UK Academic Team Blog : Teaching

Silverlight Insight event for UK Academics

ukacademia — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:16:05 GMT

As Paolo blogged we (the Microsoft Academic Team in the UK) are arranging an event targeted to Academics in Universities and Design Schools in the UK.

Silverlight Insight is a one-day event designed to give attendees a solid understanding of the Silverlight 2 platform and of the Microsoft Expression Studio toolset. It is relevant to both developers and designers alike, and comprises tutor-led sessions and hands-on exercises.

Participants will also receive a copy of the Silverlight 2 curriculum which can be customised and adapted to individual teaching needs, as well as a copy of Silverlight 2 Bible by Brad Dayley.

The three days are:

Monday, March 23rd 2009
Central Saint Martins, College of Art & Design, University of the Arts
London
Thursday, March 26th 2009
Bristol City College
Bristol
Tuesday, March 31st 2009
University of Birmingham
Birmingham

If you want to join one of the three dates, please get in touch with Paolo directly via email: pbarone [at] microsoft.com

PS: We are trying to arrange an additional date in Scotland, probably in May… while this is not confirmed yet, if you are interested in this, please let us know as well!!

ITA Student Pass

ukacademia — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:00:27 GMT

Hello,

I’d like to tell you a little about the ITA Student Pass which gives students access to a large number of e-learning courses free of charge. The e-learning materials will provide your students with access to training on real-world technology and industry-recognised certification.

You might even envisage an opportunity to incorporate some of the e-learning into the curriculum for new courses or simply to replace existing materials.

If you would like your students to have access to Microsoft e-learning materials I can supply, upon request, a series of unique codes for you to distribute to them.

To see a demonstration of what e-learning has to offer please click demo.

For the codes themselves, please email i-allmc@micrsoft.com with a subject header of ITA Student Pass.

With Best wishes,

Allison

DreamSpark

ukacademia — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:33:17 GMT

DreamSpark is a Microsoft program for placing key tools into the hands of students. It includes:

Visual Studio 2008
Expression Studio 2
Windows Server 2008
XNA Creators Club memberships
…and more

These tools are available to provide students with the equipment they need to build the next generation applications whether they are games, rich internet applications, desktop or server based applications.

To help you spread the word about DreamSpark we have put together a promotional kit for you to place in communal areas on campus:

The kit includes:

Banners for email and web
Posters
Postcards
Laptop stickers

To request a promotional kit, please email ukacinfo@microsoft.com with the following information:

Name
Institution Name
Address
Telephone
Email Address

(This offer is only open to UK universities and colleges. We will not use the details provided for any other activity unless you ask us to).

Windows Embedded Seminars

ukacademia — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:58:02 GMT

Last week I posted news about the Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems Event at TVP on 21st October.

Following on from that post, I’d also like to tell you about a series of online seminars relating to specific aspects of Windows Embedded technology. While not perhaps for those of you already teaching embedded technologies, the seminars may prove useful if you are considering future curriculum developments.

Windows Embedded and Gaming
16th September 2008
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Kiosk Solutions
13th November 2008
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Industrial Automation
19th February 2009
9:00 - 10:00

Windows Embedded and Medical Solutions
30th April 2009
9:00 - 10:00

If any of the above are of interest, you can get further information by clicking here.

Best,

Allison

Microsoft Research Asia - 10th Anniversary Innovation Forum

ukacademia — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:29:56 GMT

On August 12, Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft^®, joined visionary technologists from Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, and the University of Hong Kong, to celebrate a decade of ground-breaking collaboration during the Microsoft Research Asia's 10th Anniversary Innovation Forum.

Gates, who delivered the keynote speech, said that Microsoft’s relationship to academia in the Asia Pacific region remains vital and that cultivating the next generation of researchers should continue to be a focal point of MSR Asia’s work. “For the last 10 years, great collaborative work between Microsoft Research Asia and the region’s world-leading academic researchers has resulted in a wide range of exciting technology innovations,” Gates said. “As Asia becomes more and more of a global centre for innovation, I have no doubt that Microsoft Research Asia and its academic partners will have an even bigger impact on the world of technology.”

At the MSR Asia Innovation Forum, Bill Gates said that the success of Microsoft depends on its ability to attract and retain the best talent from around the world—something he believes MSR Asia is doing well.

To learn more about this collaboration and to hear Bill’s speech, click Innovation.

Best wishes,

Allison

News from the Faculty Summit

ukacademia — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:03:08 GMT

Lee Dirks, the Director for Education and Scholarly Research, announced five new ‘lifecycle’ tools for academics and researchers. The tools are as follows:

Research Information Centre
Creative Commons (an add-in to Microsoft Office)
Article Authoring (an add-in to Microsoft Word)
E-Journal Hosting Service
Research Output Repository Platform

To hear more about these tools from Lee, please visit Channel 8.

If you have any questions, do contact me and I’ll see if I can get them answered for you.

Best,

Allison

Invitation to Convergence 2008 Copenhagen - Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance MDAA:00071306

ukacademia — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:26:00 GMT

Hi,

I thought you'd like to receive your invitation to an interesting event in Denmark.

Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance invites you to attend:

Microsoft Academic Preconference and Convergence 2008 Copenhagen, Denmark from 17 to 20 November, 2008.

Last year we hosted about 60 educators and researchers from 17 countries from around the world. We would like to see you this year!

The Academic Preconference will be held 17-18 November 2008.

· Includes two tracks (Educators and Researchers Track) with several special sessions, workshops and network opportunities for educators and researchers working with Microsoft Dynamics software. You will be able to network, exchange experiences and enhance your knowledge with like-minded educators and researchers.

· Location: Copenhagen Business School (CBS) – Kilevej 14a, 2000 Frederiksberg.

· Registration fee: no registration fee is associated with these two days.

· Please consider the following call for papers and presentations.

Call for Papers – Researchers Track - due by 1st September 2008:

Academic Preconference 2008 - Research Agenda

17 - 18 November 2008
Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg

Submit to: workshop@3gERP.org - Please write "Submission to 3gERP workshop"

See instructions attached.

Call for Presentation – Educators Track - due by 1st September 2008:

Academic Preconference 2008 - Educators Agenda
17 - 18 November 2008

Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg

Submit to: dynaa@microsoft.com – Please write “Academic Preconference - Convergence 2008 Presentation”

See instructions attached.

Convergence will be held 19-20 November 2008.

· Here you will enhance your knowledge through Dynamics conference sessions and interactions with Microsoft customers, partners, Microsoft Dynamics specialist and industry experts and establish a true community that can be leveraged in your work.

· Location: Bella Center A/S, Center Boulevard, 2300 Copenhagen S

· Registration fee - Academic Alliance team will fund a main part of your registration fee at Convergence. Your costs will include €250.00 for your share of registration fee.

· Please request special registration codes from us to have the special academic fee.

Registration:

To register please fill in attached registration form and send to dynaa@microsoft.com.

Registration includes entrance at the registered event, the meals served as part of the agenda as well as a special educator evening gathering.

The number of participants is limited due to space restrictions and will be determined on a first come basis.

Customer Excellence Award - Excellence in Academics:

· The Convergence Customer Excellence Awards recognize, honor and celebrate customers/members that have achieved outstanding success with their Microsoft solutions as well as Microsoft partners’ solutions. Start to consider if that is your educational institution.

· Please submit your own nomination via the online form which will be available 1 July 2008. Find more details here: http://www.microsoft.com/Dynamics/convergence/copenhagen/2008/customer_excellence.aspx

To make sure to receive all details please write to dynaa@microsoft.com to be included on the mailing list.

We look forward to seeing you in Copenhagen!

MICROSOFT DYNAMICS ACADEMIC ALLIANCE

The Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance is a global program that enables educators to incorporate Microsoft Dynamics technology into the classroom. Currently, over 1,000 institutions around the world use Microsoft Dynamics products to provide students with an exceptional hands-on learning experience. If you would like to learn more about the Academic Alliance you are welcome to visit our website: http://www.microsoft.com/education/academic_alliance.mspx.

Conference on 3rd Generation Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (3gERP)

The 3gERP project aims to develop the academic foundations for a ‘standard’ flexible and highly configurable global ERP-system for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), which can be implemented and maintained at a fraction of the costs of current systems. The ambition of the project is to tackle some of the fundamental challenges and trade-offs existing systems have, for instance with regard to customizability vs. total cost including upgrades. If you would like to learn more about 3gERP please visit this website: http://www.3gerp.org

All the best,

Allison, your new Academic Information Manager

Lecturer exchange to Norway

ukacademia — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Does your university teach .NET technologies in basic programming courses? If so then one of the University Colleges in Oslo would be very keen to offer an exchange starting Autumn 2008 for one academic year. Please let me know if you are interested and I will put you in touch.

Claire

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Mix it up!

ukacademia — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:29:00 GMT

Hi! I'm Alfred Biehler, working with Microsoft UK alongside Claire in Microsoft's Developer platform group. My focus is on all our UK developers, and I've been given the opportunity to attend the MIX conference at Las Vegas. My expectations of the event was high, and I'm not disappointed!

For starters: You can join in this amazing event by going to http://www.visitmix.com. You can see the sessions on http://sessions.visitmix.com, and/or you can even attend a UK re-run later this year in the UK... more details to come.

Let me briefly share with you the biggest wow moments for me during the first keynote, that just finished:

IE 8 beta is available for download now. (This beta is intended for developers). Amongst the new capabilities shown in IE8, was the ability for web apps to detect and act on losing a network connection, and a back button that really goes back - even on AJAX pages!
SQL Server as a service has been announced. This is huge! I've been talking about this since the end of 1999, and it's fantastic to see this now becoming available. This would allow developers to build applications that draw data from "the cloud", without the need to manage and run the database yourself.
Silverlight 2 beta 1 has been announced, with awesome demos, including how we'll experience the Olympics in a few weeks, how HardRock Cafe has a memorabilia site utilizing DeepZoom (seeing a 2bn pixel photo, zooming into any area very quickly), Aston Martin's virtual showroom experience and more.
I really enjoyed seeing also some of Microsoft's partners (that also competes with us) on stage, e.g. AOL email using Silverlight, and DoubleClick (Google) for building Silverlight Adverts.
And lastly - we saw demos of how Silverlight apps just worked on Nokia phones after the agreement that has been reached yesterday with Nokia to support Silverlight on their phones.

One statistic that blew me away, was that we're getting about 1.5 million downloads and installs of Silverlight per day.

If you do have a moment - go and have a look at the sessions @ Mix online!

Alfred

Coming soon - the ability to publish your XNA game on Xbox Live Marketplace

ukacademia — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:23:00 GMT

We are excited to announce the impending release of XNA Games Studio 3.0 this summer giving (among other things) the ability for all XNA authors to publish games to Xbox Live Marketplace and in the process, to earn reputation, fame and even income. This represents a huge opportunity for your students. You can read all about this on the XNA Team Blog and also FAQ on the XNA forums.

To compliment this new development we have opened out access to the XNA Creators' Club via DreamSpark. This new programme gives access to key developer tools for all students (and academics). In addition, the XNA Creators Club website is going to get a bunch of new features too.

Finally, start saving up, XNA Game Studio 3.0 will also enable multiplayer gaming on the Zune over a wireless link. The Zune has not yet hit the UK market but we know you will want one when they arrive.

Claire

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Early bird discount for the Architect Insight Conference

ukacademia — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:29:36 GMT

The Architect Insight Conference is a two day residential event aimed at senior architects in forward thinking companies and universities. There is an early bird discount which provides a saving of £229.13 for all those who register before leap day this year (Feb 29th 2008). To find out who is speaking and how to register please visit the AIC site and please do so soon as places go fast.

Claire

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DreamSpark is here!

ukacademia — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:46:42 GMT

What's this? Free developer software for every student in the UK?

Ed Dunhill has all the details on his blog.

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Collaborative Campus Live Meeting

ukacademia — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:08:32 GMT

I learned on the Higher Education blog that our Colleagues in the Higher Education team are holding a Live Meeting:

"On Tuesday 26^th February at 9.30am we will be running a Live Meeting presentation to discuss the Microsoft Collaborative Campus as a way to connect students in a way that provides access to a vast breadth of online services such as mail, file storage and social networking capability. The presentation will be relevant to technical decision makers who are currently responsible for providing these sorts of services to students, and to business decision makers who are interested in understanding how technology can underpin these scenarios for students and staff. To request details for the meeting, and a URL to join the presentation, please email Ceri Morriss in our HE team."

If you would like your students / department/ campus to have these kind of facilities then please encourage the people who make the technical and financial decisions to join in.

Claire

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, Higher Education, technical, academic

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Why Rare recruits games graduates

ukacademia — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:46:00 GMT

The academic team has enjoyed working with Rare over the past 18 months and it seems they have enjoyed it too, so much so that Nick Burton has put pen to paper (OK, type to screen) to bring our attention to some great facts.

You might be surprised to learn that 90% of roles at Rare go to graduates. You might have forgotten that Rare offer free lectures to games students. Read the article here in Gamasutra, to find out why.

Claire

PS Don't forget to share this with your students!

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Want to make 3D games using XNA?

ukacademia — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:52:00 GMT

Easy, here's the recipe:

Download a copy of XNA Game Studio Express
Click to visit Ed Dunhill's recent blog post where you can find the 3D ingredients including stunning demos by Dan Waters
Add a generous dollop of imagination

Et voila, serves a lot of fun!

If you need more inspiration then don't forget the XNA team blog, the XNA website and the XNA learners' blog

Claire

Technorati Tags: XNA, Games, 3D, Academics, Technology, Demo

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