Microsoft UK Schools News Blog

Who will be the next Bill Gates

2009-11-06T08:24:00Z

If you’ve got a Sixth Form, you’ll want to know…

XMA and Toshiba have launched a competition, called “The next Bill Gates”. In a world of competitions and campaigns all the time, it’s a bit of a “does what it says on the tin” competition. It’s for students who’ll be applying for university next year, and students enter by recording a 60-second video answering the question “Why are you the next Bill Gates?”

The prize is £3,500 of tuition fees, a Toshiba laptop and a summer 2010 placement with XMA.

As far as I know, it has absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft, but darn, why weren’t we quicker thinking of this idea :-) Every year we take in about 80 interns for a full year as well as offering work experience for pupils from local schools, but hadn’t thought of offering it as the chance to become the next Bill Gates…

Windows 7 in North Leamington School in Warwickshire

2009-10-19T07:35:00Z

In parallel with Gerald’s written case studies (see Saturday’s post) in September, I also managed to get out of the office, and visit North Leamington School in Warwickshire – with a film crew in tow.

Although they’d only just opened, and they were adjusting to the new school site, they were very accommodating, and willing interview candidates!

The goal was to capture their story – of opening a brand new school in September, with a big deployment of Windows 7. You can see the result for yourself below.

North Leamington School - Windows 7

It was an astonishing project to complete on time, as the Warwickshire IT team had only finally got access to be able to install the IT equipment on the 20th August, and so they had to deploy a brand new, massive network in just a couple of weeks. And make sure it was running for the new arrivals.

From watching the video, you’d have no sense of how much pressure that will have placed on the school, the staff and the IT technicians, and it definitely seemed a swan-like performance (very smooth on the surface, but I imagine lots of paddling underneath!).

Normally, I wouldn’t be aiming to get a video produced so soon after a school had opened, but we had to rush this one through so that it could be shown when Steve Ballmer came to London. It’ll be interesting to hear the student’s opinions in a few months – especially once they’ve all realised that they had Windows 7 so early, and their school really was a leap ahead.

What is it like to be one of the first schools using Windows 7

2009-10-17T14:08:48Z

Windows 7 became available to schools in mid-August 2009, uncomfortably close to the start of the new school year. Although there was every encouragement from Microsoft for schools taking the plunge, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that those ICT teams that grasped the nettle were displaying a fair amount of courage. The start of a school term, after all, isn’t a moveable deadline.

Whether the new operating system was installed or not, whether or not it worked, or did what was printed on the tin, the students, teachers and administrators were still going to arrive and switch on their machines expecting to do pick up where they left off before their holidays. Failure, as they say, was not an option.

These are the first two paragraphs from Gerald Haigh’s article about the experiences of the early schools using Windows 7 in the UK. After just two weeks of term time, he went out to talk to half a dozen schools for us, and record their stories. Gerald normally spends his time split between writing books for school leaders, and leadership focused articles for educational publications. But given his ability to dive straight in and ask the right questions, it made sense to ask him to talk to these early adopters.

The resulting document, which you can download from my SkyDrive, gives you a clear idea of the thoughts of those schools, and why they chose to make such an early start on Windows 7.

Take a look for yourself, and perhaps share with others in your school, to find out what happened when the following schools started term with Windows 7:

West Hatch High School in Essex
Lodge Park Technology College in Northamptonshire
The Long Eaton School in Nottingham
The Samworth Enterprise Academy in Leicester
Twynham School in Dorset
Broadclyst Primary School in Devon

Thanks to Gerald and the schools for their openness in doing this – what had originally seemed like it might make an interesting blog post has turned into a cracking 15 page read!

What features are in which version of Windows 7?

2009-10-11T18:26:00Z

I’m sure this list is out on the web somewhere, but just in case you’ve not seen it in this easy-to-read format before, below is my list of the features of each version of Windows 7. I think this will help you to work out which one is right for your school:

Windows 7 Home Premium is the retail version. It doesn’t allow network login (called Domain Join), so it’s unsuitable for school-based computers, and unlikely to be useful for student laptops owned by the school, unless you don’t plan to manage them or connect them up to your school network except via the web. It is also unable to run XP Mode, which might be useful for some of your older software.
Windows 7 Professional is the minimum version you’ll need in-school as it has network domain join and XP Mode.
Windows 7 Enterprise is the right version if you believe that you should be encrypting any laptops used by staff (this is something I believe strongly!), because it comes with BitLocker and BitLocker To Go. And in addition it also adds AppLocker – which you may want on all of your devices too.
Windows 7 Ultimate is in the table below for completeness, but you are only likely to get this version if you buy it in a retail store with it pre-installed (which is an expensive way to get the functionality in Enterprise or Professional edition)

See below the table for my “How to Buy Windows 7” guide

What features are in which version of Windows 7?

Features	Home Premium	Professional	Enterprise	Ultimate
32-Bit and 64-Bit Versions	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create and Join a Home Group	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tablet PC Functionality	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multiple Monitor Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Document Libraries	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Fast User Switching	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Mobility Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Aero, Taskbar, & Jump Lists	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Live Thumbnail Previews	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-Touch	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Premium Games Included	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Media Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create & Play DVDs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Device Stage	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Action Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Encrypting File System	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Location Aware Printing	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Remote Desktop Host	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Domain Join & Group Policy Controls	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows XP Mode	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
AppLocker	No	No	Yes	Yes
BitLocker & BitLocker to Go	No	No	Yes	Yes
BranchCache	No	No	Yes	Yes
DirectAccess	No	No	Yes	Yes
Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA)	No	No	Yes	Yes
Enterprise Search Scopes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Multilingual User Interface Language Packs (MUI)	No	No	Yes	Yes
Licence Rights for 4 Windows Virtual Machines	No	No	Yes	Yes
Virtual Hard Disk Booting	No	No	Yes	Yes
Volume Activation	No	No	Yes	No
Licence Rights for Network Booting of Windows	No	No	Yes	No

How to buy Windows 7 for your school

So now you’ve worked out which version you want, you may want to know the best way to buy the right version!

Existing computers

For any existing computers running any version of Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can buy a Windows 7 upgrade on your Select or School Agreement. If it’s basic Select, the upgrade is to Windows 7 Professional. If you have a School Agreement, or buy a Select licence with the Software Assurance option, you’ll get Windows 7 Enterprise.

New computers

For Professional edition, you can either buy a new PC with it pre-installed, or buy a PC with Windows 7 Home Premium, and then add an upgrade.
It’s worth checking the price of both options, because the second often can often be cheaper.
For Enterprise edition, the best way is to buy a new PC with Windows 7 Home Premium, and then add an upgrade licence via a School Agreement, or with the Select licence plus Software Assurance (which gives you the right to keep upgrading, and adds the Enterprise features)

Here’s some links to find out more about School Agreement, Select Licences and Software Assurance. And the evergreen “How to get the best deal on Microsoft software” post

Your existing Microsoft partner will be able to give you a quote. I’ve just checked on the Pugh site*, and they quote £34 for a Select Windows 7 Professional upgrade.

* Pugh is one of our partners, but there are plenty of others. You can find them all on our website

Windows 7 meeting for early adopters on 7 October

2009-09-24T16:48:00Z

Mike Herrity, at Twynham School, is hosting a meeting for schools who have adopted Windows 7, to allow early adopters to share their experiences, and the lessons that have been learnt over the last 5 weeks since it was released for Volume Licence customers.

Instead of having to head down to the south coast, I’ve offered to provide a meeting room here in Reading, at the Microsoft Campus, on Wednesday 7th October.

There’s space for 20 people available, so if you’d like to attend, zip over to Mike’s excellent blog, or just drop Mike an email. He’s managing the attendee list, I’m just providing the room and the free lunch!

If you have started deploying Windows 7, this is going to be a valuable day, and I am pretty sure it will save you more than a day of your time in learning from other people’s experiences.

However, if you haven’t started deploying Windows 7 yet, then Mike will be aiming to write up lessons from the day to share with others, so keep an eye on this blog later for when it’s published.

The summer's most popular blog posts

2009-09-07T10:48:00Z

For those of you who didn’t hang around to upgrade your networks, grapple with new furniture, install audio visual equipment, or enjoy the blissful student-free corridors, welcome back.

What did you miss? Well, whilst your back was turned I managed keep on blogging at an increasing rate – and whilst not every post is worth going back to, here’s a list of the most read posts from the summer holidays:

What does Windows 7 run on
A runaway winner, thanks to links from all kinds of Windows forums
Shift Happens UK download
Will this ever make it’s way out of the blog hit parade?
Slides from the Windows 7 in Education event
Actually, the event invite got more readers, but it’s history, so better to look at the slides
Do you work during your holidays?
A look at the “Out of Office” phenomenon
We’re going on a Quango Hunt
Making light of the CPS report, and giving you a poll to quash a quango
Where are all the freebies now the budget’s cut
An update on where to find Microsoft’s free stuff
How fast can Windows 7 go?
Only posted yesterday, but already in the top posts list

If you want to read the rest, you’ll have to look for them yourself – just click on the “+” sign next to “Archives” in the left hand bar, and you can see them all. I’ve just noticed a wrote 32 this summer.

But my favourite (to write) wasn’t in the Top 10. It was actually “A week in Atlanta – Technology, Cheese and Soda” – about a visit to the World of Coke. I suspect that it’s not in the Top 10 because most people have more sense!

How fast can Windows 7 go?

2009-09-03T16:08:00Z

Earlier in the week PC Pro ran an article stating that Windows 7 is “already used on 1% of PCs”. This was lifted from some Internet metrics measured by NetApplications. It’s easy to do – each time you visit a website, your browser tells the website what version it is, and what operating system it is running on.

Given the buzz this summer about Windows 7, I thought I’d have a quick look at the stats for this blog. And the answer has truly surprised me. (Or at least it did once I’d learned from Wikipedia that Windows 7 reports itself as Windows NT 6.1)

What this table shows is the last 10,000 visitors to the blog – and 1 in 5 are running Windows 7!

Now I reckon that this is partly because the readers are more technical, and there’s been quite a buzz about Windows 7 – and lots of early deployments in schools. Given that there have already been half a dozen schools who’ve told me they’ve rolled out Windows 7 to all their desktops, perhaps Windows 7 is going to overtake even Windows 95 in it’s speed of adoption.

I was genuinely surprised at what I saw. Are you?

Online learning is better than face-to-face learning?

2009-09-02T12:00:00Z

The US Department of Education sponsored the Center for Technology in Learning to look into the effectiveness of online learning – and to specifically compare the effectiveness of using online learning compared to face to face learning. The results, published in May, are on the www.ed.gov website, for all to see.

What I’ve seen of the reporting seems to take the simple line that “online learning is better than face-to-face learning”. Hmmm, having read more than the first highlighted sentence in the abstract, I think there’s a lot more to it!

The inescapable conclusion is that with students changing, and their lives changing, methods of supporting online and blended learning are not only more convenient for many different types of students, but also more effective at ensuring that the student achieves the required learning outcomes.

What the researchers did

The researchers looked at 1,000 pieces of research, over the last 12 years, of online learning. After throwing out those pieces that didn’t compare online and face-to-face learning, or didn’t measure the impact on student learning, or didn’t take a rigorous approach to the research, they were left with 51 pieces of research – which is a large enough group to make effective comparisons.

Then they crunched all the conclusions together from all of the reports, to arrive at an overarching conclusion – answering the question “What do we know about the effectiveness of online learning compared to conventional, face-to-face learning?”

The headline conclusions

The simple conclusion was:

students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction

Which is the bit that has been reported widely.

But read on a little further, and the report went on to say:

The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes…was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face

Which is saying that a combination of online and face-to-face learning (ie blended learning) is more effective than online learning alone.

Although there are some provisos around this finding – eg theories that blended learning often includes additional learning time and additional face-to-face learning not included in standard courses – it is still significant.

Key Findings

Further in (starting on page xiv, if you’re following along) are some key findings that are good summary conclusions:

Few rigorous research studies of the effectiveness of online learning for K–12 (school) students have been published
"K-12" is ‘Kindergarten to 12th Grade’, which is American for "schools"
Of all the research completed, there was none on school use of online learning between 1994 and 2006 that met their quality criteria, and only five in total up to 2008.
Personally, I think in the UK we need to improve this situation. We’re mandating online learning platforms in every school in the UK, without there being a robust set of research to prove that it works?

Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction
This conclusion speaks for itself

Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction
Which may result from the approach a teacher takes – do they feel more engaged too, when the learning is mixed?

Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning
I’d suspect this is a factor of students being able to each learn at their own pace, and pause or repeat sections of their learning – something that’s all but impossible in face-to-face learning.

Most of the variations in the way in which different studies implemented online learning did not affect student learning outcomes significantly
I suspect that if we had the data for all e-learning in UK schools we’d see something similar – that the biggest difference in learning outcomes is achieved by a decision to support blended online learning effectively, however that happens. The two factors that did make a difference were the use of blended learning (as opposed to online only) and the amount of time students spent on task.

The effectiveness of online learning approaches appears quite broad across different content and learner types
Although, because the schools research sample was so small, there are few strong conclusions for school-age learning specifically.

Effect sizes were larger for studies in which the online and face-to-face conditions varied in terms of curriculum materials and aspects of instructional approach in addition to the medium of instruction
ie don’t just put your existing course materials onto a website – you need to plan to deliver your course differently

In the US, and I would guess that’s it also true for the UK, online learning—for students and for teachers—is one of the fastest growing trends in educational uses of technology.

The US National Center for Education Statistics (2008) estimated that the number of US school students enrolling in a technology-based distance education course grew by 65 percent in two years between 2003 to 2005, and after some recent research it’s been estimated that more than a million school students took online courses last year.

You can read the full 93-pages of the report on the US Department of Education website (although you may want to re-read your “Dummy’s Guide to Statistical Analysis” before you start!)

It’s also interesting to read the Comments debate on the New York Times website, which started when it reported the findings.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 – in Tony Hart mode

2009-09-01T11:32:00Z

This collection of videos is very clever – as you work your way through it, you’ll see that you eventually end up with some screencasts showing particular features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. But what is riveting on the journey is the way that you navigate your way around the videos – using hand drawn animations and hotspots on each video to give you a route to learn more.

It comes from the team of DeepFat and JamesOne (some of you will have met James at our Windows for Education event) who are part of our evangelism team. They have been exploring the features of Win7 and WS2008 via the medium of art, some YouTube annotations and then some screencast videos. You can start here and then click through to the stuff you're interested in.

I wonder if this has also got potential for revision gateways and other learning resources – basically linking a series of videos together, with some navigation – rather than the conventional channel/menu approach.

Your invite to the UK Launch for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010

2009-08-28T11:42:00Z

UPDATE - FRIDAY 11:30 - THE EVENT IS NOW CURRENTLY FULL - BUT YOU CAN ADD YOURSELF TO THE WAIT LIST.
Apparently we've had well over 1,000 registrations since we announced it. I'd recommend putting yourself on the wait list.
Sorry. I'll work on a list of alternative events/webcasts to attend

From now through to January, it’s going to be a season of launches. And the kick-off event for the whole series is the UK Technical Launch for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, which is going to a big event at Wembley stadium on the 6th October.

The agenda is packed – with a ‘desktop’ and ‘server’ stream (time to make it a team trip?), and we’re also expecting the event to be packed too – with a thousand spaces available.

The theme for the event “The New Efficiency” is something we’ll be talking about more during the year, as it’s something that fits in with the current budget climate in education.

Join us on 6 October in the conference rooms at the spectacular Wembley Stadium to hear from Microsoft's technology specialists on the new efficiency of the server and desktop. We have two tracks of content for you to choose from, one covering Windows 7, and the other covering Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. If you can't watch it all on the day - don't worry, all the content will be available online after the event.

For those who couldn’t make it to the Windows in Education event last week, this is a good alternative. Although it isn’t specifically for education, we had some of the same speakers – James & Gareth – and I know that there will be plenty of things covered which fit into your IT thinking.

If you only do two things before you head off for the Bank Holiday weekend, I’d recommend:

Register for your place (~~before all those other people get back from holiday~~ Too late, they're back. You can now add yourself to the Waitlist for a place)
Add it to your Calendar (to stop anybody inviting you to a dull meeting on that day)

Another take on qualifications – have you thought about the Microsoft IT Academy?

2009-08-27T10:07:00Z

If you’re running the ICT systems in your school, and NOT running the curriculum ICT, then you may want to forward this onto the ICT Co-ordinator, or to the Deputy Head in charge of Curriculum Development. Although it’s got ‘IT’ in the title, the IT Academy is actually all about curriculum development and helping your students/staff to gain commercially valuable qualifications.

Don’t tell the curriculum side, but it’s also a great way to get your school an inclusive MSDNAA and TechNet Plus subscription if you’re having difficulty getting it paid for otherwise!

I’ve spent a few hours in the company of the team who promote the Microsoft IT Academy scheme in the UK. Basically the scheme offers schools the chance to deliver Microsoft’s IT training and qualifications to your students, staff and even your wider community. The qualifications that you can deliver will help your students (or parents in your community) raise their skills to prepare for business roles, or potentially for technical employment as web developers or systems administrators.

The chart on the right (click on it to see the BIG version) shows the routes to the qualifications that students can attain. And because the qualifications are instantly recognisable in the commercial sector – like MCSE qualifications – it is an instant help with preparing for employment.

But this isn’t just about student qualifications – it can also be used to provide training and qualifications for the wider community, and this is exactly how some of the current IT Academies use it – which is either helping to generate a revenue stream, or to increase parental engagement.

Once you’ve signed up to be an IT Academy, the scheme includes:

Free Microsoft eLearning (over 300 courses)
Free Microsoft Software Licences
Massive discounts on Microsoft Certifications and Courseware
Free MSDNAA & TechNet Plus Subscription
Free Microsoft Certified Trainer Membership

Currently about two-thirds of UK colleges and universities offer the IT Academy programme, and hundreds of schools. So it could be that your school is already doing it (in which case you might have some of these benefits already).

But the key question I asked the IT Academy team was about cost. Because although they describe everything above as ‘free’, I’d assumed that the annual fee would be prohibitive. The actual answer is that it costs less than £600 for a school to become an IT Academy, and (thanks to the agreement with the SSAT earlier this year), it’s cheaper for Specialist Schools. Especially if you factor in the cost of an MSDNAA & TechNet Plus subscription, this is a great deal.

Although there’s tons of information about IT Academy on our education website, I think there’s probably too much info there, so instead of reading it all I’d recommend giving the Prodigy team a call, or dropping them an email, to get them to explain it to you in plain English. (Just like buying software, IT Academy works the same way – you get access through our partners, rather than directly from us. In this case the partner is Prodigy)

Email the IT Academy team or call them on 0845 3991553.

Any lingering doubts? Take a look at the two case studies from current IT Academies - President Kennedy School and Sawtry Community College

How they sell a 'laptop for students' scheme Down Under

2009-08-26T18:47:23Z

In Australia, the New South Wales government have committed to provide 200,000 students with their own laptop – and over the next few months they’ll be rolling them out at 5,000 a week. You can read more about their approach on ZDNet. And soon every Year 9 to 12 student in NSW public schools will have a wireless laptop – with the Year 9 students getting theirs by the end of the year.

Obviously it’s a big-budget programme, and I was fascinated to see that the Education Department in NSW have created an appropriate big-budget video to talk about the programme. It appears to be designed to sell the idea to students, and just as importantly to parents, to ensure it gets off to a good start.

Watch the video

And in a major achievement, they’ve managed to avoid too much technical or pedagogical language – making it seem much more real.

I noticed too that there’s a NSW Public Schools channel on YouTube. Not just for technology, but for all the things they want to talk to parents about – such as cyber-safety, a parent’s guide to Facebook etc. And every parent of primary age children will understand why their Head Lice video is second in the “most watched” stakes.

When was the last time you checked out Microsoft Downloads?

2009-08-26T11:06:00Z

Mark A’Bear is one of our resident ‘amateur’ geeks in the education team. His job isn’t to be a full-time geek, as he’s our Education Partner Manager (and from my days of working at Microsoft partners, I know he’s pretty good at that). But he’s also a closet geek, and he has many moments of geekery – like when he talks about his home network, and his Home Server. Home Server! That’s geekery.

Within the team, he sits somewhere in the middle of the geek-tree, with me waaay down towards the bottom, and Ben Nunney sitting in the top of the tree. (Ben’s our specialist for Live@edu, as you’ll see on his blog).

Mark also blogs for UK Education Partners, but he keeps it low profile, which means I can occasionally steal content from his blog posts. (If you are a UK Education Partner, and you want to know where Mark’s blog is, email him). This week, I read one of his blog posts and thought it would be useful for network managers up and down the country (who, let’s face it, are the only people in school and reading this blog this month).

So, in Mark’s own words:

I subscribe to a weekly notification of top new downloads from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads. The reason I do this is to keep track of all the great new content that appears on a daily basis. To encourage partners to regularly check out these resources I’ve listed a few that have appeared in the last week or so:

1. Windows Live Essentials – the suite of applications such as Messenger, Live Writer, Photo Gallery and Movie Maker have all been updated – and so has the Windows Live Toolbar

2. Online Services Guide – a comprehensive guide to Microsoft’s online services including product offerings and licensing models

3. Geneva Beta 2 – this is going to be an important technology for delivering user access and single sign-on solutions

4. Windows Automated Installation Kit (Beta 2) - The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is a set of tools and documentation that support the configuration and deployment of Microsoft® Windows® operating systems.. By using Windows AIK, you can automate Windows installations, capture Windows images with ImageX, configure and modify images using Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management (DISM), create Windows PE images, and migrate user profiles and data with the User State Migration Tool (USMT).

5. Windows Azure Platform Training Kit - The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content including hands-on labs, presentations, and demos that are designed to help you learn how to use the Windows Azure platform.

The Geneva identity beta is potentially quite wide-reaching – as Becta reported on their ‘Emerging Technologies for Learning’ site in May.

Where are all the freebies now the budget's cut

2009-08-25T17:55:22Z

I received this query by email from an international colleague:

“I heard that MS UK Education team created a DVD with all free products/links to Microsoft web sites that are potentially beneficial to teachers and students, and that you shared this with your education audiences. Can you point me to the folder where the DVD content is?”

And after I answered it, I then thought I should share the answer, because if somebody in Latvia is interested, it’ll probably be interesting to somebody in Luton too, given the state of education ICT budgets.

Yes, we did create a DVD for BETT two years ago, but that will be quite out of date. However, you can still get to the content at:
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/curriculum_materials_for_teachers/default.mspx

For more up-to-date information, there are some key web pages listing free resources

On the UK Education site we have a “free stuff” page:
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/schools/software-licensing/free-stuff.aspx

In addition, I have used a “free stuff” tag on the blog whenever I’ve blogged about free stuff. So this link will show every article which promotes free stuff:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/tags/free+stuff/default.aspx

Two specifically useful posts are the ones which contain an education focused list of free downloads etc:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2008/05/27/what-have-microsoft-ever-done-for-us.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ukschools/archive/2008/05/28/but-apart-from-that-what-have-microsoft-done-for-us.aspx

And finally, there’s a blog post from the BlogMS team that has a fuller list of free Microsoft stuff. This isn’t education specific, and mainly useful for technical people rather than educationalists, but it’s a good list:
http://blogs.technet.com/blogms/pages/microsoft-free-software.aspx

Does that help anybody else too?

Microsoft SQL Server Data Management Conference – Sept 29 in London

2009-08-25T13:35:22Z

This is probably something for local authorities, who’re running big datacentres, but there are likely to be readers of this blog that are either in that role, or are running big datacentres in their school. And given the size of some of the transactional databases in schools today, this might apply to you…

I’ve just heard that the first ever Microsoft SQL Server Data Management Conference is being held in London on Tuesday September 29^th. Although it is not an education-specific event, there is a good agenda with excellent presenters that could be of use to you if you are running complex databases. It’s obviously useful for IT managers, and information managers, database administrators and architects will find real value to add to their knowledge of how to get the most out of SQL Server.

The agenda focuses on some of the major data management challenges that we know SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition is more than ready to handle: high-performance and scalability, robust security, virtualisation, data warehousing and business intelligence.

The cast of presenters includes:

Donald Farmer & Mark Linton from the SQL Server Development team

Mark Whitehorn, independent consultant and author on databases and data management

An array of Microsoft technical expertise on SQL Server, data management and Business Intelligence

The agenda includes specific topics on using SQL Server in heterogeneous data environments (i.e. Oracle) and SQL Server as the data platform of choice for business critical applications such as SAP. It also includes a closer-look at the SQL Server 2008 R2 functionality in a presentation by Donald Farmer from the SQL Server development team.

The full agenda, which includes a choice of tracks for the afternoon, is available on the website

The event is free, and given that effective database management is top of the list for many organisations, you may want to book your place as soon as you can.

You can book directly on the Microsoft events website, or register by phone on 0870 166 6670 (quoting event reference 4125)