The UK Higher Education Blog

Windows Azure in four minutes

Rayfl — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:55:00 GMT

Things are changing very rapidly in the way that ICT services can be delivered and used in education. Although most of the developments from major ICT providers aren’t specific to education, they are addressing the issues that education faces today.

One of the developments is the Windows Azure system, which is designed to allow you to run services and develop applications for a cloud-based system, instead of having a bigger pile of servers within your university.

The detail of how these services work, and how you can use them to build applications and services for your university is covered in tons of details on website, but what I’ve been missing is a simple overview.

The official summary blurb for Azure describes it thus:

The Windows Azure platform offers a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud applications and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.

Windows Azure offers a platform that is easily implemented alongside your current environment.

- Windows Azure: operating system as an online service
- Microsoft SQL Azure: fully relational cloud database solution
- Windows Azure platform AppFabric: makes it simpler to connect cloud services and on-premises applications

And I’ve found a short video that provides an overview of Windows Azure in a much more digestible form. Having watched it, I can now describe it to other people much better (and now fully appreciate why it’s a good thing!).

The best simple introduction I’ve seen for Windows Azure

If you can’t see the video above, then here’s a direct link.

Interesting though: Steve Marx has blogged about how he made this video - using just PowerPoint & Community Clips. I’m envious of his talent.

The issue that is highlighted by the video is how you can use the Azure platform to build an application or service that grows over time. But in the world of universities, I imagine that it also has a critical capability to be able to provide 'bursts’ of services, to match the natural rhythm of the academic year. For example, providing application and server bandwidth for processing applications, or around setting up student residence services, which may be heavily used in some parts of the year, but only need a trickle of support the rest of the year. And also the ability to drop down to 5% of normal usage for the summer break. Unless you’ve got a highly virtualised and actively managed datacentre, it’s likely that today it’s difficult to scale for the troughs as well as the peaks.

If this is a bit lightweight for you, then you may prefer to read the Introducing Windows Azure whitepaper (PDF) – just one of many whitepapers on Windows Azure

Ready-made IT user documentation

Rayfl — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:59:00 GMT

When I started working at Microsoft, I hadn’t been in such an open, technology rich culture before. And with so many IT systems around, and so many different software resources, my head was buzzing. In fact, I remember that at the end of the first week, the number of links in my Favourites was massive – just to internal websites.

I’d never used internet telephony, encryption, instant messaging, live meeting, SharePoint or Groove before, so I was all at sea until I could play around and work out how they were supposed to operate. Meanwhile, people who’d been at Microsoft for a while were metaphorically whizzing past me, as they collaborated, shared, published and distributed information. Whilst I was trying to work out how to answer my desk phone.

One of the godsends for me was a set of documents called Work Smart Guides, which walked me through the basics of some of the new technology I was encountering.

As our IT team describe it, Work Smart Guides bridge the gap between technology and users. Work Smart guides provide employees with scenario-based, best-use productivity aids on Microsoft products and technologies.

We produce them because we expect to see more consistent, productive, and cost-effective use of products and technologies across the company – which helps the business ROI on IT investments, as well as helping people to understand the benefit the IT team deliver to users.

Ready-made IT guides

I found out today that we have also published them for customers to modify and use. This seems a great step – because I’m guessing that every university in the UK is producing user documentation where 80-90% of the content is identical. So these guides would make a good starter for 10, either for the format, or the instructions, or the simple screenshots. As an example, here’s the Email Basics one.

The subjects covered in the step-by-step guides for users include:

Environmental sustainability (hints like using Balanced power settings on your laptop)
Protecting data with BitLocker
Getting started with email
Transfer files and settings to a new computer
Collaborating with SharePoint
An overview of collaboration tools
Customising SharePoint sites
Integrating Outlook with SharePoint
Basics of managing email (Are you a stacker or a filer?)
Office tips
Outlook email signatures
New features for users in Windows 7

Download the Work Smart Guides

You can download the customisable versions of Work Smart materials from TechNet. There are 23 of them, and they come in one big Zip file for you to play with.

Bonus: You should also be looking at the Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder, described by Long Zheng as a miracle tool. It does what it says on the tin, and the best bit is that the document it creates is brilliant for creating user guides, with screen shots and step-by-step instructions.

Download the Office 2010 Beta and get a head start

Rayfl — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:00:00 GMT

The Office 2010 Beta is available for free download from the Microsoft website, and it’s something that you could install on some of your campus computers to see what’s in it, and how it helps your staff and students.

Remember how sometimes you felt smug when you were running Windows 7 Beta at least 6 months before everybody else on campus? Well, you can feel it once again!

Why trial the new Office system?

In the past, when we released new software, you had to wait to see what it will do, and whether it is the right thing for your campus. But now, with our new approach of releasing very public Beta versions, you can actually download an early versions months before release, and try it out with some of your staff and students, as well as trying it out from a technical installation perspective. With Office 2010, there’s a bunch of new features which are going to be especially useful for education, such as:

Save to SharePoint allows students and staff to use shared sites or their personal site more easily. The overwhelming majority of universities are using SharePoint and looking for new ways to grow it’s use. This removes all the hassle of having to save to your local disk, and then leave and upload the file to SharePoint.

Let’s face it, anything that makes it easier for staff to use your SharePoint is a good thing, and encourages active sharing of information.

Save to SkyDrive is one step further by connecting your users to their 25GB of free storage on the SkyDrive site. And because SkyDrive allows you to have private folders, shared folders and public folders, each user can easily control what’s visible to others, and available via any Internet connected computer. This is also the way to activate the Office Web Applications – once you’ve saved something on your SkyDrive it can be opened in the web version of Office 2010.

This is really important for staff, because they can save an assignment, and know that all students can have access to it, whether or not they have Office on their own laptop. Mind you, anecdotally, it appears that students are just as or more likely to have a current version of Office on their laptop than the version on campus machines/

Create PDF Document is something I have used quite a bit since discovering it – I can now take my Word document and turn it into something which is perceived to be more ‘professionally published’ because it’s a PDF. And it’s dead easy to use.

Although it’s probably not something used every day for assignments, it’s great for staff when they’re publishing anything for external or internal readers.

PowerPoint has a new “Broadcast Slide Show” option, which takes your presentation and presents it live on a web page – with all the fancy animations and everything else. So now, if you’re delivering a lecture to more than just the students in the room, then everybody can be looking at the same thing, in high resolution and in real time, without needing any extra fancy software. All you do is share a weblink, and you’re ready to teach the world!

You can find out a little more on this on the PowerPoint blog.

PowerPoint’s new video features will genuinely make staff smile, because it just makes working with video easier, so that lecturers can include video in their teaching more easily. You can now trim the parts of the video to display – selecting when to start and stop the video automatically. It’s a doddle, just using the ‘Trim Video’ option, and dragging the markers to the start and end position. This is brilliant if you’ve got a long video in your library (eg a TV programme) that you want to only show 2 minutes from. Videos are now embedded in your presentation by default, meaning that your one PowerPoint file has all the bits it needs to run, rather than having to remember to copy all the video files. And finally, you can now easily insert a video from websites like YouTube and TeacherTube just by clicking ‘Insert>Video>Video from Web Site’ and pasting in the embed code from the video.

I read in the Times today that schools are considering spending up to £10,000 a year on a filtering system for YouTube that stops the comments and related films showing up on the page. I guess this is a cheaper alternative! Because you embed the YouTube video you want in your PowerPoint, and nothing else. Job done – no comments, no related films. Fixed.

There’s plenty more (if, like me, you live in your Outlook Inbox, there’s tons there that will make you happy too!). But the easiest way to discover what it can do is to download it, install it and give it a whirl. That way, you can work out whether it is something you want to build into your summer deployment plans (especially if you have a Campus Agreement, and you’re covered for new releases – it can help you to plan your free deployment!)

I wouldn’t advise you to do something I wouldn’t do myself. I’ve been running the early versions of Office 2010 since last September, and this beta version since November. It’s given me the confidence that it works, and I know I wouldn’t go back now.

PS If you’re going to do install it, can I highly recommend installing the Ribbon Hero too – and giving it to one of your least-innovative lecturers (the one that’s glued to their Office 2003 Menu, and doesn’t like the new Office Ribbon menus). Ask them to try it for a fortnight with Ribbon Hero, and see if they’ll go back!

Looking for another Microsoft blog – take a look at the directory

Rayfl — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:22:00 GMT

My colleague Daniel Good, keeps a directory of all of the Microsoft team blogs – those that are run by, or on behalf of, Microsoft teams. It’s a really handy reference if you’ve got a burning interest in a subject, product or programme. It’s just been updated, and checking it out today I realised we have blogs for all kinds of stuff, like:

Of course, they’re not all as regularly updated as this one, or as beautiful . But I bet that 99% of them are more technical. And the ones I’ve highlighted answer about 1/3 of the regular questions I get asked (and especially “How do I get a job at Microsoft?” question).

For individual blogs, then take a look at the Microsoft Technical Communities website – as well as pointing towards all the places you can go to discuss and get self-help, the blogs page lets you search all of the blogs written by individual Microsoft people, with just one search box. I only found that today, but already I’m addicted.

Running the cloud

Rayfl — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:51:00 GMT

A few years ago, when we first started the Live@edu email service, it was running on the same system as Hotmail. Since then we’ve moved it onto a completely Exchange-based system, which has actually been running Exchange 2010 for quite some time. And so I’d forgotten about Hotmail. But running cloud services at a massive scale requires quite a lot of work in the background, and I was surprised me when I read the “peek behind the scenes at Hotmail” article, on the Inside Windows Live blog, because there are some stunning stats about how Hotmail is now run:

We deliver localised versions of Hotmail to 59 regional markets, in 36 languages*
We host well over 1.3 billion inboxes.
Over 350 million people are actively using Hotmail on a monthly basis.
We handle over 3 billion messages a day and filter out over 1 billion spam messages.
We are growing storage at over 2 petabytes a month (a petabyte is ~1 million gigabytes or ~1,000 terabytes).
We currently have over 155 petabytes of storage deployed (70% of storage is taken up with attachments, typically photos).
We’re the largest SQL Server 2008 deployment in the world (we monitor and manage many thousands of SQL servers).

And the team go on to describe how they keep all of that running, and how they keep the deployment of new storage and systems ahead of the demand for it. I can’t imagine adding 2 million gigabytes of storage every month. That’s an awful lot of disks!

Gizmodo have a nice graphic which tries to put a petabyte into scale – 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets, or 13.3 years of HD-TV. And it equates 50 petabytes to the entire written works of mankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages. And there’s three times as much as that in the Hotmail data centres!

* As I mentioned, our Live@edu service actually runs on a different system. For example, data for UK customers is stored in our new Dublin datacentre, rather than outside of Europe or simply spread over a range of different worldwide data centres

Eduserv’s report into the use of SharePoint by Higher Education Institutions

Rayfl — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:10:59 GMT

The final report from the University of Northumbria, completed through the Eduserv-funded ‘Investigation into the uptake and use of Microsoft SharePoint by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)’ is now available for download. I’ve taken the key findings directly from the website:

Most UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are using SharePoint to some extent (78% of the 40 UK HEIs interviewed in a telephone survey of IT Directors said that they were making some use of SharePoint)

SharePoint’s rapid rise in the HE sector can be attributed to several factors: (i) the ease with which it can be procured; (ii) its wide variety of functionality the gap in the HE information environment for such a product; (iii) its devolution of a lot of power to local users which suits the federal culture of HEIs.

Two distinct types of SharePoint implementation were discerned: organic (bottom-up) implementations and corporate (top-down) implementations

Drivers for implementing SharePoint included: improving document management; supporting collaboration (internally and externally); improving an intranet or external website; targeting information to particular audiences; improving and automating cross-institution processes; providing a personalised portal for staff and students; bring together and managing data from different information systems in the HEI

A range of critical success factors for SharePoint implementations were identified.

With most HEIs already having a virtual learning environment (VLE) in place only two HEIs were found to be using SharePoint as a VLE; but SharePoint is being used in teaching and learning, particularly for functions such as group collaborative work, ad-hoc non-repeated courses, and work that cuts across different courses

Several HEIs are using SharePoint to support collaborative research work with colleagues in other institutions; whilst there is plenty of scope for SharePoint to support research groups it will face strong competition from open source systems in this space.

The research is the first study into the use of SharePoint in UK HE, and was very comprehensive – it involved telephone interviews with 40 HEIs (mostly IT Directors and Project Managers); an online survey attracting 51 responses from 47 universities; three case studies; an online community consultation and a literature review. It was conducted in the summer and autumn of 2009, and one conclusions is that “2010-11 is likely to see significant development in the SharePoint space”

This study was funded under Eduserv’s Research Programme to improve HEIs’ understanding about the level and nature of interest in SharePoint and whether it is justified in terms of accepted good practice, and to enhance Eduserv’s understanding about the uptake and usage of SharePoint solutions in the UK HE community and influence their 2-3 year plans for service provision in line with their charitable mission.

You can download the SharePoint in Higher Education Final Report from the University of Northumbria website, as well as download all of the detailed appendices.

What to do if you get supplied with fake software

Rayfl — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:13:00 GMT

After reading a post on Dave Morrison’s blog (I have no idea whether he’s right or wrong about having bought fake software, but the pricing certainly seems too,too low!) I found out a bit more about the Product Identification Service that our licensing team run here in the UK.

It’s ideal if you’ve bought a copy of software (for example, if a student on your campus has a query, or a lecturer has just received a new computer with software) and although it looks legit, you think there might be something be wrong.

Basically, what you can do is send it in to our team, and they’ll check it out.

If it is legitimate, they’ll send it straight back to you, along with a letter confirming it is genuine.
If it is a fake copy, then they will replace it with a legitimate replacement.
Of course, this only applies to a single copy – if you’ve bought 100, we’re only going to send you one back!

Of course, it has to be a sophisticated fake – if you knew it was a fake when you were buying it, then we’re not going to swap it for a legitimate version! But if you’ve genuinely been taken in, then its your route to rescue!

Take a look at the “Product Identification Service” and perhaps keep a bookmark for it – even if you don’t need it, I’m sure one day a student might need your help.

What’s in it for you? Well, if somebody has scammed you, you get a full legit copy in return. (And avoid the risk of viruses & trojans that exist in fake copies, or the risk that at some future point your fake version stops running)

What’s in it for us? We get some help in trying to track down the suppliers of fake software, because it’s bad for us and our legitimate Microsoft partners.

Ribbon Hero – combining games and learning

Rayfl — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:35:11 GMT

It seems that one of the trendy topics discussed at education conferences these days is the combination of gaming and learning. Most of the time, it’s discussed in the context of the classroom or of students, but I’ve just learnt that we’ve now applied it to product training, in one of our experimental Office Labs releases

Today Microsoft Office Labs released Ribbon Hero, a free prototype app that works with Office 2007 and with Office 2010 beta. The new prototype is designed to test the effectiveness, feasibility and appeal of delivering Office training in a game-like setting. The heart of Ribbon Hero is a set of challenges that users play right in the Office applications. These challenges expose users to features that they might not be aware of and which can help users get their work done faster.

In addition, Ribbon Hero awards points for using both basic features, such as, Bold and Italic, and for using the features introduced in the challenges. Ribbon Hero does some analysis of the person’s usage patterns to prioritise the order in which it presents challenges.

And then to add the competitive element, Ribbon Hero integrates with Facebook so you can share your success (or in my case, failures) with your friends. Ribbon Hero offers to post an update to your Facebook profile when impressive point levels have been reached. This feature enables you to compare your success with Ribbon Hero with your friends and compete for bragging rights.

Ribbon Hero is a free download, and has got to be a big step up from conventional training ideas and manuals. And timely too, as Office 2010 approaches, it’s another useful tool to help with the migration from Office 2003.

You can read more about it on the Office Labs blog, or watch the short videos to see how it works.

And finally, to download free Office 2010 beta visit www.microsoft.com/2010

Reducing Costs

Dominic Watts — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:46:47 GMT

Microsoft and Business Insights Group are presenting -

“A Change in Fortunes”

Which is a Cost Reduction seminar at Microsoft’s London offices on 26^th January.

Business Insight Group, also known as Insight4Education is active in the Higher Education sector working with the most innovative institutions implementing the next generation of Student Information Systems and Finance Systems.

The seminar will be presented by a range of companies and illustrated with real world examples, the event demonstrates how can significant economies can be made through the use of modern technologies and applications.

This free seminar covers:

modern integrated financial and administrative systems
the treatment of the whole student lifecycle
the benefits and use of the latest technologies

The event is of particular benefit to IT, financial and administrative personnel.

Further details and registration can be found at http://www.i4e.co.uk/Fortunes/Default.htm

Amazing University website built with Microsoft tools (Sharepoint & Silverlight)

Dominic Watts — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:28:11 GMT

According to my colleague Michael Kleine in the Netherlands, the University of Florida “web Site of the year” award goes to Hogeschool in the beautiful city of Utrecht. I’ve just had a quick tour around the website and I’d find it hard to disagree with the University of Florida, it makes excellent use of:

Multi Language
Mapping
- You have to do the “go for a walk”
- It even shows where the local bike shop is
Student engagement
Immersive interaction
Community orientation
Social networking (flikr, Twitter, YouTube etc..)

Which altogether helps to create a powerful message about a progressive and exciting university. There are lots of zones to explore on the site and it makes for a compelling experience. I know there are some great websites for UK universities but this one really lifts the lid on what’s possible.

See for yourself http://international.hu.nl/ or have a brief look at the video tour:

Using Windows 7 DirectAccess to connect staff to your university network securely

Rayfl — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:23:00 GMT

Ever since Windows 7 was launched, I’ve had a steady stream of people asking me if I know of educational establishments who have implemented DirectAccess.

DirectAccess allows you to setup your staff laptops so that they can always have secure access to your university network wherever they are, but without forcing them to use a VPN connection. There are a number of benefits for universities and staff:

Unlike a VPN connection, it only reroutes some network access through your network connection, not all Internet access. Which means it doesn’t slow down or filter normal Internet access at home from the laptop.

It is transparent to the user – so they just access a network share or VLE folder as they normally would, just as if they are on campus.

It can be used with two-factor security (eg a smartcard) so that it meets Cabinet Office guidance on information security on remote access to sensitive student data

It minimises the amount of sensitive data that your staff put on their laptop. This could save you getting into hot water with the Information Commissioner’s Office if a laptop goes missing.

You can manage your laptops through policies, even if they are rarely connected to your campus network

Although I use it myself (and as a user, I’m a big fan of it, because VPN access used to be slow, and I’d avoid VPN’ing as much as possible) I don’t know of any universities that have implemented it fully.

So I thought that perhaps I should share some resources to help people who are experimenting.

A short video introduction to DirectAccess

There’s a 2 minute video demonstration of it which you can download, which shows how very simple it is for the user.

DirectAccess webcast

View the TechNet DirectAccess webcast home page

In this webcast, John Baker from the TechNet team focuses on the DirectAccess feature in the Windows 7 operating system, which provides secure anywhere access on the network. We explore how DirectAccess makes it easier for IT professionals to manage the network infrastructure and how it helps reduces IT costs. We also discuss how DirectAccess works and how to set up and configure DirectAccess in the network infrastructure. The session includes demonstrations on how to setup and configure DirectAccess on Windows 7-based clients and the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.

Networking Enhancements Whitepaper

There’s a whitepaper, called (takes deep breath) “Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Networking Enhancements for Enterprises” which takes a detailed look at new networking technologies in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, with particular emphasis on enhancements to improve connectivity for a mobile workforce. New features and enhancments including DirectAccess, BranchCache, VPN Reconnect, mobile broadband device support, URL-based QoS, DNSSEC, and support for green computing.

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

Infrastructure and Planning Guide for DirectAccess

The TechNet site has a growing series of Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for all kinds of areas – virtualisation, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server, Online Services and the Optimised Desktop. The one that’s relevant is the IPD Guide for DirectAccess in Windows 7.

Want more on DirectAccess?

Head to the TechNet DirectAccess page, for a big bundle of further documents and information that will help.

And if you’ve implemented it in your university, then drop me a line or add a comment, to share your story.

The Higher Education Briefing 2009 – slides and other materials

Rayfl — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:35:00 GMT

Today’s briefing event covered a lot of ground, and a lot of questions from the audience too. If you were there, then you’re probably reading this to download the slides. And if you weren’t, then the slides will be a start to understanding what you missed!

Here are the links for all of the downloads:

Introduction & Higher Education Overview
from Dominic Watts and Steve Beswick of Microsoft
Alternative IT Delivery Methods – the King’s College London story
from Lynne Tucker, Chief Technology Officer and Director of IT Systems
The Software + Services mix
from Chris Rothwell of Microsoft
Identity Management and SharePoint
from Martin Creevey of Salford Software
SharePoint in Higher Education
from Vatro Popovic of Microsoft
Looking ahead a decade: The future vision of work (video)
from Ray Fleming of Microsoft

A number of people asked me afterwards about the interactive tool I’d used for the presentation. And the secret is pptPlex, which is an add-in for PowerPoint 2007. It allows you to build amazingly interactive presentations, and also allows you to move around a storyboard in a completely non-linear way.

SharePoint as a Learning Management System
from Kelvyn Hicks of eLearning Force
Desktop Virtualisation
from David Hitchen
And finally, instead of looking at Dominic’s Office 2010 slides, why not just download the beta and explore it yourself!

If you want all the presentations, follow this link to open the folder with all the presentations in SkyDrive.

[Dominic Watts] just adding this one, it's the Office 2010 slides that I never actually used but is a useful guide to what's coming down the road, follow this link to get access. Of course you should also follow Ray's link to the download and begin with Office 2010 without delay.

The Cambridge and Oxford College IT conference

Rayfl — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:15:52 GMT

Early this morning, Dominic and I jumped into our respective cars to head to Cambridgeshire, to present a keynote for the third Cambridge and Oxford College IT Conference, held at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. It’s quite an unusual conference venue, set inside the AirSpace hangar – overlooking a display of planes from the last century. My Dad and brother are both ex-Air Force Armourers, so seeing the Vulcan and Lancaster took me back to my childhood in Scampton, Lincolnshire.

In this historical setting, I was talking about the future, and the opportunities and challenges which exist as IT moves forward.

I used our ‘Productivity Vision’ video, which looks at the workplace of 2019, and then continued by deconstructing the technology behind the video – to look at what exists now – either in research labs or in real life - and how the components might build to get to the vision described for the future.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the whole presentation, but I can share the short video that I used as the introduction, which is the starting point for the story I told.

Productivity Future Vision

You can view the video on our Officlabs Envisioning website, and you can also watch a video as Ian Sands, Director of Envisioning, steps through the video scene by scene and describes in greater depth the story behind the people and technology on display.

A number of people asked me afterwards about the interactive tool I’d used for the presentation. And the secret is pptPlex, which is an add-in for PowerPoint 2007. It allows you to build amazingly interactive presentations, and also allows you to move around a storyboard in a completely non-linear way.

A plain English Guide to Data Protection

Rayfl — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:21:01 GMT

I keep an eye on the Information Commissioner’s Office press releases on their website (in the hope that we’re not going to see schools appearing too often), where I suspect they have a busy Press Officer producing a constant stream of news (last 2 weeks : Recruitment firms fined; mobile phone customers record sold illegally; Primary Care Trusts break the law; One third of data security breaches result from burglary and theft).

On Thursday I saw that the ICO announced that it’s latest publication “demystifies data protection”.

It even quoted Stephen Alambritis, Head of Public Affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses:

Small businesses do not have time for pages and pages of jargon and gobbledegook, but getting data protection right makes good business sense. Data protection lapses cost reputations and can affect the bottom line. But, many organisations tell us that data protection law is difficult to understand. This new
no-nonsense guide will help the business community to understand and comply with the law

It even promised to demystify plainly wrong stories, such as “It is illegal to take photographs of your children in their nativity play at school.” (It points out “The Data Protection Act does not prevent parents taking photographs of their children and friends participating in school events.”)

Well, after all the mystery that has surrounded information security in the public sector, I jumped straight over to the new guide, and downloaded the PDF version, with high hopes.

As a positive, it’s definitely written in plain English. Which is a relief after so many migraine-inducing data protection documents.

And there are many specific examples which are really useful to help understand it all. So if your job gets close to protecting data, then this is a must read.

But it runs to 92 pages. 92 pages for an easy-to-understand guide? One to pass to the Head I think!

Also a great source of facts to shout at the telly/newspaper with next time you see one of those idiotic data protection stories…

Scaling up Innovation

Rayfl — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:17:00 GMT

The Microsoft UK Education team has a dozen people in it (surprised?) who are focused full-time on education – across schools, colleges and universities. Which means that we’re awfully busy and spread across many, many things all the time. But fortunately we have the help of other similar teams around the world, and a much bigger team in our offices in America. Sometimes we produce work for the rest of the world (like the Innovative Schools case studies, focusing on journeys of innovation and the lessons that innovative schools have learnt on their way), and sometimes the work flows the other way – towards us.

One of the things that has been done as part of the worldwide Partners in Learning programme is The Scaling Framework – an interactive tool that helps analyse how you move an innovation from being something done by 1 or 2 people, to making it widespread.

It made me think of two specific cases where today there is a challenge of scaling innovation. The first is Virtual Learning Environments, where it is proving to be difficult to take good practice from one lecturer/department/university to the whole system. And the other is taking an innovative ICT teaching initiative and spreading it to other departments.

The Scaling Framework is a simple interactive tool that explains the five dimensions of scale, and then digs down into areas such as “Traps to Avoid” and “Next Steps to Explore”.

You can either us this as an individual, or pop it up on your whiteboard next time you’re holding a leadership team meeting, and explore interactively.

Take a look at the interactive Scaling Framework, and see if it can help you

I was interested in the “Spread” dimension – and the trap to avoid: “Developers should realise a somewhat less powerful innovation that reaches much greater numbers of use is a step forward”. We were talking about this at lunchtime today, discussing a new piece of software for teachers which may only appeal to innovators, meaning that the majority of users won’t be affected by it. So is it better to try and promote something a little less innovative, but likely to be used by more people?