers, to enhance the experience Microsoft has released Visual Studio Achievements, with the achievements students talents and learning are recognized as they perform various coding feats, which unlock achievements and earn badges which can be shared and displayed on social network profiles and web sites.

Some examples of individual achievements include Regional Manager (have more than 10 regions in a single class), Close To The Metal (use 5 preprocessor directives), Stubby (generate method stubs 10 times) or Interrupting Cow (have 10 breakpoints in a file). All in all, there are 32 achievements awaiting to be unlocked, all of which are listed here. Here's what the 6 different badges look like:

The Six Categories of Achievements

Learn More About Visual Studio

Visual Studio is a powerful tool with tons of features, many of which you may not know about. Earning some of the badges may result in learning about features you didn’t even know existed!

Download It Download Now

How It Works

With the Visual Studio Achievements Extension, achievements are unlocked based on your activity. Your code is analysed on a background thread each time you compile. In addition, the extension listens for certain events and actions that you may perform in Visual Studio, reporting progress on these events to the server. When you unlock an achievement, Visual Studio lets you know visually with a pop-up displaying the award. Each time you earn a badge, a unique page is created with your profile picture, the badge and a description. Students can then automatically tweet about achievements they earn and/or share them on Facebook.

Get Visual Studio for FREE via DreamSpark

Learning Without Frontiers 2012 Conference - Core Points (Part 1)

Tim Bush — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:53:04 GMT

Last week, I attended the Learning Without Frontiers (#lwf12) conference in Olympia. Aside from Olympia now starting to feel like my second home after spending the early part of this month there at the BETT 2012 show, the conference was arguably the most inspiring and motivating I have attended since Thinking Digital a few years ago (FOTE gets a mention here, also).

Much like Herb Kim of Thinking Digital, Graham Brown Martin and his team have done a brilliant job at curating an amazing line-up of speakers to address the core theme of the conference: The Future of Learning.

With the underlying theme of trying to create an environment that can stimulate a Napster like shift in education, speakers such as Microsoft's very own Anthony Salcito, Noam Chomsky, Ray Kurzweil, Ellen MacArthur and Conrad Wolfram, to name a few, presented some inspiring and often controversial views and ideas about how to transform education.

To recap the content from all of the presentations would probably qualify me for the longest blog post in the world award. For the sake of brevity, though, I will try and summarise the 5 core points from my perspective, made from a selection of speakers across the 2 days. This only skims the surface and I would highly recommend viewing the video content from the conference when it is made available on the conference website.

Also, if you attended the conference, it would be great to hear what you thought where your core points and ideas presented at the event. Leave your thoughts in the comments below. I look forward to continuing the conversation over the coming weeks.

This blog post covers part one of this summary, with part 2 to following tomorrow.

Point 1: Anthony Salcitio (Microsoft)

I am not just highlighting some core points made during Anthony's presentation because he is VP for Education at Microsoft. I personally felt that Anthony's presentation was both thought provoking yet practical, and the fact that Sir Ken Robinson referenced it during his summary means I can't be far off the mark.

Anthony spoke about a number of pragmatic and game changing ideas, but his thoughts around the fact that technology should be used as a service to teachers and students and not be the core focus, really stuck with me.

Technology to support teaching and learning should be at the forefront of our agendas moving forward. Technology, combined with great teaching, is what is going to drive change and improve attainment for students in the future.

Technology and bad teaching is going to add little value and has very little scale at a time when learning is no longer a linear process. Students now come to class with content already pre-wired. It is the teachers role to make that content come alive and add meaningful context and discussion. Technology, when used effectively by great teachers, can give real scale and impact.

The paradigm of learning has changed and simply digitising the old methods of teaching and content delivery is not going to provide the Napster like change the conference was trying to unleash.

The personalisation of learning and creating an emotional connection to this learning is what is going to create the transformation needed.

Anthony, during his presentation, discussed a number of different methods and techniques that can help transform and enhance the emotional connection to learning. Gaming, and the gamification of learning, was a core element of this.

Jane McGonical, in her brilliant TED talk 'Gaming can make a better world', discusses some of these ideas and was referenced by Anthony is his talk. The video is well worth taking the time to view below.

Games based learning requires and builds skill as the game develops, and the gamer creates an emotion connection with the game. With points and reward built in to the game, games based learning essentially creates a new category: the incentivisation of learning.

When gamers play a game, at the beginning they die a lot. Yet they slowly become an expert at the game as they play more often and learn more about the environment and dynamics of the game.

This approach to learning could have a massive impact and is in stark contrast to the traditional methods of teaching and learning that focused on content, retention and assessment.

We must not forget, though, that students and teachers are the future. Not technology.

I have probably done a really bad job at trying to highlight some of the core points from Anthony's presentation, but will post the video from LWF12 to the blog when its available. I will definitely be watching it time and time again!

Point 2: Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, in a recorded introductory video to the conference, discussed some fairly controversial ideas regarding how to positively change the future of learning. I didn't agree with all of them, particularly his views around the impact that technologies such as the internet has had on society. That’s maybe something for another blog post, though.

Noam's opening remarks covered a fairly wide range of topics, but ultimately focused on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

He discussed that we need to create an education system that encourages creative exploration, independence of thought and the ability for people to push the boundaries forward. He argued that we wont get the economic and technical gains society needs without graduates that can achieve this.

Noam went onto talk about that significant changes to how the education curriculum is structured are needed to support this goal. He discussed assessment, in particular.

Noam felt that tests can be a useful benchmark, but beyond this doesn't tell you much. You can study for a test and then 3 weeks later you have forgotten everything. In this sense, assessment managed in this manor is just a set of hurdles and is relatively worthless. Searching and enquiring is more significant than passing tests.

Noam felt that an education system that rewards discovery and independent thought, not standardisation, was needed to build the foundation for a strong economic future.

How do you feel about some of these ideas?

Point 3: Ellen MacArthur

Ellen gave a motivating talk about her experiences of sailing around the world and the lessons she learnt.

Sailing solo around the world presents some very unique and dangerous challenges. With a boat that is built for speed, rather than safety, luxuries such as sleep and 'turning off' for a few hours are soon a distant memory when you are 2,500 miles from the nearest port. Extreme concentration and the full awareness and management of the resources available to you are key to survival. On the boat, the battery is like a heart beat and 5 seconds is all it takes for disaster to hit. What is available on the boat is all you have and the management of these is key!

When Ellen successfully completed her goal, she thought back to the finite resources on the boat and drew comparisons to the earth. Much like on her sailing adventures and the resources on her boat, what we have available on the earth to sustain future generations are also finite.

This led to Ellen leaving professional sailing and launch the Ellen MacArthur foundation that aims to focus on one thing - all our futures.

Societies use of natural resources have spiked since WW2 and are clearly fundamental to life, today. These are finite, though, and will eventually be used up. So if these can be eventually used up, what does society do? Use less?

If this is the case, what are we aiming for as a society. To do less? If so, how do we inspire young people?

Ellen argued that we need to think differently when it comes to manufacturing the things that we need and use in the future. Designing for disassembly, that would allow for products to be broken down and used to produce the next car or carpet tile, would offer the environmental protection the earth needs combined with new economic opportunities.

A system level change is needed, though. In the case of the automotive industry, for example, consumers would purchase miles rather than a car. You would essentially lease the miles and then give it back to the automotive company to breakdown into the next car. Bold steps, but arguably necessary given the facts presented by Ellen during her talk.

A practical expression of this ideology is something called the circular economy, which promotes a continuous circle of production and recycling/re-production of goods.

With the mission to re-think, re-design and build a better future, the foundation is working closely with governments, businesses and, most importantly, young people to encourage a generation to see things differently and safe guard the future of our environment.

Part 2 of this Learning Without Frontiers themed post will follow tomorrow.

SkyDrive and Office Web Apps

Tim Bush — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:30:00 GMT

For schools, colleges and universities looking for a powerful tool for their students to help them better collaborate on group projects, SkyDrive and Office Web Apps is the ideal solution.

Those looking for a web based solution often think about Google Docs. While tools such as this may work well for simple tasks, they may not have the features you need to create professional documents. You can also have formatting issues when you move between these apps and Office.

You could also use a “file cloud” like Dropbox, but these tools aren’t really designed for collaboration, and they don’t let you work simultaneously with others on a document.

Faced with these choices, many people decide to work independently and email files back and forth. This makes it hard to know if you’re working on the latest version of a document, and sometimes you can run into attachment limits. It also can take a lot of time to piece together different Word documents or PowerPoint presentations from multiple email messages.

With SkyDrive, you have a better option. Students can store all their files in one place, so everyone can access the latest version. They can also use free Office Web Apps for basic editing from any browser.

More specifically, SkyDrive and Office Web Apps allow you to more easily manage the following:

SkyDrive and Word let students work together on the same document from different computers
Let everyone in the group work on the same presentation file – even at the same time – from any PC, Mac, or just a web browser with the PowerPoint Web App
Easily share the presentation and let everyone see it the way it was intended to look by uploading the file to SkyDrive and viewing it with the PowerPoint Web App
Access and collaborate on files in almost any web browser even if Office isn't installed on that computer
Spend more time actually working on a spreadsheet or model and less time reformatting or organizing it
With OneNote, keep notes synced across all of your computers and even your Windows Phone or iPhone
Easily open and print your documents from the library or computer lab at school

SkyDrive and Office Web Apps make sharing easy. Learn more about how your students can start embracing these powerful tools, also offered as part of Live@edu, today.

Trending the verbal network at BETT 2012

Tim Bush — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Post written by Mark Reynolds, Schools Business Manager (South)

(At the time of writing) It’s the Friday after BETT. Last week, I was in the middle of Olympia, for the last BETT Friday ever (assuming that the EXCEL London move works out). The Microsoft stand was incredibly busy, which is brilliant. I didn’t get to talk to everyone I wanted to, but did have hundreds of great conversations with a huge range of people; and whist trending on Twitter is all well and good, I thought I’d try and sum up the trends I spotted by talking to people face-to-face, in a totally unscientific brain-dump of BETT 2012.

So, what was trending on the verbal network at BETT?

1. Computer Science and the teaching of IT. After Gove’s speech on the Wednesday, we had loads of people come on to the stand, asking how we could help them re-write their ICT curriculum. Some were big Local Authorities who are planning things centrally, and some were individual IT teachers, who, quite frankly, looked a mixture of terrified and excited about the need to introduce some “proper” computing into their classrooms. We had some amazing teachers on the stand who could help them start straight away, like Ray Chambers from Lodge Park and Nicki Maddams from Hartsdown Technology College. They were showing off the amazing Kodu for game programming and also showcasing the software they’d written themselves for Kinect. Microsoft has been campaigning long and hard for the computing in schools agenda, and it’s great to see that work recognised – but my view is that we also need to retain some balance. Do people still need to know how to use Office properly? Of course they do. Kids need to learn how to format their CV, track their budget with a spread sheet, or build an exciting presentation - but that can definitely be achieved at an earlier stage in their learning than it is today, either with in-app games like Ribbon Hero or with industry recognised qualifications like MOS. I think it’s a really exciting time to be involved in Education IT, but teacher CPD will get more and more important as we push things forward in a new direction.

2. BYOD, and iPads in particular. Yes, this is a Microsoft blog that’s going to talk about iPads. Shock horror. It may amaze you to know this, but most of us at Microsoft are pretty pragmatic types. We are very excited about the launch of Windows 8, and wish we could have told you more at BETT – but we’re also seeing lots of schools buying iPads and also visiting the stand, waving their iPads at us, mostly asking things like: “can I use this with your Cloud” or “can you help me manage these on my network”. So for me, there are two parts to this: user experience and management. When schools use our Live@Edu email service, they can sync mail and calendars to their iPads very easily and have a great experience. We even have apps for SkyDrive, OneNote and Lync on iOS. Most teachers I spoke too seem to use their Windows PC for planning lessons, writing documents and doing the bulk of their admin – then use the iPad to carry around to meetings or browse the web on the sofa. Therefore, using Cloud technology like SkyDrive which lets you easily move files around is a big benefit, and we showed just that during our “School in a Box” presentation. As for device management, we encouraged the technical people who came on to look at the beta of System Centre 2012, which for the first time will allow schools to manage iOS and Android devices. There were many raised eyebrows and confused looks – but we said yes, as long as you’re using Windows Server and Exchange for email, then BYOD and teacher iPads are just about to get a lot less scary and hopefully help schools avoid any nasty “SIMS data/iPad/left on bus” type moments.

3. Skype/Lync and the Video Conferencing 2.0. A few years ago, video conferencing in schools meant that you had to buy big expensive dedicated kits, with plasma screens, wall mounted cameras and complicated software. Now, we all use Skype at home and the whole idea of video conferencing is more accessible and widely accepted as a non-speciaist subject. We had a brilliant presentation on our stand by Joe Dale, sharing some inspired ideas from Skyping Santa to sleepover Skype nights in the school hall! We got feedback that some Local Authorities or RBC broadband services block Skype – which we’ve taken on board and will hope to discuss with those people in the coming months. Now this is, of course, often for reasons of e-safety – but with current budget restraints and the huge pull of Skype from people's home lives, we have to find a way to help schools embrace it safely. Joe advocates the teacher leading a Skype call at the front of the class – to a teacher leading their class at the other end, Skype in the Classroom is not about student-student conversations. Where things got really interesting at BETT, is when people realised that the “managed” world of Video Conferencing (using Lync integrated with your Active-directory, Exchange servers and Office apps) would, in time, merge with the “consumer” world of Video Conferencing. This will allow me, on my Microsoft provided Lync client, to call my wife at home on Skype. Not to mention me calling my 8 year-old on his xBox! The possibilities are mind-blowing, but for a whole host of reasons, from distance learning, to cost-saving, to international collaboration – it’s time to re-visit Video Conferencing in your schools and explore the possibilities.

I was once told that you should never tell people more than three things at once, so that’s my lot. Anyway, I still have 158 unread post-BETT emails in my inbox. See you next year at EXCEL.

Cool new devices for schools at CES

Tim Bush — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:54:57 GMT

Originally posted on Anthony Salcito’s Education Insights Blog.

I’m back in the office after a quick trip to Las Vegas for CES. I love to walk the show floor each year to see all the new gadgets, not just because it’s fun to tinker with new technology, but because I like to get a first look at the new innovations that could be most useful when applied in education. There are a lot of new Microsoft products that are available to schools now or very soon. Surface 2.0 has just shipped, the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) and a Kinect for Windows sensor are coming on February 1st, and Nokia phones built on Windows Phone are out now.

Our hardware partners are building some cool PCs and Windows 7 runs super-fast and super-long on them. They’re building rich input devices, with mice, keyboards, and pen inputs – some go from a laptop to a tablet in just seconds -- satisfying those students who want the best of both tablets and PCs in one. There are also a lot of new form factors designed to appeal to students that are lightweight with rich screens, and that are very flexible with support for gaming and use things like voice and touch commands to enable a very immersive experience. Ultrabooks were the star of the show. You can see the latest Windows 7 devices here and in the embedded video below.

I am really excited about all the choices schools have when it comes to determining what device they want to bring into their institution. As we know 1:1 learning is going to become more rampant with the shift to digital content and the need to make sure kids are prepared for college and career. We’ve learned a lot about technology’s effectiveness in schools and in 1:1 programs in particular, and I encourage school leaders to think holistically about the learning environment before they jump to buy technology for technology’s sake. I met with JP Sa Couto and Critical Links at CES. They help schools think about all aspects to create the most effective learning environment. They have done a lot of research and investment in looking at everything from the school furnishings to lighting to looking at ethnographic studies to literally determine how a device best fits into a school.

Schools want devices for different activities….reading digital textbooks, taking notes, creating presentations and papers, the ability to plug in an array of peripherals and 3rd party solutions, and centralized IT management and security. And as data-driven education improves, schools need to be able to analyze what students and teachers are doing with the technology and link the outcomes to assessments and personalized lesson planning through business intelligence and learning management systems.

There are a lot of great new tablet PCs and laptops designed especially for education that can withstand the rigors of heavy use during the school day, including getting thrown in backpacks and dropped on the playground.

At CES, Lenovo was showing off the newly released Lenovo Classmate + . It’s a rugged PC laptop that converts into a tablet, sports a drop resistant exterior, spill proof keyboard, reinforced steel hinges, 10.1 inch touch display with pen (optional HD), 10 hour battery life, multiple USB ports and VGA or HDMI output to monitor. The Lenovo X130e is also a good choice for K12 schools made rugged with rubber “bumpers” and reinforced hinges to take a long school day.

Dell’s Inspiron Duo continues to win praise from students and teachers alike because its innovative flip hinge design makes it very easy to go from touch to type in seconds. The 10.1 HD multi touch screen, student sized keyboard and rugged design make it the perfect device for schools that want a HD tablet and a laptop in one device.

For university students who want a computer that’s light, fast, durable and stylish, ultrabooks are all the rage. The video below showcases the latest hardware from Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony.

Choosing the Right Device for your School: Ten Considerations Schools Should Make When Purchasing New Devices

Tim Bush — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:55:00 GMT

Today there are a myriad of devices for schools that range from those that are good at doing just one thing to those that promise to do everything. It’s confusing to know which one to choose given your school’s budget, educational goals and existing technology investments.

In an era when schools are asked to do more with less, school administrators really want to make sure new devices meet the needs of students and drive positive educational outcomes. Schools should ask themselves “What do we want to accomplish with the device?”. The answer usually includes schools wanting a device where students can consume digital content, easily take and share notes, create presentations and write papers, plug in an array of peripherals like microscopes, take a tough and rugged school environment and (oh, by the way) be less than £400.

Students need to be prepared for life skills they’ll take into higher education and their career. Do the devices prepare them for the creative and collaborative workforce they’ll ultimately join? Will the devices be more distraction than instruction? Do the devices run the software necessary to crunch data, write papers, edit photos and tie it all together in a presentation?

There’s a lot to think about. In an attempt to help, we’ve narrowed down ten important considerations schools should make when purchasing new devices.

View or download the full document below.

Choosing the Right Device for your School Ten Considerations Schools Should Make When Purchasing New Devices

View more documents from Microsoft Education UK

How are you currently managing the decision making around device selection within your institution? I would love to hear your experiences and ideas in the comments below. Thanks in advance!

Tim

Interesting Opportunity for Academic App developers to win some great prizes

Tim Bush — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

The Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone is now available as a reward with the Windows Phone UK Developer Reward Programme.

By simply joining the UK Developer rewards programme Educators and Students can get rewarded with loads of other fantastic prizes for building Windows Phone App and publishing it on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The programme concludes (Sunday 5 Feb 2012). So There is no better time to start building and publishing your Windows Phone app. It’s incredibly easy with 5 simple steps:

Build your original & unique Windows Phone App and publish on the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Register yourself on this website (www.my-rewards.com/wp).
You will be awarded with one point when we have evaluated your app in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Redeem your points for a range of fantastic prizes and gadgets. When you have earned a point, you are automatically entered into the weekly prize draw with an awesome line up of bonus prizes.
Build more Windows Phone Apps and get the chance to earn more points to redeem bigger and better rewards!

So download the tools form DreamSpark and Register and start building & publishing your Windows Phone apps today.

Once you started building apps why not get involved and Make a Difference

Enter to compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012 Windows Phone Challenge and create software that can really make a broad impact in the world.

Get started on your solution today.

Get your questions ready! Join Windows Phone Challenge Captain Jukka Wallasvaara on 22 February at 15:00 GMT or 23 February at 05:00 GMT via Live Meeting and ask him about competing in the Windows Phone Challenge. Follow these instructions to join Live Meeting. The Live Meeting sessions will be recorded and posted on this page under the Helpful Links. Find out what time it is your country/region.

Originally posted on the Microsoft UK Faculty Connection Blog.

A turning point for education? Trends to watch in 2012

Tim Bush — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:30:00 GMT

Originally posted on Anthony Salcito’s Education Insights Blog.

Will the year 2012 prove to be a turning point for education? There’s certainly an ever-increasing spotlight on the quality of education and an interest to help improve it from all corners of society. As I travel around the world, I see many technology companies increasing their focus and investment in education. And I think it’s time for the industry to pull together to think not just about winning and losing, but how we can do what’s right for students and make learning better.

I’m inspired everyday by the work of teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and business leaders who have made improving education worldwide a facet of their lives. As part of Microsoft’s Partners in Learning initiative, we work with more than 9 million teachers in 115 countries, and it’s amazing to me that regardless of local economics or other challenges in their unique learning environments, teachers find a way to make a difference in students’ lives.

With the ever-changing economic climate, the next year is sure to be filled with both challenges and opportunities. Here are some trends and themes I think we’ll continue to hear more about in 2012.

1. A tighter focus and prioritization on workforce readiness and jobs. This is going to be everywhere. Traditional universities are thinking much more about preparing students for the workforce, immersing students with job skills training earlier. Traditional community colleges, technical and vocational schools will continue to see a rise in popularity and student interest. And even in the K-12 space, schools are doing more to introduce skill-based learning outside of the core subject areas of math, science and reading that students are tested on. This is true globally where the unemployment rate is also at record lows. In countries like Spain and Korea, entrepreneurship is rising in importance and kids are looking to discover and create new industries. Through our Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project, we know skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity are vital for students as they prepare to enter the workforce. So much so, that The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – a worldwide, three-yearly evaluation in OECD member countries of school pupils’ performance – will be including Collaborative Problem Solving as a mandatory component of the 2015 study.

2. A support for innovative teacher methodologies is critical. There’s a lot of debate whether technology can replace or diminish the role of a teacher in the classroom. At Microsoft, we believe investing in teaching and professional development of teachers is one of the most important investments we can make in education. One teacher can reach thousands over the course of a career, and literally catalyze the future of a community. Between our Innovative Teaching and Learning Research and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, there is a lot of research on teacher effectiveness and its impact on student learning. We know the more education a child obtains, the higher their income earning potential is…and now there is a new study out of Harvard and Columbia that shows how just even one great teacher can impact a student’s future earnings. The Partners in Learning Network is a free community resource with networking, educator resources, lesson plans, and invaluable learning content from the world’s best teachers.

3. 2012 is when the cloud moves from a curiosity to a necessity. While more than 22 million students, faculty and staff are using Microsoft’s cloud services today in education, there is going to be huge growth. Schools will recognize the cloud is a key component to their digital content platform strategy to storage options as it relates to security, identity, back-up, etc., It’s also a way to cost-effectively deliver more technology to more people quickly and so that they can focus their IT resources on projects that really drive improvements to learning.

4. Real data-driven learning. Another big trend I think you will start to see is more examples of data-driven learning and education taken to the next level. Historically, data-driven education has been a chart taking activity where we get data and display information, but then reaction to the data has been inconsistent. The data collection of students’ progress hasn’t been driving a real opportunity for proactive support. This is where business intelligence (BI) can enable a much richer dialogue with regards helping teachers personalize learning and being able to create individualized lessons for students at different places in their learning.

5. Gaming and the emergence of Kinect as a PC factor. Yes, I am a gamer…and I blog a lot about how gaming and the mechanics of gaming can and should be brought into education to help drive expectations of students higher. At CES, I had an opportunity to see Kinect applied in very interesting ways. There were vendors showing how Kinect can work with digital whiteboards and classroom navigation, lecture capture, and how voice control can be integrated in very simple and elegant ways. We are starting to see a grassroots effort and more teachers include Kinect as a component of classroom design and a way to motivate students. It’s also a way for schools to save money yet still acquire innovative technology to create rich, interactive experiences. The marketplace for more education solutions will continue to grow after the Kinect for Windows SDK and Kinect for Windows Sensor is released publicly on February 1st.

6. Change the conversation from the device to learning. I think we’ll see a movement where schools will move beyond 1:1 computing and really focus on digital learning. It will transform from a device conversation to a learning conversation. There will be trends like “bring your own device” (BYOD) that support it, and the proliferation of multiple device types (laptops, slates, tablets, phones) that support the technology environment schools want and need. But then the conversation needs to turn to connecting the devices to curriculum and pedagogy and the assessment models. And all the content needs to be accessible on multiple devices and be available anytime and anywhere.

7. The rise of digital curriculum and reading. The rise of digital reading is certainly a reality in the consumer space, but textbook providers are just starting to build out next-generation content experiences. I think we’ll finally start to see the transition and some schools like this one in Turkey as early adopters. While many schools will use the opportunity to save money on traditional textbooks to fund devices, schools have to think about this holistically and not just buy a device to replace a textbook. Digitizing textbooks in and of itself is not transformative, but by focusing on the entire learning continuum and how digital curriculum and content created by students and teachers can be connected to back-end systems that can link the student outcomes to assessments, personalized learning and increased student achievement…now that’s transformative change.

Microsoft is working with more than 150 publishers worldwide, including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Cornelsen, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Santillana to publish and distribute digital textbooks in the cloud. These textbooks and new content will be able to be consumed by students on a variety of devices, from Windows 7 notebooks to tablets and slates, Windows Phone, Xbox, Kinect and Office 365, reflecting the diversity and personalization required as part of the learning experience.

I think it will be a very exciting year.

Teched Europe 2012 Registration now open

Tim Bush — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:13:37 GMT

Come to TechEd Europe, unplug from your day job, & dive into the thousands of learning & networking opportunities

In addition to over 400 sessions with Microsoft and industry speakers, TechEd offers you face-to-face connections with thousands of your peers who share your challenges. TechEd is the forum to gain the expertise and insights that will help you get the most from your IT investments.
TechEd offers 4 days to:

LEARN in-depth about the latest technology trends and how you can leverage these effectively in your business
DISCOVER the future of Microsoft’s products, technologies, solutions and services directly from Microsoft’s leaders with news, announcements, and demos
NETWORK with Microsoft and industry thought leaders, and fellow delegates that share your technology interests and business challenges
PLAN the features and architecture to support your business goals and product roadmap

Need Even More? Attend a Pre-Conference Seminar

By arriving a day early on Monday, 25 June and registering for the special Pre-Conference Seminars you will get in-depth training and insights on the Microsoft technologies and products that power your business. Select from 10 different topics taught by John Craddock, Kate Gregory, Steve Fox, Mikael Nystrom, Kent Agerlund, Alberto Ferrari, Richard Hundhausen, and more!

Register NOW for TechEd Europe (limited number of academic tickets available for students and educators)

Originally posted on the Microsoft UK Faculty Connection Blog.

OneNote and SharePoint 2010: Online Collaboration and Social Independent Learning (part 1)

Tim Bush — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:56:47 GMT

First in a series of guest posts from Adrian Edgar, Independent Education Consultant. Director of ICT and SMT at Culford School for 7 Years.

Last week I was lucky enough to be part of the Microsoft Education team at BETT 2012. I spoke on the subject of using OneNote 2010 and SharePoint 2010 MySites. In this blog post, I’d like to recap some of the key points and show some of the great ways we have developed use of the software.

OneNote addresses the three core aspects that underpin effective learning. Pupils can capture their thoughts quickly and record their work. This could be typed notes, pictures, drawings or indeed, written notes. As long as pupils get in to the habit of using their OneNote notebook as their central portfolio, collecting and organising work becomes second nature. Rarely can you say that a piece of software aids organisation in such an effective manner.

Finally, and the most important aspect is the ability to simply share work and collaborate. This could be two or more pupils discussing work, but it is just as likely to involve the other key players in the process. Teachers and Parents can be given rights to read or contribute to the notebook and if you link this to a SharePoint library or SkyDrive share, the opportunities are endless.

Rather than focus on the core aspects of OneNote I’d like to discuss the fantastic way we can integrate the use of SharePoint Libraries, Outlook scheduling and tasks in order to help pupils plan and organise their time.

The first part of the process is to share the notebook and then grant contribute rights. In this example, I’m going to use SharePoint 2010 My Sites.

Create a shared library
Assign permissions
Grant collaboration rights

Create a shared library in SharePoint 2010

First step is to create a new document library under the students My Site pages

1. Start by making sure you are in the My Content section before you begin the process

2. From My Sites, click on Site Actions and Select New Document Library

3. Follow the instructions to complete each section as shown below

4. Click on Create to complete the process. You should see the new library created on the left hand tool bar. The new document library should open and display the library toolbar ribbon

5. It’s at this stage you can assign the correct permissions to the library

Assigning Library Permissions

Now that we have our new homework library, I’m going to make sure the correct people have permission.

Once you have created your new library it should open with the Library Tools ribbon as shown. If not, simply look for the ribbon tab on the left next to Site Actions and click on Library.

1. Look for the Library Permissions icon on the far right. Click on this icon.

2. More than likely, this library will inherit permissions from the level above. Simply click on the Stop Inheriting Permissions button and agree to the dialogue box.

3. Now you can remove all the permissions you don’t need and add your own.

Be careful when you do this. Make sure you keep your permissions to the library. The example below uses a fake student called Lucy Jones.

4. Tick the boxes next to the permissions you want to remove and then click on Remove User Permissions.

5. Now you can add permissions for the teacher to contribute to the library. This will assign permissions to any document uploaded to that library.

Granting Collaboration Rights

The final stage of this section is to assign collaboration rights to the teacher. For this example we are going to use the name, Mrs T Green.

1. With the same Library Permissions ribbon open, confirm that you can see the indicator stating that the library has individual permissions. If not follow step 2 above.

2. Click on Grant Permissions on the Permission Tools ribbon. The dialogue box below will open.

3. In this example I have allocated Contribute permissions to Mrs Teresa Green. I could have also used any of my Active Directory groups and assigned permissions to all staff.

4. Scrolling down the page, I have the opportunity to personalise a message explaining the permission I have granted.

5. Click OK to complete the process. The SharePoint server will email your welcome message.

In the next part of this post I will show you how to go one stage further now and set up a sharing collaboration process between teacher and pupil.

In the meantime, the slides from the OneNote session at BETT 2012 can be viewed/downloaded below.

BETT 2012: OneNote & SharePoint: Anytime, anywhere collaboration

View more presentations from Microsoft Education UK

Building School Networks for the Future - with System Centre and Hyper-V

Ellie G Jones — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:00:00 GMT

One of our (many) friends over at EduGeek has recently done some work with Marine Academy Plymouth taking over their systems in May 2011. We have now a series which charts the process of systems modernisation from analysis, to planning, then implementation before finally evaluation. This first article will deal with a summary of that analysis; and the ones which follow will cover Stuart Wilkie’s (IT Manager) decisions and how he put them into practice.

Marine Academy Plymouth is the UK’s first Marine Academy. It’s a state-funded specialist secondary school with three sponsors - University of Plymouth , Cornwall College and Plymouth City Council

The Marine theme is not just about Marine Science. One of the common questions (and EduGeek had a few at a recent open evening), is why “Marine Academy”? You immediately think, do I need to grow fins, have a boat, swim even…? Well actually it’s none of those things. All the careers that we currently pursue from a land-based concept can feasibly be accessed in association with the sea and marine. Careers in areas such as engineering, tourism, medicine, catering, building and agriculture – just to start with!

Marine Academy Plymouth’s focus is to help to prepare and develop the students’ career opportunities, for today’s traditional jobs and for those that we don’t yet know about, we will achieve this through a commitment to high standards and to sustainability.

“A modern, reliable, environmentally friendly computer system is key to the Academy in so many ways. Everything we do here has to embody our ethos and beliefs and ultimately empower the learners of tomorrow.”

Standardisation and a stable platform are the key to the success and development of any system – at least that’s what the experience of time tells me.

The systems at Marine Academy were a bit of a mix at the start with a wide variety of hardware manufacturers as well as specification. Dealing with the inequality of accessibility would be key to ensuring the consistency of the learning experience.

The system itself consisted of surprising few servers for the scale of the clients – all 600+ of them! The server platform was powered by two DCs, Exchange, Capita SIMS (Student Management System) and ISA all of which relatively new. There were also a selection of older servers performing legacy file sharing and testing roles such as WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) and the free imaging and management platform “FOG”. The problem was the DCs were also the DFS, directly connected to the SAN , contained all the User Data (everything from Home folders to Profiles and the traditional Staff and Student shared folders) and the legacy servers were exactly that – legacy. There was no redundancy within the system, and the ability to perform any maintenance, or failure, would render parts of the network inoperable.

The majority of the teaching staff had been issued with laptops, a throwback to the Government “Laptop for Teachers” scheme. There was a wide variety of sizes and specifications. A quick glance at these, and their age/condition presented an issue. Consistency of delivery for one, and secondly, Devon and Plymouth as Local Authorities were insisting on implementation of encryption of all mobile devices which left school and college sites.

Largely, the desktop fleet was in a good way. Marine Academy has 6 main ICT Suites plus clusters for Technology, Science and Arts. ICT Suites had largely been refreshed the previous year with high not being realised due to downgrading to the older Windows XP Operating System. The administrative and support workstations had also received the same refresh which was slight overkill based on their use. The remainder of the machines comprised of large fleets of either “custom build” dual core machines, older Celeron small form IBMs or RM All in Ones. The majority of classrooms had a single workstation installed to be used with the Interactive Whiteboard and AV facilities available which fell into one of the latter two ranges.

Returning to the headline intentions, consistency of learning experience, reliability, stability and core to the Academy ethos, sustainability, the question lies, how could it be done?

Key development intentions:

More power was required to bolster the Server Platform to give the failover and resilience, as well as the flexibility to develop.
Security of Laptop Fleet for Curriculum Planning and Delivery, and a decision on the future of laptops or workstations for the “teacher point” in classrooms
Workstation modernisation, in those areas which had been “left behind”
Consistency of learning/delivery experience, by ensuring that no matter where learners were working – their settings and files followed them, and the environment they were working in was always the same.

Coming up in the second article in the series, there will be details of how we designed the new server system, what choices we made and why plus the start of the implementation process… so stay tuned!

Stuart’s “alter-ego” is TheScarfedOne and as well as being the IT Manager at Marine Academy Plymouth, he fits in being part of the staff team at Edugeek.net, with whom Microsoft have a close relationship. Edugeek.net is the community for ICT Support and Development in Schools, with a worldwide following. His blog can be found at here