FE blog

Newcastle event next week - Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 networking

Jonathan Noble has let me know that there are still plenty of spare spaces at the free event at Newcastle University next Wednesday (the 8th), which will be looking at Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 for education. And the agenda includes DirectAccess, BranchCache and XP Mode – all mentioned earlier in the week.

Find out more on Jonathan’s blog, or just sign up directly at the VBUG site

Typing in Arabic on a Qwerty keyboard – a simple free download

In my local library I often pass by the computer section, where people are sitting typing away into Hotmail in languages I don’t understand (I live in rural Oxfordshire, so much of the time I think it’s eastern European languages). And I guess they’ve become fluent in finding the key combinations to create the accents, umlauts etc. But I’d never considered that it would be possible to send an email in Arabic from a qwerty keyboard.

Microsoft Maren looks ideal for any computer where there may be a requirement for Arabic as well as Roman languages. For example, in a community access suite, or open access areas such as libraries.

Lack of access to an Arabic keyboard or lack of familiarity with one are two of the most common problems preventing Arabic users from communicating in their own language.

But the team at the Cairo Microsoft Innovation Lab have, and they’ve created a simple Windows extension that allows users to easily chat, search, blog, email and create documents in Arabic, by converting it on the fly from Roman characters.

It’s available as a free download from the Maren website, and there’s also a funky animation that shows how it works.

Microsoft Maren allows you to type Arabic in Roman characters (Romanized Arabic, Arabizi, Arabish or Franco-Arabic) and have it converted on the fly to Arabic script.

This download isn’t just for education institutions – you can also point students to the site if they want to download it for their home PCs.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 networking enhancements for education

I’ve just finished reading the whitepaper about networking enhancements that are included within Windows 7, which are especially powerful when combined with Windows Server 2008 R2. Although I’m not the most technical person in the team, it made sense to me, and a couple of key features jumped out at me as being particularly useful in education:

DirectAccess for academic staff to replace VPN connections

The scenario of VPN which the whitepaper describes matches my own use of VPN.

When I’m working from home, I avoid using a VPN connection when I can, because all of my internet traffic is re-routed through it, and slows down downloads and other web access (VOIP is sometimes lower quality too). And if my machine goes into sleep mode temporarily, I have to go through all of the quarantine and security checks again when it wakes up. So I tend to ‘batch up’ the things I need to VPN for, logon, do them, and then logoff VPN again.

But as a user, it means that if I get internal SharePoint links in email, I can’t click straight through. And I can’t quickly update my own SharePoint wiki etc. (And, similarly, the IT support team can’t automatically deploy critical updates or Group Policy changes until I next VPN in). I’m guessing that you have the same situation on campus.

With Windows 7, the inclusion of DirectAccess means that users can have the same experience (and access) when they work at home (or from another remote location, like a wireless hotspot) as they would on campus. So they can access your internal SharePoint, other intranet sites and any internal applications. But it doesn’t re-route their general Internet traffic, so they still have full-speed web access (unless you decide to change that too!).

There’s a lot of technical details (and acronyms like IPv6, IPsec and 56-bit key encryption) on page 5-6 of the whitepaper

Better synchronisation for offline files and slow connections

Windows 7 adds enhanced support for synchronising files between your own PC and a network share – with more sensitivity to bandwidth for broadband and WAN connections, and invisible background synchronisation of offline files. This will be particularly useful where staff keep master files on their local machine (like their curriculum delivery plan) but you want to protect them from losing it all by ensuring it is synchronised to a network connection.

Well, the alternative is to implant the I-must-make-a-backup-every-day chip in your colleagues!

Better support for saving money on electricity

With the wider use of wireless around campus, you’ll be pleased to hear that Wake On Lan has been extended to wireless too – allowing you to use a more aggressive power-saving profile on your laptops and desktops, without compromising your ability to manage them.

Don’t underestimate how much money this could save you. PC Pro put the potential power savings at nearly £50 a computer if you switch from Windows default power settings to the most energy efficient. With an estimated 1/2 million university-owned computers across campuses, that’s a big bundle of money. (I know that you don’t pay the power bills from the IT budget, but perhaps there’s an opportunity to get some contribution from the facilities teams to support the changes!)

Have a read of the whitepaper – there’s a lot of straightforward and clear advice

And bonus materials…

As a bonus, there are more detailed technical documents on DirectAccess which are also useful:

• DirectAccess Technical Overview
  Covers the functional and architectural aspects of DirectAccess, a technology introduced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to enable mobile workers to seamlessly connect to enterprise network resources when connected to the Internet.
  
• Next Generation Remote Access with DirectAccess and VPNs
  Compares DirectAccess with VPNs and describes the scenarios that are most appropriate for each.
  
• Using DirectAccess to provide secure access to corporate resources from anywhere
  Case Study: Although broadband services and Wi-Fi have dramatically improved, the connectivity experience for remote corporate users remains largely unchanged. Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) is adopting the DirectAccess feature in Windows® 7 and in Windows Server® 2008 R2 to enable employees to gain seamless remote access to corporate applications and data. The solution, which only requires Internet connectivity and credentials, significantly improves productivity and can be an important cost-saving mechanism.
  
• DirectAccess Early Adopter’s Guide
  This guide introduces DirectAccess concepts, defines new terms, explains requirements for installation, discusses how to design DirectAccess architecture, and then steps you through installation and deployment.
  
• Direct Access Step-by-Step Guide
  Step By Step Guide: Demonstrate DirectAccess in a Test Lab

Business Intelligence in education - turning data into information

With increasing governance and fiscal demands, Northumbria University needed a way for their managers to quickly and easily track critical financial and student data.  After implementing the Business Intelligence solution, their stakeholders now have access to near real-time, streaming reports to support effective decision making.  Northumbria worked with Watersons, a Microsoft Gold Partner. As David Chesser, the Deputy Vice Chancellor and Finance Director at Northumbria University said:

Thanks to our new Microsoft Business Intelligence solution, instead of spending the majority of their time locating and gathering data, our information officers can tackle critical projects that add even more value to our schools, programs and the university.

 

The benefits they describe include:

• Data Accuracy
  • Providing certainty to all decision makers
• Online Portal increasing transparency
  • Self service allowing everyone to ask their own questions
• ‘Big picture view’
  • Provides holistic, current and reliable information

For more information you can read the full Northumbria University Business Intelligence case study

Tech Ed – a week of developers and IT support teams in Berlin

This year Tech Ed is moving from Barcelona to Berlin. It’s also been squeezed into a single week – 7,000 developers and IT professionals descending on Berlin to enjoy a packed week full of technology. My first Tech Ed was only a few years ago, and I couldn’t believe the size of the event (and that was when it was two separate events in separate weeks) nor the amount of information that I was trying to take in in such a short period.

We’ve also traditionally been able to offer significantly reduced places to a few education customers, and a general academic discount for many others. This year, we’ll still be offering the Academic discount – details below – but unfortunately no free places. (Sorry). Hopefully, if your job involves making your college’s technology work smoothly and developing it as a strategic asset for the future, then you’ll still find enough in the agenda to justify the cost from the training budget. (Not sure if my wife’s tactic would work for this – don’t tell them the price, simply tell them that you’ve saved €800 on the normal registration price, and it’s less than half price)

ps Just in case you thought you’d missed another budget announcement, don’t panic. The 19% VAT thing is because the event is held in Berlin, and the EU rules stipulate we have to charge the VAT rate of the country where the event is delivered.

What happens if your college is listed as a spammer

Over the last few months, there have been a few occasions where universities have been falsely identified as spammers – either because their mail sending services inadvertently set of spam detectors, or because they were genuinely being used to re-route spam mail. This problem is likely to increase rather than decrease, as so much of our daily email is categorised as spam. Yale University found out that 94% of all email that went through their own servers was spam last autumn, which is only slightly higher than the average.

Understandably when a spammer is blocked, the ISP or mail provider doesn’t tell them, otherwise it would turn into a cat-and-mouse game between spammers and email services.

So if you had your college email is blocked by an ISP or email service, the first you may know about it is when one of your students or staff tells you that an important email they sent didn’t arrive.

JANET have provided some generic advice on avoiding false-positives on spam detection, and my colleague Ben has provided some very specific advice on how to ensure that your email system isn’t blocked by Hotmail or other Microsoft mail services.

Ben’s is a step by step guide, with a lot of very specific links and instructions that you can follow, including a good deal of background reading to help you to understand why the situation happens, as well as how to avoid it.

Sometimes you can have your mail blocked because recipients report it as spam in their mail client (eg if you have a mailing list which includes potential applicants, and they report your newsletter as spam to their mail service provider), so it is definitely worth following Ben’s guidance, especially if somebody in your college is planning any massive e-mailshots going forward. I expect that somebody in your marketin department will right now be working on their big email marketing campaign for next academic year, and won’t realise that it could foul-up your email system. In most cases, you may feel that it is unfair that you’ve been identified – but spam is measured through the eyes of the reader, and not everybody trusts the “unsubscribe” option, and simply ticks the “this mail is spam” button instead.

When students lose memory sticks

You must have seen them – plaintive, desperate or just plain panic. It hasn’t taken long for the USB memory stick to turn into something that everybody has (and yet, I can still remember that sense of satisfaction when I was given my first freebie memory stick with 16MB of memory!). Now it’s not uncommon to see students with 2GB memory sticks plugged into whatever computer they are using.

BUT as well as being a solution to portable data storage, they are also a problem. Because one day it might go missing. And it is not uncommon to find desperate pleas around computer suites asking for help in finding a missing USB memory stick.

We’ve been suggesting for a while that students use either SkyDrive or Office Live Workspace to store files online. It also means that they can share files if they choose, and collaborate on work. And in the case of Office Live Workspace, they can Open & Save into their storage on the web, directly from Office. And they are both free.

But, it’s a bit of a boring subject isn’t it? Until you’ve lost your memory stick. (A bit like doing PC backups – boring until it’s too late!)

So the Office Live Workspaces team have created a video that just might appeal to your students.

Ever wondered where student’s lost memory sticks end up?

So now you know.  And you can either encourage students to use their free Office Live Workspace individually, or provide it as a free service to all of your students through the Live@Edu service

Building an external website in SharePoint – Esher College

The number of colleges using SharePoint to provide a portal within their college is steadily increasing – mainly, I think, because it can provide a way to integrate all of the different sets of data across the college – from student information systems, to virtual learning environments, and every day document management.

One of the things that has been less prominent is the use of the same SharePoint to drive the external website. Often I see colleges with two different web systems, which results in having to manage two completely different content management systems, and often two different technical skill sets.

Esher College have standardised onto one technology, and are using SharePoint for their external site too – with help from Parabola Software. Although they have three portals – one for the public site, one for student and one for staff, it is possible to link information between the portals and provided the user has access rights it’s seamless.

I’d be interested in hearing about others using SharePoint for their external website – just add a comment to the blog, and give a link to yours.

(For more inspiration, take a look at this list of Top 10 SharePoint 2007 sites, with examples from outside of education, worldwide)

Windows 7 Application Compatibility in education

A last week I wrote “Windows 7 is getting closer”, and one of the readers posed the question about Application Compatibility – their point was that they used over 450 applications, so couldn’t we test them all to check they work on Windows 7. Hopefully it’s no surprise to learn that we can’t do all of that, but that there’s been a big focus on overall application compatibility in Windows 7 – back to both Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Later today, Mark Russinovich is hosting a worldwide roundtable on Application Compability that you might want to join in. As it is a single event for the whole world, it is at 7pm our time tonight, but I’ve had a look at the telly schedule and there’s nothing exciting on (thank goodness Britain’s Got Talent has finished – for so many reasons!).

Here’s the blurb:

“Windows 7 is approaching fast and from the application standpoint is very similar to Windows Vista. We’re going to examine Windows 7 application compatibility not only from the perspective of moving from Windows Vista, but also for those coming from Windows XP. Join us to discuss the most common challenges around application compatibility when coming from a legacy operating system, why changes were made along the way, compatibility technologies inside the OS and methods for getting incompatible applications to run on Windows 7. Along the way we share tips and tricks, demonstrate free tools to analyze and fix applications and answer your specific questions about application compatibility live.”

You can attend using this link – just logon a few minutes before 7pm: https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard

As part of the “virtual” experience, you may submit your questions about Windows 7 Application Compatibility to the panel live during the event—or submit questions in advance to vrtable@microsoft.com.

Windows 7 is getting closer

The Windows 7 team announced it will be available on October 22nd – that’s the date in the stores, so I don’t know if we’ll get the version for education (ie the Volume Licence version) any earlier. Even if it was earlier, I guess it’s unlikely it’ll be in time to roll it out before the end of the summer holidays (shame). Given the positive feedback that seems to be flowing around the current Release Candidate (did you know you can install that and run it free until July next year?), perhaps we could collaboratively build a list of devices people have been running it on – especially some of the entry-level netbooks and laptops.

As an aside, if you, or a student you know, is going to buy a new laptop this summer then the Windows 7 team also mentioned that there will be news soon on the Windows 7 Upgrade Option. My understanding is that this is similar to the “Tech Guarantee” we’ve offered in the past, where if you buy a new PC after a certain date, you qualify for a low-cost upgrade to Windows 7. More details when I have them…

What does Windows 7 run on? Share your experiences

Time for sharing – what devices have you got Windows 7 running on already, and what spec? Add a comment to the blog, or drop me an email via the link above, and I’ll publish a table in a couple of weeks, based on typical experiences of computers that are in schools today. Given the experiences of running Windows Vista on older laptops, the real interest is not going to be “Does it run on what I’m going to buy this summer?”, but “Does it run on what I bought last summer, and the summer before?”

Here’s my list so far, for my own laptops:

And finally, my second favourite feature of Windows 7

After I told you my favourite Windows 7 feature last week, I’ve now decided what my second favourite feature is – you can setup the default printer according to your location.

This is great for me, as I use my laptop in the office, at home, and out and about. I’d be working at home, hit PRINT, and then realise it was going to a printer somewhere in Reading. And there’s been more than one occasion when I’ve had to ring somebody and ask them to grab something urgently from the printer and put it in the shredder!

Now, with Windows 7, I have set up my default printers so that at home it prints on my inkjet (connected through my home PC) and in the office, it will print to the nearest printer to my desk.

Your staff can avoid that awful moment when they’re sitting at home, and realise they’ve printed their holiday booking on the printer at work.

SharePoint in Welsh – SharePoint ar gael in Gymraeg

During half-term week, we joined the Welsh Assembly Government at the Urdd Eisteddfod in Cardiff Bay, to launch Welsh language support for SharePoint. Steve Beswick, of Microsoft, and Meri Huws, of the Welsh Language Board, officially launched the pack with Jane Hutt, the Welsh Assembly Minister for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills.

This follows on from the work we did a little while ago to make Windows and Office available in Welsh. We do all of this through making a free Language Interface Pack available for download, which you can then use to convert your system over.

I know from my visits to Wales that there are already quite a few colleges in Wales using SharePoint, and for the launch, some local Swansea schools got involved.

Julie Davies, a teacher at Ysgol Gyfun Bryn Tawe in Swansea explained why it was so important:

As a school and centre of excellence for Welsh medium education, we have always taken advantage of new Welsh language initiatives and resources. We are very excited to see a large IT company recognising and responding to the need for more resources in our first language. I believe Swansea Edunet which is based on SharePoint will improve communication within the school, and create an effective learning community for staff members and pupils.

But why SharePoint in Welsh, and why is it so important to education? Well, the answer on the day was:

Mae Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 yn darparu lleoliad sengl, integredig lle gall defnyddwyr gydweithio’n effeithiol, chwilio am wybodaeth, rheoli cynnwys a llyfnhau prosesau gweinyddol. Mae’n integreiddio’n hawdd â systemau TGCh sydd eisoes yn eu lle, ac mae’n gymorth i wneud penderfyniadau ar sail gwybodaeth drwy cynorthwyo i staff gael hyd i wybodaeth yn haws, i’w rhannu ac i adrodd arni.

You can find the English version of this in the Welsh Language Board press release in English (Welsh version here)

Download Information

The downloads are now publicly available using the URLs below.  I got a surprise checking these links – the pages are all in Welsh!

SharePoint Server 2007 Language Pack  (X86)

SharePoint Server 2007 Language Pack  (X64)

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack 

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Language Pack (X64)

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Student Relationship Management – Live Meetings coming up

Because of the competitive nature of student recruitment these days it seems that a lot of colleges are developing vastly improved strategies to recruit the "right" sort of student. SRM (Student Relationship Management) combined with the correct CRM technology package is one of the major strategies that many colleges are using to make the difference.

Pythagoras are one of our partners (rather than the Greek philosopher*) are one of our partners who specialise in this area, and are running a series of Live Meetings, or webinars, over the next couple of months specifically for colleges and universities. As the research shows that only a third of Universities or Colleges and Schools have a CRM system it might be worth registering for the upcoming Microsoft CRM webinar for Education on the 5th June or 10th July.

As the relationship between student and academic establishment has evolved to resemble a customer/provider dynamic, a true three hundred and sixty degree approach to relationship management will equip Schools, Higher and Further Education establishments with all of the tools they need to provide the highest levels of service to their 'clients' whilst in parallel allowing all relevant data to be interrogated and reported upon in order to drive strategic decision making for the future.

Pythagoras CRM provides the tools for easily creating and maintaining a clear picture of the information that educators and leaders need. This solution developed with Microsoft Dynamics helps drive consistent, measurable improvements in daily work processes, promotes more effective cross-departmental collaboration, and enables new levels of efficiency.

Pythagoras has developed Microsoft CRM for Education and is already being successfully used in a number of universities, colleges and schools throughout the UK. City University London and New Line Learning Academies have recently deployed Microsoft CRM for Education and this has resulted in a vastly improved way they manage their relationships and internal processes.

The free webinar will take you through Pythagoras' offering and introduce a unique approach to the sector. Register below to take part.

More info and register for 10am on June 5th

More info and register for 10am on 10th July

You can find out more about the Pythagoras CRM on their website

How will Windows 7 help FE colleges – Part Five – Learning Resources

Over the last few days, I’ve published quite a few separate articles on Windows 7. One of my aims was to try and help identify the wood from the trees – finding the things in Windows 7 which will make a real difference to the way that Windows is used in education, and will make your life easier or your IT systems more secure. But there are plenty of aspects I haven’t covered, so here’s a couple of pointers towards other resources you may want to take a bit of time to review:

• If you’ve enjoyed the “Learning Snacks” in the last few days, then there are more on Windows 7, which you can watch here.
• There are free two-hour online clinics, looking at Windows 7 in more depth from the perspective of:
  - IT Professionals (that’s you)
  - Information Workers (your teaching staff?)
  - Consumers (that’s all of us!)
• There are loads of deeper materials, all free, available on the Microsoft Learning Windows 7 Learning Portal

How will Windows 7 help FE colleges – Part Four – Getting new computers onto campus quickly

Oh, joy. A new batch of computers has arrived in the college. There’s anti-theft marking to do, security screws to add, mice to clamp and that’s all before all of the actual deployment has to be done – getting them out to the right classroom, with the right software.

Well, Windows 7 has invented some new acronyms to help with the software bit. It’s got DISM, which is the natty name for Deployment Image Servicing and Management, which combines the functionality of several image-management tools that were available in Windows Vista. According to the MS Learning team, DISM will help you “deploy Windows images to computer systems efficiently and quickly”. Today’s “Learning Snack” describes the DISM tool and demonstrates some of the commands that administrators can use while preparing and servicing Windows images offline.

Learning Snack: Deployment Services in Windows 7 

 Might I offer apologies if you’ve been searching for a “snack” on Google (* other search engines are available :-) and ended up on this blog. Perhaps you were looking for this