This seems to have started from one of my colleagues in Microsoft Research wanting to improve his language skills through the medium of role-playing games. It worked but it seems that not many people understand why.
So, Microsoft is now co-funding an initiative with a number of universities to find scientific evidence supporting the use of gaming as a valid educational tool. For more information take a look here.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/382180_msftvideogame08.html
Virtualisation is all the rage, and as a result it is gaining attention across the whole public sector, including education. Originally focused on consolidating resources in the data centre, virtualisation now has applications across the spectrum: driving down costs, improving responsiveness and reducing carbon emissions — with the potential to dramatically improve productivity and reduce cost.
Of course, with the launch of Windows Server 2008, the capabilities of the Microsoft virtualisation system have made a leap (described by a colleague, in a silver-tongued moment as “a comprehensive end-to-end toolset for creating, managing and securing a virtual infrastructure”) . There’s a chance for you to catch up with the story, and see what it possible at Virtualisation Unplugged on 24 October 2008, at the Royal Academy of Music in London
| 9.15 | Registration |
| 9.45 | Introduction to Microsoft all-up story on virtualisation |
| 10.00 | Customer Presentation |
| 10.45 | Break |
| 11.00 | Server Virtualisation with Hyper-V Technical session introducing Hyper-V — The Microsoft server virtualisation offering |
| 11.30 | Management of Virtual Servers
including other vendors such as VMware |
| 12.30 | Lunch |
| 13.30 | Role-based Computing
Delivering the right set of services using the right virtualisation method |
| 14.30 | Application Virtualisation using App V
formerly known as Softgrid |
| 15.15 | Break |
| 15.30 | Virtualisation Futures
Where are we going with virtualisation? |
| 16.00 | Questions and Answers |
| 16.30 | Close |
Find out more, and register here
Take a look at the table comparing functionality with other VLE products on the market. The great thing about using Sharepoint as a VLE is that pretty much every university, in the UK at least, is licensed for staff already so this becomes a matter of getting more functionality and value out of existing and familiar technology. I've often been asked to help a university write a business case for Sharepoint. A starting point could be to look at how much is currently spent on funding the licensing and/or maintainance of the institutional VLE and then look at the compartitive costs of SharePoint.
For many students starting at university this year it will be their first experience of living independently and many will be feeling vulnerable and perhaps not always on their guard from potential scams. Email is a lifeline for millions of students and regrettably it is being exploited by a minority waiting to pounce on vulnerable individuals. There are many lines of defence built into a university's and hosted email infrastructures to help protect against email scams but often the last and best line of defence is a combination of education and awareness allowing people to recognise common types of email scams.
Thankfully, the team on the HoTMaiL blog have posted this entry:
http://emailsupport.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5D6F5A79A79B6708!7926.entry
It lists in some detail the 5 most common types of email scam, which are:
- Verify your account now to avoid it being closed!
- A large sum of money is due to you if you just give us your personal information.
- You won something!
- The sudden emergency!
- If you don’t forward this email, something bad will happen.
Also listed is information on what to do if you receive a questionable email. The content of the article has a slight leaning to HoTMaiL but much of it is generic to any reader.
The post has plenty of information on how to spot these. For many people reading this blog, you might be tempted to believe that it's easy to identify these scams but for the young and vulnerable it's surprising how tempting it can be to follow the rabbit and get lured into the scam.
Why not take the content from this posting, modify it to make it more relevant to your students and place it on your student pages? The worse thing we can do is assume this is obvious to everyone.
Talking with the University of Aberdeen, they thought that hey had one of the biggest student wireless networks in Europe. There to allow their students to connect to the VLE and the Internet, wherever they are on campus – from their own laptops. The drive to provide ever-improving services to students has been on for a while, and continues to accelerate. Looking outside the UK is often useful – the demand-led, student-as-a-customer mindset has been around on US campuses for years longer than here.
There’s no doubt that there are increasing expectations from students about the connectivity and services you’ll offer them through your ICT services (I read that Nottingham University are just about to experiment with WiMax), and if it isn’t already, it’s likely to end up on your IT development plan.
Whilst searching for something else, I came across the La Trobe University case study from Australia, where they have implemented Network Access Protection, a feature of Windows Server 2008, to detect and manage the health of systems connecting to their network – including Windows, Linux and Apple computers. And that allows them to safely manage student laptops connecting to their network. If you’re interested in the subject, you may want to read their case study, or better still, watch the video
<![CDATA[<a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=ad991585-9920-4a9f-b5b2-ce2cdce9ca5f" target="_new" title="La Trobe University">Video: La Trobe University</a>]]> You can read their full case study here, and read more about Network Access Protection (NAP) here
I've pinched this from my colleague Mark A'Bear, some of it's perhaps more focused on schools but it shows a sample of how some of the web work Microsoft is doing can be relevant to education. Mark has summarised some of our education links below with a very brief description of each technology. They might not all seem like obvious areas of technology and education but with some imagination we are already seeing some fabulous teaching resources being built around this. The one thing you will need in most cases is a Windows Live ID. If you haven’t got one already …. why not?
I'm starting with my current favourite, Worldwide Telescope – this community resource is another example of applications in the cloud that could be made available as part of a curriculum. The guided tours and ability to explore planets and astrological features are well worth the investment of a few minutes if you haven't tried it yet, please do.
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
Auto Collage – as the name suggests this product takes a collection of images and blends them together into an attractive collage. The user can specify the number of images, save thye collection, email to a colleague, etc
http://research.microsoft.com/AutoCollage/
Films for Learning – think of this as U-Tube for Education, offering a range of ‘lessons’ prepared and submitted for teachers.
http://www.filmsforlearning.org
Homework Helper – this small tool uses drop-down boxes – key stage, subject, topic - to create a granular search for particular information. Try GCSE, Geography, Volcanoes and then search for Etna. The results are educationally relevant as opposed to random.
http://www.livehomeworkhelper.co.uk/
Live Mesh – this cool technology automatically synchronises information across different devices. PCs are currently supported with Mac and Mobile support imminent. Members can be invited to join a Mesh so this technology is perfect for collaboration and group learning scenarios.
http://www.mesh.com
Photosynth – this great tool stitches together a series of related pictures into a panoramic 3D view that users can zoom in and out of to see the detail. The site contains a wealth of examples to explore whilst the technology itself is perfect for presenting to a group, submitting as course work or just providing an innovative presentation of homework.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Popfly – try a mashup for yourself, or look at the examples at: http://dev.live.com/mashups/default.aspx. This is where users can merge multiple applications together such as images from Flickr and Virtual Earth to see the geographic location of those images. THis is just the tip of the iceberg though.
http://www.popfly.ms/
Silverlight – more and more application providers are developing in sliverlight. It is a great way of creating rich and engaging content as well as streaming video content. The site has some great examples and you can install Silverlight yourself. The Showcase has a number of great examples such as the Hard Rock Cafe: http://silverlight.net/showcase/
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/
Surface – this we think is the ‘next generation’ whiteboard. Take a look at the videos and imagine how this technology could be used in education to support Special Education Needs, Group working, class teaching, parents’ evenings, etc, etc. We now have a device in the offices at TVP so we’ll try and make one available first hand at the next partner event.
http://www.microsoft.com/surface
Worldwide Telescope – this community resource is another example of applications in the cloud that could be made available as part of a curriculum. The guided tours and ability to explore planets and astrological features are well worth the investment of a few minutes.
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
All over the UK this week tens of thousands of new students will be arriving into lecture theatres full of expectation and a desire to learn. The vast majority of these students will have had more exposure to technology than any previous intake and, frankly, it's going to be difficult to impress many of them with a handful of powerpoint slides. You may have seen my pptFlex posting the other day which, with some thought, can bring a great deal of flexibility to using powerpoint based content for teaching and learning. Now, I've discovered Wii Presenter on CodePlex. Essentially, you can use a Wii controller to navigate through PowerPoint,
A short video explaining what is capable is here:
According to Jack Schofield, on the Guardian’s Technology Blog, Cray have just announced a deskside supercomputer, running Windows HPC (the high performance computing version of Windows Server 2008).
This took me by surprise for a number of reasons:
- “Deskside Supercomputer” – Wow. I still remember seeing my first Cray supercomputer at CERN in the late 80’s, with a picnic bench around the outside. Now we’ve gone “deskside”
- Jack calls it “cheap” –at $25,000 (approx £14,000) it might be cheap for a supercomputer, but not quite in the same league as a normal “deskside” computer
- It’s available on amazon.com – That’s really game-shifting – buying supercomputers from the same place I buy books, games, CDs and ironing boards (yes, we really did get our last ironing board on amazon.co.uk)
Anyway, I’m not planning to buy one just yet, but thought it was worth sharing! Read more on Jack’s blog
At the end of this month, Steve Ballmer will be in the UK, and providing the opening keynote for our UK conference “Technologies to Change your Business”. As well as the usual slew of new product announcements, I noticed that Microsoft Research will be showing off some of the future technologies. At many events, these can make the highlights, as the team from Cambridge (and elsewhere globally) talk about what’s going on behind the closed doors of the research labs.
If you’d like to come along for the afternoon, there are still some (free!) places available – you can register on the links below
“The fifth [computing] revolution is about more than personal empowerment and social interaction; we literally will get the tools to help us better understand and address global issues that affect billions of people, including education, healthcare, science, and environmental change.”
CeBIT, March 3, 2008
Technologies to Change Your Business: How Customers Are Implementing Tomorrow’s Strategies Today
The Microsoft Launch Event for IT Managers & Executives with Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft and Chris Ingle, Consulting & Research Director, IDC
12.30pm – 5pm. 1 October 2008. Royal Festival Hall South Bank Complex
Some organisations see new products as an incremental improvement to what they do today – others look for the opportunity to make a step change in the way they deliver services & value to customers. IT initiatives such as virtualisation, consolidation & hosted services are not in themselves new, and yet many customers still only scratch the surface of their potential – few are yet to embrace these strategies and use them extensively to deliver new value.
At the upcoming launch event, “Technologies to Change your Business”, we will not only be introducing the latest in the line up of Server technologies from Microsoft, Hyper-V and SQL Server 2008, but more importantly, showcasing customers who are taking these products and using them as the catalyst for significant change in their business. Additionally, we will be showcasing some of the future emerging technologies to come from Microsoft Research.
Agenda
12:15 Registration and Lunch
13:00 Introduction – Martin Veitch, CIO Magazine
13:15 Opening Keynote by Steve Ballmer: Microsoft's Vision for Software Delivered as a Service
14:00 Taking Virtualisation to the Next Level: Achieving a Dynamic IT Infrastructure.
Bruce Lynn, Microsoft
14:40 Virtualisation vNext: Customer Case Study and Q&A
15:00 Break
15:30 Planning for the next wave of Technologies: Chris Ingle, IDC
16:00 From Database to Data Platform. Delivering New Value to the Business.
Keith Burns and Andrew Fryer, Microsoft
16:30 Deriving New Value from Data and SQL Server 2008: Customer Case Study and Q&A
16:50 Summary
17:00 Close
Register Now to join us for an afternoon of innovation, debate & insight as we launch the next wave of technologies to help you deliver new value to your organisation.
I've been playing around with a new Office add-in for several months now. pptPlex introduces a fresh look at how Powerpoint can be used for presentations and teaching. Have you ever been frustrated with the typical linear format of a powerpoint presentation? Would it be useful to think of your content as being on a great big canvas that allows you to focus in on the relevant content at the appropriate time and re-visit it quickly and simply.
I could go on, but if you are looking at bringing a new style to your presentations, lectures, briefings and/or tutorials then pptPlex could be for you. On the site there's access to the download, FAQ, Blog and discussions about pptPlex. My favourite things about pptPlex are:
- Using live content (documents, spreadsheets etc)
- Zooming in and out of slides
- Organising presentations into sections for the "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you've told them"
- Navigating through the content the way I want to navigate - not just left to right
Take a look at the video for a snapshot of what it does:
I've also just read that some one is using a Nintendo Wii controller to navigate.
There are more videos here.
See more stuff here- www.officelabs.com, I'm also trying Email Prioritizer.
I've just noticed this posting:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan/archive/2008/09/10/dave-whyley-receives-honorary-doctorate-for-mobile-learning.aspx
on my Colleague, Jason Langridge's, blog. David Whyley has been awarded an honorary Doctorate from Wolverhampton University for his work n the field of learning.
Whoops – when I wrote about the Ultimate Steal (Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for £38.95, only for students) I said it was open to all UK students who have a .ac.uk email address (and staff too).
Of course, I’d forgotten something – we have also added Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man students and staff from the beginning this year.
So that means if you’re a student or staff member, and you meet the criteria (including having an email address that ends in '.ac.im', '.ac.gg', '.ac.je') then you’re in – part of the merry Ultimate Steal band!
(I was reminded about this as I packed my suitcase for a trip to Jersey tomorrow. Normally, a trip to Jersey in September is nice and summery – but not this year I think!)
I found this button for my Windows Live Toolbar this evening and it gives a link directly from my toolbar to www.lhc.ac.uk.
To access the button visit here. It's great to see a toolbar promote access to a learning site.
Today, I’m in London, and inspired by Mike’s Aberdeen Photosynth yesterday, I thought I’d have a go. And I am astounded at how easy it turned out to be.
I took my photos of Westminster Cathedral, which is right outside of our office. Just before you say “But that’s not Westminster”, then re-read the last sentence. It’s the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, not Westminster Abbey.
Before I first worked in Victoria Street, I had no idea that this impressive building was a few hundreds yards from the Abbey. It is well described on its website: “Westminster Cathedral is one of the greatest secrets of London; people heading down Victoria Street on the well-trodden route to more famous sites are astonished to come across a piazza opening up the view to an extraordinary facade of towers, balconies and domes.”
Anyway, I stood in front of it, and kept taking photos – 103 of them – including close ups of the statuary, and the left hand-side of the building, and then loaded them into the Photosynth software. I didn’t have to tag them, or arrange them, or shoot in any particular order – it did all of the work. And after about an hour (analysis, upload and display time, I guess) that was it – a 3D model of the cathedral was made.
You can see a snapshot of a part of it on the right, and you can see my whole synth here.
I tried a few tricks, to see how they would work:
- Walking in the left-hand door, and you can too, but the lighting made it impossible to take photos inside - LINK
- A close up of the notice board by the door – LINK – spot the bargain!
- And a view around the side, with a close up of the mosaic over the door – LINK
I was astounded at the “3D dot” model it created, as it is an amazing trick from a few photos!
Have a go at Photosynth yourself. I think this whole model took less than 30 minutes of my time (plus the background uploading)!
When I wrote about the Ultimate Steal, I said it was for university students and staff with a .ac.uk email address. There’s also a requirement that if you’re a Higher Education student, you must be enrolled in an undergraduate or postgraduate level course. And although that was straightforward for most students, it turned out to be quite tricky for Open University students. With the nature of their studies, it sometimes turned out to be difficult to work out whether somebody was actually doing a degree or not!
So this year, after some negotiations with our dear lawyerly-friends, we have made a leap and extended the offer out to ANY registered Open University student who has one of their ‘open.ac.uk’ email addresses and also to all OU staff.
Which means that, if you’re an OU student, regardless of which course you are on, and how many modules you’re currently studying, you’re eligible for the Ultimate Steal
