Visual Studio Express in Labs

[CAM]

I help run the computer club on Friday lunchtimes in my school and one of the kids mentioned he wanted to go further beyond Scratch. Since I have a basic knowledge of a few programming languages I figured I'd see what I can do to teach him.

 

Does anyone know if I can install the free Visual Studio Express on lab computers in a school or do we need to buy a full licence?

[Norphy]

You can install the Express edition if you want. You can also install full fat VS for free using Dreamspark iirc as long as it's used for educational purposes (teaching and learning) only. I'm sure that @jamesbmarshall can give you specifics.

[peterp]

Seconded for Dreamspark. Very cheap, and the students can then download and have visual studio pro, server os's and sql server at home too.

[jamesbmarshall]

Definitely look at DreamSpark!

 

https://www.dreamspark.com/Institution/Subscription.aspx

Edited June 17, 2014 by jamesbmarshall

[spd_demon]

How are you guys getting around the trial / ms login issue? The suite will need to be reactivated every 90 days and we just can support that in our environment.

 

[peterp]

Well, that is a trial of Visual Studio Express.

As far as I am aware, this cannot be used for teaching. It is a free version for learners.

You will need an academic licence of some sort.

 

We used to add Visual Studio Pro and MSDN to our EES agreement. Now we signed up to dreamspark, then you use Visual Studio Pro, not express.

[spd_demon]

It's actually the same thing. If you go to the "Labs" installers (in Dreamspark), it gives you the same version. If you login to it, it changes from trial to activated. But only for 90 days. Additional logins are required to keep it "activated". Says trial but it is misleading. We too are now using Visual Studio Pro 2012 as that is the last version to support a product key.