Are you a network manager or technician working in a Windows based environment?

In that case, we need you!

Microsoft in conjunction with EduGeek are working on a whitepaper and need the input from experienced educational technical staff.

This is your chance to make a difference and help promote best practice in schools throughout the UK and for this we are asking for 10 EduGeek members to come on board and assist in the production of this paper.

All we ask from you is that you are able to spare the time to add your input to this.

The time we currently estimate it will take up from you is as follows:

1. Attend a 20-30 minute briefing call
   
2. Read a 30-40 page draft document – taking notes for later discussion
   
3. Attend meeting at Microsoft HQ TVP Reading to provide feedback expected timings to be…
   
4. 10-10:30 start
   
5. 12:30 lunch
   
6. 2:30ish finish
   

If you want to help out with this, please contact us via apply@edugeek.net - Currently all slots are full

Emailing does not commit you to attend as we will email you specific details once we have confirmed them. Just include your name, the school you, your role are at and when would be best to meet up and also take a group call (or worst times this month for you).

*Please note that you must be able to attend the meeting in Reading. We know this may exclude many of you who live further away and want to help, but it is very important you are a part of the process every step of the way.

For those of you who are not aware, Stone Computers are currently doing a rather funky roadshow in a rather big truck up and down England and Wales showing off their newest technologies and devices including:

• Brand new solutions from Stone including Unity, Assist, Connected, Integrum and Serverless
• Innovative Microsoft solutions including Azure, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility Suite
• The latest and greatest Windows 10 devices from the likes of Acer, Microsoft, Samsung, Stone and Toshiba – including the brand new Surface Book and Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro S
• Range of Large Format Displays from the likes of CTOUCH, Promethean, Iiyama and Sharp

I popped over to Leeds yesterday to see them at Elland Road stadium and was greeted by Daley Robinson who, whilst giving me a tour of their products, told me that they had decided to abandon the idea of hosting their annual event in stuffy rooms this year to make it more casual and personal to better suit network managers, techies and teachers who wanted simply to drop in for a quick chat and look at what was on offer rather than sit through presentations.

And it seemed to be working very well indeed in their huge trailer which has been kitted out in a rock theme - inc. music - throughout.

If you are a Stone customer or simply after a few ideas for future purchasing/planning you can drop in at one of the following locations below and pick their brains and have a cup of the rather nice coffee they had on offer

For more information and tickets you can find out where the nearest place to see them here: Stone Group Events | Eventbrite

There is also a map here: https://www.stonegroup.co.uk/tour/

Tour dates:

06 Apr – Sheffield

08 Apr – Stafford

12 Apr – Newcastle

14 Apr – Harrogate

14 Apr – Rochdale

19 Apr – Newark

20 Apr – Derby

21 Apr – Coventry

25 Apr – Shrewsbury

26 Apr – Walsall

27 Apr - Gloucester

28 Apr – Bristol

03 May – Swansea

04 May – Cardiff

06 May – Exeter

09 May – Norwich

11 May – Ipswich

12 May – Barnet

16 May – Uxbridge

17 may – Dagenham

18 May – Croydon

19 May - Tunbridge Wells

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2016/02/10/on-net-framework-4-6-1-and-exchange-compatibility.aspx

On .NET Framework 4.6.1 and Exchange compatibility

We wanted to post a quick note to call out that since yesterday, the .NET Framework 4.6.1 has been made a recommended update on WU (Windows Update).

 

As we have already stated in the Exchange Supportability Matrix, at this time, this version of .NET framework is not supported by Exchange. In fact, we know of some issues if it is installed.

 

We are working with the .NET team to ensure that Exchange customers have a smooth transition to .NET Framework 4.6.1, but in the meantime, delay this particular .NET update on your Exchange servers (information on how this can be accomplished can be found in the KB article 3133990, How to temporarily block the installation of the .NET Framework 4.6.1).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\WU]
"BlockNetFramework461"=dword:00000001

In January, we renewed the MoU under a slightly different name – the ‘Education Cloud Transition Agreement’ – the reason for the change of name is to indicate that this is a transition agreement, to allow UK Schools the time to move to Cloud Services e.g. Office 365 Education and take advantage of the inherent licensing and total cost of ownership savings which public cloud services can provide.

To be clear, the Education Cloud Transition Agreement is not a new licensing agreement, and we have no plans to phase out EES/OVS-ES.

Under the new agreement, Microsoft have agreed with DfE to extend the previous (UK only) Volume Licensing discounts until July 2018 for all existing customers, at which point the agreement expires.

Pricing is now equivalent for 1-year or 3-year term OVS-ES and EES agreements.

Office 365 Education continues to be free of charge for Education customers, and a move to Cloud services can save up to 60% on Microsoft licensing costs, on top of which schools can realise the savings they would make on Server hardware, maintenance, power, cooling etc etc.

Furthermore, Microsoft also now offers free Office 365 Pro Plus (full client downloads) to all Staff and Students on all of their devices at Schools licensed for Office on an OVS-ES.

To answer the individual queries:

@Gibson335

Q: Will EES (or a similar subscription) continue?

A: Yes, absolutely – OVS-ES/EES is our main licensing program for Education, and this is where Microsoft invests heavily for example;

· free Office for students and staff at eligible institutions,

· free Intune for Students at schools who have licensed EMS/Intune for Staff

· free Windows 10 Education for Students etc etc.

No plans to discontinue EES/OVS-ES.

Q: If so, and it's not as heavily discounted, by what percentage is it likely to increase?

A: Customers renewing their OVS-ES agreement will be able to continue to take advantage of UK specific pricing and discounts until July 2018 at which point the Education Cloud Transition Agreement expires.

A UK customer with an OVS-ES agreement which expires at any point between now and July 2018 can renew for 1 year or 3 years with UK discounted prices.

After July 2018 (should there not be a replacement agreement with DfE) Academic pricing and discounts would still be in effect – i.e. they would not pay Commercial or Government rates.

Q: Will any items be unavailable under a new subscription which are currently available in EES?

A: No plans (that I’m aware of) for a new Academic subscription licensing program, EES and OVS-ES are our ‘hero’ licensing programs for Education.

Q: Will any further subscriptions be tied in with agreeing to a cloud-based solution?

A: No, in fact Office 365 Education is available for free for all UK Education customers without the requirement of a volume licensing agreement.

Q: If current 3-year agreement expires in July 2018 or later, will MS allow that agreement to lapse early to allow us to sign up for a new 3-year deal? (Unlikely I know, but may as well ask if there's room).

A: No, this would not be possible. However, schools can start to make costs savings between now and July 2018 by migrating to Cloud services.

@Gshaw

Q: For FE & HE customers what will our pricing look like after June 2016, will on-site infrastructure licenses i.e. Windows Server, SQL Server etc. become considerably more expensive i.e. >20% cost increase.

A: Microsoft is working with UK Government to continue to provide the same EES pricing terms detailed above for HE and FE customers. More news on this in the next few weeks

Q: After 2018 will EES effectively become a paid subscription to Office 365 Education with no other licenses available for on-premises servers?

A: No, we intend to continue to provide on premises licensing for Microsoft technology through the EES/OVS-ES agreement, with the option to add Cloud Services e.g. Office 365, Azure through the same agreement.

Q: If our on-premises licenses get removed what alternative are MS going to provide e.g. in Azure considering many organisations have critical services running on Microsoft server platforms e.g. MIS systems that don't have a suitable cloud equivalent?

A: No plans to remove on premises licensing from the EES/OVS-ES agreement.

Azure is a cost effective alternative to on-premises solutions. Microsoft has just announced that customers with Windows Server licenses (with Software Assurance) are permitted to move their server instances into Azure and only pay for the Compute time i.e. buy on-premises Windows Server licenses, and you can deploy into the Cloud.

@Kevin_Lane

Q: Have they got plans to remove software assurance.

A: No plans to remove Software Assurance

Q: Working at home rights is anything going to be changing with this

A: Not that I’m aware of. In terms of Office, Microsoft now provides Office 365 Pro Plus for free to all Staff (and Students) at Schools who license Office on their EES/OVS-ES agreement – this allows Schools to provide Office to staff for 5 x PC/MAC + 5 x iPad/Android devices so is actually a better option than WAH. https://products.office.com/en-GB/student?tab=teachers&ms.officeurl=teachers

@Edu-IT

Q: Will Office 365 become chargeable?

A: We have no plans to charge for Office 365 Education – in fact Microsoft has recently made additional functionality free to Education customers e.g. unlimited archiving, legal hold, encryption etc.

@Jmak

Q: Please can you clarify when the price changes will impact existing subscribers?

A: The new Education Cloud Transition Agreement MoU expires 30th June 2018, however up to that date, customers can lock in current pricing for up to 3 years

Q: I might quite fancy moving my infrastructure into the cloud. Can you provide a price list please?

A: All pricing is set by our partners, however we can certainly help estimate the costs of a migration to Public Cloud Services such as Azure

@Jawloms

Q: If it's a push to more stuff being cloud based, what requirements do they put on the broadband connection?

A: This all depends on the number of users, data etc etc. That being said, we do provide planners, calculators and tools here https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Network-planning-and-performance-tuning-for-Office-365-e5f1228c-da3c-4654-bf16-d163daee8848?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Many thanks to Microsoft Education UK for helping out with your queries.

Now, if you want to grab yourself a pair of these (see pics below) amazing pieces of foot art all you have to do is email @VeryPC – who have very kindly offered to handle the shipping for us - at edusocks@very-pc.co.uk with the following information:

• Your name
  
• Address
  
• Sock size, selected from the following 2 options:
  

Small: equivalent to UK size 8 and less

Large: anything larger than above

Please note, this is a strictly limited edition run as there are only 350 pairs to giveaway and when they're gone, they're gone

Congratulations to the winners of the RM Neon Edugeek Scripting competition. RM Education joined with EduGeek to launch a challenge to see who is the King or Queen of Scripts. The competition celebrates the release of RM Neon, an exciting new cloud solution from RM Education, designed to revolutionise the way that you manage your school’s IT.

Overall Winner:

@Ephelyon

Script:

Script that enables schools to import class/set lists from SIMS into Exchange as distribution groups.

Prize:

PlayStation 4 and a free year’s subscription to RM Neon

Runner Up:

@Nephilim

Prize:

Minecraft prizes

Revealed for the first time at this year’s BETT conference, RM Neon was created to address the needs and challenges facing IT managers in schools of all sizes, helping them to deal with the rapidly changing technology that is integrated into teaching and learning on a daily basis.

RM Neon empowers IT managers and their team to view and manage a school’s entire infrastructure network from a range of different devices, all through one interface. RM Neon also features flight decks, a script library and a support community giving IT managers instant access to technical expertise and knowledge.

Through the Control Centre, IT managers can make real-time decisions wherever they are based, meaning that any issues can be quickly identified and rectified before they become a costly and time-consuming disruption. The flightdeck graphs and tables can be customised to allow staff to manage day-to-day operations while identifying new trends, and the flight decks can be customised to share with the school’s wider management team to enable greater collaboration and effective planning for the future.

Bron Musgrave, Product Manager at RM Education, said: “Through the research we carried out, we found that IT managers had highlighted a need to create their own customised flight decks so it’s easier for them and other staff to access key performance data and the metrics that are important to them.

“In addition to the benefits RM Neon offers to IT staff, it has hugely positive implications for the entire school. Through RM Neon, IT managers can share common network tasks, enabling teachers and support staff to change passwords and do other routine tasks.“Not only does this increase efficiency across the whole school’s operations but it frees up schools’ IT staff to dedicate their expertise to more complex scenarios.”

RM Neon also incorporates a local PowerShell script library which helps to increase productivity by allowing the network team to create and edit management tools to run jobs that can be simply scheduled by their staff at the touch of a button. These scripts can then be shared with the wider RM Neon Community, where IT staff can access and exchange knowledge and best practice techniques and collaborate with other professionals across the UK.

For more about RM Neon, visit www.rmneon.com

BETT 2014 - 5 reasons Neon flyer.pdf

Product Info PDF

Dear EduGeekers,

As you are probably already aware because of our stylish green ‘homepage takeover’ theme on EduGeek this week, VeryPC have just turned 10 years old.

Looking both back and forward at this landmark anniversary, we want to extend our thanks for all the support, feedback and involvement from our old, new and future customers, friends, colleagues and foes who have helped us build what I believe is a fantastic company and a great place to work.

We believe here at VeryPC that building a successful business is based on knowledge, honesty and providing the best person to person service we are capable of. Being part of EduGeek has helped us improve on and demonstrate these principles. About a year and a half ago we became an EduGeek sponsor, and as a company we made a real effort to connect through competitions, freebies, deals, a bit of tech advice, general discussion and just plain having fun. You welcomed us and our ways warmly into the community, and for that we are truly grateful. Being part of EduGeek enables us to become a better supplier of ICT hardware and services by using this fantastic platform to engage with and learn from our customers and target market.

It is no understatement to say that EduGeek has been an important part of our company’s success whilst we’ve been a sponsor here. You have really helped us achieve remarkable growth. Because of this growth, we recently achieved Intel Platinum partner status and are now one of the top 20 Intel suppliers in the UK.

Our competitions on EduGeek have been a really fun way to promote VeryPC. Our latest competition had more entrants than ever before; it reached further and included anyone who wanted to enter via our website. I want to tell you, right now, that as a way of showing our gratitude to The EduGeek community, we will continue to have special EduGeek competitions and promotions exclusively for you guys.

So I just want to say thank you EduGeek and thank you EduGeekers. We love it here. You are awesome, and we’ll be happy spending the next 10 years with you.

Andy Hopton @verypc_andy

Managing Director

VeryPC

RM Education has joined with EduGeek to launch a challenge to see who is the King or Queen of Scripts. The competition coincides with the launch of RM Neon, a new cloud solution from RM Education, designed to revolutionise the way that you manage your school’s IT.

Take the challenge for a chance to win a PS4!

Here is your chance to show off your scripting skills or have a go for the first time. There are 4 categories that you can enter a script for. You can submit as many scripts as you like into as many categories as you want.

The competition closes on 31^st March and winners will be announced on 15^th April. Qualifying scripts should be written or wrapped in PowerShell version 3.0. The winner in each category will win a Minecraft-themed gift and a year’s subscription of RM Neon. An overall winner will be chosen and they will also win a Sony PlayStation 4.

The Categories:

• Can’t do without it - this is the category for your life-savers and your time-savers – what are the scripts you’d be lost without?
  
• Because I can – your fun stuff, like the script you used to celebrate Star Wars day by changing the backgrounds of your team’s screens last year
  
• Who done it? – develop a script or scripts to report ‘which logged in user(s) used which app(s) on what device(s), and when.’
  
• School hero – this is open to students in full time education. Write a script that could be deployed to improve e-safety in your school/college
  

How do I enter?

1. Create a script in Powershell 3.0 (or at least Powershell wrapped for wsh/vbs scripters) that fits into at least one of the categories above
   
2. Zip the script using your EduGeek username as the file name (e.g. JoeBloggs.zip)
   
3. Read the full terms at this page
   
4. Create a new thread in RM Neon Scripting Challenge submission forum and attach your file along with a few details. Please include your real name, sex, age and region.
   

Good Luck.

If you have any questions please PM the account RM-Neon, ask a question in the scripts submission area (only you and our staff have acess) or email rmneon@rm.com.

What is RM Neon?

RM Neon was born out of some research that RM Education undertook to understand how they could help you manage the increasing number of diverse systems and technology that you face today. It is a cloud-hosted solution that enables you to view and manage your IT systems, software, devices and users all through one interface. With RM Neon you can:

• Manage a multitude of different IT systems
  
• Monitor and compare data from many systems
  
• Better manage all of your day to day IT tasks
  
• Access scripts from RM Education and the RM Neon Community
  
• Get expert advice as and when you need it from other RM Neon users
  

This exciting new innovation was launched at BETT and will be released on 15^th April. If you want to find out more or register to be kept informed, visit www.rmneon.com.

Hi

My name is Kent Nolan and I work in Tech Support for PaperCut. A while back I had the idea of running a competition that involved people coming up with the most creative/fun script they can make. We’ve seen some funny scripts in the past that have come through support, mainly the one about the IT guy who forwarded every fifth print job through to the principal's office, resulting in concert tickets being snapped up by a lucky assistant.

 

It is scripts like that one that lead me to this idea; how geeky can you make these scripts? There are plenty of people who are better at JavaScript than I am - in fact my example script is pretty lazy, have a look at the code. Chris Dance (one of the PaperCut founders) has written a script too and that one is pretty impressive.

 

And if you win, first place is a Raspberry Pi with all the trimmings, second and third place get a Raspberry Pi unit too. If your script doesn’t win a Raspberry Pi but it’s really geeky, we have some ThinkGeek vouchers to give away.

 

If you want to play, check out our competition page and when you’re ready, you can enter by either:

 

• Posting your script as an attachment below.
  
• Linking us to your blog.
  
• Creating a GitHub branch for it (also post a link below).
  
• Or by emailing it to the following address: edugeekcomp@papercut.com
  

 

If you have any questions, let me know, I’ll be lurking around in this and other threads.

 

Good luck, have fun.

Help your students develop the creative skills they need for today’s technology-driven economy, including digital art, animation and coding. Simply submit their digital designs to enter the competition and your school could win £10,000!

Entries should be based on visual interpretations of the themes ‘How Technology Helps Me Learn’ or ‘The Future Classroom’. Pupils can create art and animations using smartphones, tablets or computers and their entries will help form Britain’s largest virtual children’s art exhibition.

Support from the Education Community

The competition boasts a prestigious panel of judges, including former Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Estelle Morris, who is a patron of the e-Learning Foundation. Additional judges include film producer and Coderdojo ambassador Lord David Puttnam and Stephen Heppell, leading online education expert and Professor of New Media Environments, Bournemouth University. Other key supporters of the initiative include Xirrus Platinum Reseller Partner Academia as well as Autodesk and Coderdojo.

"We all know technology is an important part of teaching and education, but the most exciting thing about it is when we see technology working seamlessly with teachers' and pupils' creativity. There are some amazing talents waiting to be discovered through the Art of Wi-Fi and I can't wait to see the entries starting to come in," said Estelle Morris

Stephen adds: "No one really knows how good our children can be, but when we surprise them with great challenges, they astonish us right back with their ingenuity. This is such an exciting competition."

Building skills for the digital workplace

"The "Art-of-Wi-Fi" competition provides a fantastic opportunity to bring important digital skills into the classroom," said CoderDojo ambassador Lord David Puttnam. "The failure to emphasise the importance of programming skills within the core curriculum puts at risk the future job prospects of a whole generation of bright young students, many of whom will find themselves disadvantaged in the competition for the most desirable, and well paid areas of employment."

"Technology plays an important role in our lives and should be incorporated into the education of our children, to develop the skills they will need in today’s digital workplace," agrees Matthew Bell, UK Secondary Education Manager at Autodesk , a 3D design company that provides free software to students. "This competition will inspire students to use new technologies at school and outside the classroom," he added.

Getting Involved

The competition will also be supported by a roadshow starting in December, where Xirrus will visit schools to help students learn about digital art and coding. The winners will be announced at an awards evening to be held at the Saatchi Gallery in London in October 2013, where the winning pieces will be displayed.

* Find out more and register for the Art-of-Wifi here *

Learn more about Xirrus products:

• Wireless solutions for High Density wireless
  
• Wireless solutions for Primary/Secondary Schools
  
• Whitepaper: iPads on Campus - Addressing the challenges of tablets
  

.

One of the frequent changes you see is around the choice of domain name a school will use. Traditionally, schools would use a domain based on their name, the geographical Local Authority they are in (but not always part of) and a tail of .sch.uk to identify them as a UK School, eg blogs-pri.dookland.sch.uk. This domain is allocated to them by Nominet, is linked to the DfE number of the school and belongs to the school.

Sometimes you will hear that the domain belongs to the Council / LA and this is not altogether true. The domain belongs to the school, but might be controlled by the LA as part of delivery of services (eg over an RBC) or has previously been managed by the LA on behalf of the school, via the LA tech support team. Schools can ask for the domain to be transferred to a Registrar of their choice and can have someone manage the associated DNS.

Some schools chose not to use their .sch.uk domain. This could be because of the above myth meant they registered a new domain when leaving an LA service, they might not like the long URL or email addresses it can give, it can be down to a marketing / PR choice or it might simply be personal preference of a member of Senior Leadership / technical staff.

There are a few important things to remember about your choice of domain though. Firstly, the ends of domains, that is to say the general Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .com, .net, or country specific / country-code TLDs (ccTLDs) such as .co.uk and .org.uk, have a specific purpose and identify the type of business or organisation you are. These domains are registered for a period of time and have to be re-registered on a regular basis. They are open to dispute by other groups of the same name and you can even find conflicting domains ([schoolname].com and [schoolname].org) being used by different schools or even one by a school and the other by a commercial comany with a good claim to both domains.

Some companies and organisations will try to capture all related domains so that this problem is dealt with, but schools often forget that they have the .sch.uk domain which they have left fallen by the wayside.

Your .sch.uk does not lapse, it is free, it can only be controlled by your school, it cannot be grabbed by a former student with an axe to grind and it doesn’t have to be your principle domain.

At the moment I recommend schools, which are choosing a different domain as their principle domain, to keep hold of their .sch.uk domain. If you are swapping email services then this extra domain can usually sit in the background so emails to the old addresses still reach their original recipients. Websites can have a CNAME record to redirect your .sch.uk domain to your preferred domain.

Generally, there is no excuse for not keeping the old domain other than wanting to have a ‘clean break’ or you make use of services which do not allow for other options. If this is the case then you need to consider the impact of lost emails, irregular communications which might get missed, etc.

A few hours of work now can save you days of trouble later on. Go on, be proud to let people know you are still a school ... that is what .sch.uk is there for after all.

.

Over the next few weeks I am looking at each point to tease apart the ideals behind them, to try to see both sides of the discussion and to share examples about who others have work on the issues. A lot of this will be from a UK-centric position but hopefully it will provide some insight into the similarities and differences with our friends in other countries.

Today’s point is about Decision Making

The technology function of your school organization exists to serve the educational function, not the other way around. Corollary: your technology coordinator works for you, not vice versa.

To use technology you should have a reason, understand what you want it to do and also understand how you can measure whether it is achieving it or not.

Oh dear … this sound like we are going to talk about planning again.

In the past a number of choices about technology have been a little chicken and egg with what has been used. There have been pilot projects or innovative schools who have gone out and done something interesting with new or emerging technology. The technology has inspired them to try something new and when it has worked you then find research to look into it on a wider scale. This is where folk like Becta came in … as well as groups such as the Association of Learning Technology, NAACE, Besa and so on. They took the research to the next level, either as partnerships with schools, those doing the research, with suppliers or as the controller of funds (or any combination) … resulting in ring-fenced funds to allow schools and LAs to implement a given technology.

So the idea that the technology should be based on your choice has not always been the way it should have been, but it was usually instigated based on good practice and research. How will it was implemented is then debatable and how much that removed control and decision making from individual schools is another point some will raise.

But where does the technology coordinator (NM, ICT Coordinator, LA Technology Manager) sit in this? To some extent they might have chosen the specific technology based on available funds, with a certain set of features, but the pedagogy behind it all should be pretty agnostic and be able to use whatever is provided. An IWB is an IWB … and whilst specific software might have benefits over other solutions the idea of it being used by learners is common … it is just the method which might change. The arguing point against this is around wireless tablets connected to projectors (removing the requirement for the learner to come to the front of the class … an important feature in some schools with learners who do not engage when in front of their peers) or the ‘add-on’ tools such as voting systems (actually a separate technology in their own right but can work well with IWBs).

The other arguing point around this is about policies and strategies. I hate to say it but there is a little thing called the law. In fact it is the Law. It deserves the capitalisation. And this varies across the world. There are many things which educationally would seem to be perfect decisions but are then put on hold or stopped because the NM / Tech coord / etc says no. This is not done lightly, nor is it done without consideration for what benefits will be lost and it is usually done with some attempt at compromise. Areas where there will be clashes ranging from safeguarding, copyright and intellectual property, data protection and information management, funding and classroom management. A good NM will educate you about these (if you are not up to speed) and will work with you to get the most out of tech … but they are frequently the gatekeeper as to what tech you can use because they have the knowledge about the bits which will cause problems. In the same way you have people to tell you not to try blowing up the science lab (in spite of how much fun it was when we were at school to see people do experiments that blackened the ceiling), or have people who tell you not to use certain classrooms due to them falling down … you have people who will say not to use certain technologies in certain ways. I’ll discuss the legal side of this in a later post … but just try to believe that a good NM is talking these into account and advising Senior Leaders, classroom teachers, office staff, parents, learners, local community and the random people who ring up the school because of things you post on the internet.

Yes, the Technology Coordinator works for you, but part of that job is choosing or helping to choose appropriate technology and keeping you safe. Don’t give them a job and then tell them they can’t do it!

On the other side, your NM should not keep things as a dark art and be the only person making choices. Any choices made should be clearly explained and, as per the last blog post, show where they are held accountable. Likewise the choice of technology should not force you down a particular educational route, but it can be an inspiration for doing something different. Be aware of the differences and look at the early adopters to see what they did and what worked / failed.

(originally posted at http://www.grumbledook.org/2012/08/28/internet-safety-talking-point-2/)

Over the next few weeks I am looking at each point to tease apart the ideals behind them, to try to see both sides of the discussion and to share examples about who others have work on the issues. A lot of this will be from a UK-centric position but hopefully it will provide some insight into the similarities and differences with our friends in other countries.

Today’s point is about responsibility and accountability.

Even though they may use fancy terms and know more than you do about their domain, you never would allow your business manager or special education coordinator to operate without oversight. So stop doing so with your technology coordinator.

This raises an important point. With great power comes great responsibility, and there is a group in schools who have a lot of power. Whatever you might think of your Network Manager or Technician, of your LA Support Manager or even the Academy Technical Director (I will generically use the term NM to cover these and similar positions), how they have gained power / ownership / responsibility / control will be so varied it would take several posts to pinpoint which applies to your case. We would also end up talking about stereotypes and pigeon-holing people.

In reality it is rarely for it to be one reason as to why a single person might be making major decisions which affect a wide range of people, and it would be wrong to always assume malice, arrogance, superiority complexes on their part. It would also be wrong to assume the ignorance of senior managers in schools, apathy of staff, poor funding and poor communication. However, I am sure all of the above would sound familiar to many.

Instead, let us look at the idea of responsibility and accountability.

Yes, the NM is likely to be the expert in the field as to what technology can work, how it can work, how to support it and so on, but the requirements which set out what technology is needed should not be set out by a single person, but by a group of stakeholders working out what is best for the school (or schools if part of a larger group). This involves planning, communication, compromises, compliance (with laws, local and school policies, etc) and it will require targets / outcomes. This is where the oversight and accountability comes in … and it doesn’t just apply to the NM. It is needed … and should be in place.

And this is where we hit a number of problems.

Firstly you might be in a school where there is no communication, planning, team-working, etc and so someone has to effectively be a visionary, trying to guess what is needed or to lead on the choice of technology, almost in a single-minded way as nothing would happen without this. This can effectively place all the power and control with a single person with no oversight. This is not specifically their fault, and Scott’s point, in my eyes, appear to be a shout out to Senior Leaders in schools to wake up, stop relying on a single person and to make it more of a team effort … not a call to snatch back power from someone else.

Within the UK there is a standard for IT Support (based on industry standards) called FITS. This clearly sets out how the NM, Senior Leaders and other stakeholders can establish the targets, hold people accountable for delivering on projects / work and set out the standards by which systems will work, how changes will be decided and managed, how choices of technology can be made and how this can be measured against the desired impact.

I will follow this up by looking at each point (one a day perhaps) to strip it down and look at both sides of the point.

Please remember that these are talking points and will bring forward a variety of views, depending on personal experience.

—————–

For Leadership Day 2012, I thought I would gather in one place many of the talking points that I use with principals and superintendents about Internet safety…

1. Even though they may use fancy terms and know more than you do about their domain, you never would allow your business manager or special education coordinator to operate without oversight. So stop doing so with your technology coordinator.
   
2. The technology function of your school organization exists to serve the educational function, not the other way around. Corollary: your technology coordinator works for you, not vice versa.
   
3. Mobile phones, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, blogs, Wikispaces, Google, and whatever other technologies you’re blocking are not inherently evil. Stop demonizing them and focus on people’s behavior, not the tools, particularly when it comes to making policy.
   
4. You don’t need special policies for specific tools. Just check that the policies you have are inclusive of electronic communication channels and then enforce the policies you already have on bullying, cheating, sexual harassment, inappropriate communication, illicit behavior, etc.
   
5. Why are you penalizing the 95% for the 5%? You don’t do this in other areas of discipline at school. Even though you know some students will use their voices or bodies inappropriately in school, you don’t ban everyone from speaking or moving. You know some students may show up drunk to the prom, yet you don’t cancel the prom because of a few rule breakers. Instead, you assume that most students will act appropriately most of the time and then you enforce reasonable expectations and policies for the occasional few that don’t. To use a historical analogy, it’s the difference between DUI-style policies and flat-out Prohibition (which, if you recall, failed miserably). Just as you don’t put entire schools on lockdown every time there’s a fight in the cafeteria, you need to stop penalizing entire student bodies because of statistically-infrequent, worst-case scenarios.
   
6. You never can promise 100% safety. For instance, you never would promise a parent that her child would never, ever be in a fight at school. So quit trying to guarantee 100% safety when it comes to technology. Provide reasonable supervision, implement reasonable procedures and policies, and move on.
   
7. The ‘online predators will prey on your schoolchildren’ argument is a false bogeyman, a scare tactic that is fed to us by the media, politicians, law enforcement, and computer security vendors. The number of reported incidents in the news of this occurring is zero.
   
8. Federal laws do not require your draconian filtering. You can’t point the finger somewhere else. You have to own it yourself.
   
9. Students and teachers rise to the level of the expectations that you have for them. If you expect the worst, that’s what you’ll get.
   
10. Schools that ‘loosen up’ with students and teachers find that they have no more problems than they did before. And, often, they have fewer problems because folks aren’t trying to get around the restrictions.
    
11. There’s a difference between a teachable moment and a punishable moment. Lean toward the former as much as possible.
    
12. If your community is pressuring you to be more restrictive, that’s when it’s time to educate, not capitulate. Overzealous blocking and filtering has real and significant negative impacts on information access, student learning, pedagogy, ability to address required curricular standards, and educators’ willingness to integrate technology. It also makes it awfully tough to prepare students for a digital era.
    
13. ‘Walled garden’ online environments prevent the occurrence of serendipitous learning connections with the outside world.
    
14. If you’re prohibiting teachers from being ‘friends’ with students online, are you also prohibiting them from being ‘friends’ with students in neighborhoods, at church, in volunteer organizations, at the mall, and in other non-school settings?
    
15. Schools with mindsets of enabling powerful student learning usually block much less than those that don’t. Their first reaction is ‘how can we make this work?’ rather than ‘we need to keep this out.’
    
16. As the lead learner, it’s your responsibility to actively monitor what’s being filtered and blocked and to always reconsider that in light of learning and teaching needs.
    
17. If you trust your teachers with the children, you should trust them with the Internet. Addendum: Mistrust of teachers drives away good educators.
    
18. If you make it too hard to get permission to unblock something, you might as well not have the option in the first place.
    
19. Unless you like losing lawsuits, remember that students and staff have speech and privacy rights, particularly off-campus. Remember that any dumb decision you make is Internet fodder and has a good chance of going viral online. Do you really want to be the next stupid administrator story on The Huffington Post?
    
20. When you violate the Constitution and punish kids just because you don’t like what they legally said or did and think you can get away with it, you not only run the risk of incurring financial liability for your school system in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars but also abuse your position of trust and send messages to students about the corruption of power and disregard for the rule of law.
    
21. Never make a policy you can’t enforce.
    
22. Don’t abdicate your teaching responsibility. Students do not magically gain the ability at the end of the school day or after graduation to navigate complex, challenging, unfiltered digital information spaces. If you don’t teach them how to navigate the unfiltered Internet appropriately and safely while you have them, who’s going to?
    
23. Acceptable use and other policies send messages to students, staff, and parents. Is the predominant message that you want to send really that ‘the technologies that are transforming everything around us should first and foremost be feared?’
    
24. Imagine a scale with two balancing pans. On one side are all of the anxieties, fears, barriers, challenges, and perceived problems that your staff, parents, and community members put forth. If you want effective technology integration and implementation to occur in your school system, it is your job as the leader to tip the scale the other way. Addendum: It is difficult to understand the learning power of digital technologies – and easy to dismiss their pedagogical usefulness – if you are not familiar enough with them to understand their positive affordances.
    
25. In a hyperconnected, technology-suffused, digital, global world, you do your children a disservice – and highlight your irrelevance – by blocking out our present and their future.
    
26. Educating is always, always more powerful than blocking.
    

BONUS 1. Elsewhere in your state – perhaps even near you – are school districts that have figured this out. They operate under the same laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that you do. If they can be less restrictive, why can’t you?

A huge thanks to everyone who has influenced my thinking and my writing in this area, including folks like Doug Johnson, Sylvia Martinez, danah boyd, Will Richardson, and Tina Barseghian. I’m sure that I’ve forgotten a few talking points that I’ll just add later. Which one is your favorite (or least favorite)? What would you add to or change on this list?

—————–

Many thanks to Scott for permission to republish this post. I will add more posts about each item shortly.

(Originally published on To Block or Not to Block, that isn’t the question! | Grumbledook Thinks )

Casio has long been the leader in maintenance-free projectors for schools and universities, with its own Laser & LED Hybrid light source providing years of high-brightness images that never dim and never need expensive replacement lamps. Casio first introduced the Laser & LED Hybrid light source in 2010, and was the first manufacturer to use a solid-state light source instead of traditional and unreliable lamps. The result has been a sea change in how technology buyers choose projectors — the lifetime cost (total cost of ownership) of owning a projector can now be significantly reduced, if not eliminated altogether. Casio is so confident of its long-lasting technology that it offers a 5-year/10,000-hour warranty covering both the light source and hardware.

Technology marches on, but that’s no reason to adopt the latest gadgets just for the sake of it. The best educational devices combine cutting-edge technology with sensible thinking, where every aspect has been designed to improve the learning experience while keeping maintenance costs to a minimum and lessening the impact on the natural environment.

New additions to the Casio range

Casio Projectors has now released two new additions to its Laser & LED Hybrid light source range. The XJ-H2600 and the XJ-H2650 are both WXGA projectors with a brightness of 3,500 ANSI lumens. Casio’s Laser & LED technology also boasts a light source life of 20,000 hours, eliminating maintenance but and cuts operating costs, while achieving maximum brightness in as little as five seconds from start-up.

With their powerful output and consistent image, the XJ-H2600, and the XJ-H2650 with added connectivity, are both well-suited for projecting in everything from small reception classes to large lecture hall audiences.

Casio XJ-H2600

• WXGA Resolution (1280 x 800)
  
• 3,500 ANSI Lumen's
  
• less than 1 watt usage in standby mode
  
• Light source avg life of 20,000 hours
  
• Start up in as little as 5 seconds
  
• 10W Speaker
  
• Automatic Brightness (see below)
  
• DLP 3D Ready (see below)
  
• Connectivity: Two(2) RGB, RGB Output, Video, HDMI, RS-232, Audio In/Out
  

Full Spec

Casio XJ-H2650

As above (XJ-H2650) but with the following differences

• USB Connectivity (see below)
  
• LAN/RJ-45 Network capable (see below)
  
• Wireless LAN Adapter (see below)
  

Full Spec

The new Casio models also feature the following functions:

• Keylock function prevents unauthorised access
  The projector can be disabled using key operation on the main unit, making it secure from mischievous children!
  
• DLP^® 3D projection function
  Becoming ever more popular as a teaching aid, 3D content can bring subjects to life and studies have shown that pupils find it easier to recall information they were taught using 3D projectors. 3D glasses sold separately.
  
• Energy-saving Intelligent Brightness Control
  Integrated light sensors automatically adjust the projection brightness level according to the ambient lighting. This reduces power consumption by as much as 63%.
  
• Custom logo feature at start-up
  Users can capture and save projection screen data, such as a school or university logo, and use it for the projector’s start-up screen.
  
• Smartphone and USB memory presentations
  With the XJ-H2650, users can give wireless presentations using a smartphone (software require) or computer that supports wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g), or project data from a USB memory device (file conversion required).
  
• Interactive Pointer (sold separately)
  Teaching staff can point at the projection screen and operate a connected PC.
  

For more information about any of Casio’s Laser & LED Hybrid projectors, call us on 020 8450 9131, email projectors@casio.co.uk or visit www.casio-projectors.eu/uk.

The Genie and the Lamp: Projectors that never need a new bulb

For more information visit: www.casio-projectors.eu/uk

Casio has long been the leader in maintenance-free projectors for schools and universities, with its own Laser & LED Hybrid light source providing years of high-brightness images that never dim and never need expensive replacement lamps. Casio first introduced the Laser & LED Hybrid light source in 2010, and was the first manufacturer to use a solid-state light source instead of traditional and unreliable lamps. The result has been a sea change in how technology buyers choose projectors — the lifetime cost (total cost of ownership) of owning a projector can now be significantly reduced, if not eliminated altogether. Casio is so confident of its long-lasting technology that it offers a 5-year/10,000-hour warranty covering both the light source and hardware.

Technology marches on, but that’s no reason to adopt the latest gadgets just for the sake of it. The best educational devices combine cutting-edge technology with sensible thinking, where every aspect has been designed to improve the learning experience while keeping maintenance costs to a minimum and lessening the impact on the natural environment.

New additions to the Casio range

Casio Projectors has now released two new additions to its Laser & LED Hybrid light source range. The XJ-H2600 and the XJ-H2650 are both WXGA projectors with a brightness of 3,500 ANSI lumens. Casio’s Laser & LED technology also boasts a light source life of 20,000 hours, eliminating maintenance whilst cutting operating costs and achieving maximum brightness in as little as five seconds from start-up.

With their powerful output and consistent image, the XJ-H2600, and the XJ-H2650 with added connectivity, are both well-suited for projecting in everything from small reception classes to large lecture hall audiences.

Casio XJ-H2600

• WXGA Resolution (1280 x 800)
  
• 3,500 ANSI Lumen's
  
• Less than 1 watt usage in standby mode
  
• Light source avg life of 20,000 hours
  
• Start up in as little as 5 seconds
  
• 10W Speaker
  
• Automatic Brightness (see below)
  
• DLP 3D Ready (see below)
  
• Connectivity: Two(2) RGB, RGB Output, Video, HDMI, RS-232, Audio In/Out
  

Full Spec

Casio XJ-H2650

As above (XJ-H2650) but with the following differences

• USB Connectivity (see below)
  
• LAN/RJ-45 Network capable (see below)
  
• Wireless LAN Adapter (see below)
  

Full Spec

The new Casio models also feature the following functions:

• Keylock function prevents unauthorised access
  The projector can be disabled using key operation on the main unit, making it secure from mischievous children!
  
• DLP^® 3D projection function
  Becoming ever more popular as a teaching aid, 3D content can bring subjects to life and studies have shown that pupils find it easier to recall information they were taught using 3D projectors. 3D glasses sold separately.
  
• Energy-saving Intelligent Brightness Control
  Integrated light sensors automatically adjust the projection brightness level according to the ambient lighting. This reduces power consumption by as much as 63%.
  
• Custom logo feature at start-up
  Users can capture and save projection screen data, such as a school or university logo, and use it for the projector’s start-up screen.
  
• Smartphone and USB memory presentations
  With the XJ-H2650, users can give wireless presentations using a smartphone (software required) or computer that supports wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g), or project data from a USB memory device (file conversion required).
  
• Interactive Pointer (sold separately)
  Teaching staff can point at the projection screen and operate a connected PC.
  

For more information about any of Casio’s Laser & LED Hybrid projectors:

Call: 020 8450 9131

Email: projectors@casio.co.uk

Visit: www.casio-projectors.eu/uk

* This is a sponsored article for Casio UK via IDG.

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By now most of you will have noticed that we are hosting the Frambozembier Raspberry Pi developers forums and we think it is about high time we let you know a bit more about them and why we have teamed up.

Frambozenbier.org is the brainchild of 3 avid open source and electronics enthusiasts:

Liam Fraser (@Liam-FB) is the technical lead at Frambozenbier and had already made several Raspberry-Pi tutorials that can be seen on the main RaspberryPi.org website and YouTube.

Austin Waddecar (@Ozzy-FB) is a graphic designer and helps in creating the written and multimedia tutorials as well as providing all of the branding and marketing.

@Turbo-FB: Publicity shy Turbo-FB is the Frambozenbier project co-ordinator and also helps Austin with the written materials.

Collectively, their ultimate aim is to work closely with Raspberry Pi directly and provide tutorials, guidence and advice for all those with a serious interest in developing on the Raspberry Pi for all levels of experience.

Their main site - www.frambozenbier.org - already has a raft of video tutorials, news and other items which as the Pi's get rolled out, will provide a ready resource to anyone looking for more on what is going on, and quite early on in their development they approced us at EduGeek as to the possibility of helping them out with setting up forums for them, as we kew this would be of particular interest to our members we suggested that placing them on EduGeek, where there would already be an entusiastic user base, would possibly be the best option. And they agreed. The RasPi forums can be found here - http://www.edugeek.net/forums/frambozenbier-raspi-forums - and Frambozenbier will be working away on them from now on (as they now actually have one of the first Pi's) to help you all out. So if you have any Pi questions or comments please post them up in there and one of them will be along as soon as they possibly can to help you out.

 

(L to R) Liam, Dos_Box, Austin and the Raspberry Pi

As you all know by now the long awaited Raspberry Pi launched last week, and although the sudden demand had initially caused the 2 distributors, Farnell and RS Components, websites to choke early on this has now been sorted out, probably due to the fact that the first 10,000 Raspebrry Pi units had sold within about 15 minutes of going on sale. The good news however is that Raspberrypi.org have announced that the production lines will now continue to produce units to demand, so there should be a ready and constant supply in the near future.

If you missed it and want to find about a bit more about the launch you can view Eben Upton, one of the main people behind the development of the Raspberry Pi being interviewed by the BBC here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17190918

You can also listen to an interview with co-creator David Braben on the BBC Radio 4 Today program here (the interview is at the 1:44 point):http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console

We at EduGeek have not only been following the whole Raspberry Pi development, but have in recent weeks been helping various people out in the background, and it is for this reason we feel that there are some things you should be aware of as regards to 'where to go for what' in the Pi world.

For this we have teamed up with the guys at Frambozenbier.org, the Raspberry Pi homebrew community, who have not only produced some first class documentation on the Pi but asked us to host their forums for them. These forums are intended to be far more development and project orientated than the single projects forum on the main Raspberry Pi site, and given the amount of knowledge, experience and innovation we know our members possess, we're pretty sure they have found the right home.

Firstly, links you need to know

You should note that the people behind Raspberry Pi had decided that the software development side of Raspberry Pi should be community driven hence why it may seem that there are duplicate forums on both sites. The main 'official' Raspberry Pi site will be for news and updates whereas the community sites will be where all of the technical action takes place, which is why EduGeek was asked to help in providing the community forums given our strong schools user base, levels of technical knowledge readily at hand, and experience of running busy forums. This is where you will be able to find out about the latest developments and technical help from those who have been working with the Raspberry Pi from the early days.

The official Raspberry Pi Site: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

The official Raspberry Pi Forums: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum

Raspberry Pi Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/#!/raspberry_pi

Community website: www.frambozenbier.org

Community forums: www.edugeek.net/raspi

Community wiki: www.elinux.org/R-Pi_Hub

Farnell: http://www.farnell.com/

RS Components: http://uk.rs-online.com/web/

Secondly, Data Sheets

You can find attached to here the first data sheets for the Raspberry Pi. These have been produced by Frambozenbier for Raspberrypi.org and contain all of the specs and basic technical information you will need as well as some historical background to the project and details on purchasing. These will also be posted in a sticky within the development forums hosted by us and any updated or new versions posted in there.

1. About the Raspberry Pi Foundation: Rpi_Datasheet_001_Raspberry_Pi_Foundation.pdf

2. Raspberry Pi press release: Rpi_Datasheet_101_Raspberry_Pi_Release.pdf

3. The Raspberry Pi computer overview: Rpi_Datasheet_201_Raspberry_Pi_Computer.pdf

4. Raspberry Pi I/O layout: Rpi_Datasheet_202_Raspberry_Pi_IO.pdf

5. Physical connectivity: Rpi_Datasheet_401_Connecting_Together.pdf

6. How to download OS images: Rpi_Datasheet_701_Downloading_OS_Images.pdf

7. Extracting the OS to SD cards: Rpi_Datasheet_702_Extract_OS-to_SD_Card.pdf

Rpi_Datasheet_202_Rasperry_Pi_IO.pdf

Rpi_Datasheet_701_Downloading_OS_Images.pdf

Registration for a new-look series of Tech.Days UK training events is now open. With a fresh format for 2012, Microsoft will be bringing more learning and networking sessions to your doorstep, wherever you are. And to top it off they have ditched PowerPoint to make every event 100% hands-on collaboration. ;-) Woo!

Private Cloud & Virtualisation

The Tech.Days IT Pro camp series covers a range of topics around the private cloud and virtualisation, including:

• Virtualising servers with Hyper-V

• Building a data centre

• Migrating to the latest version of Windows Server

• The consumerisation of IT

Register Here for a Camp Near You!

Enjoy!

James.

I did video the whole speech and will probably do some selective clips in a later post to highlight certain points but the key things (for me) can be drawn out of the full text which is available on the DfE website, which also has a copy of the video.

Over the last few months we have seen a bit of softening from Mr Gove on some parts of technology and ICT. The initial lack of any comment or ideas on technology were disconcerting for many, and the rawness of the demise of Becta, coupled with the scaling back of LA involvement, had hit a nerve with many. Whatever the good reasons for such a rapid change, it was detrimentally viewed due to so many other issues it was causing. The political flags waved on all sides and some tended to forget a key fact ... lack of information and unsure direction was having a detrimental effect on schools who were delaying adopting good use of technology often because they were waiting for the next hoop to jump through.

Well, the core of the speech helped solve some of that. Some of the hoops are going. The Programme of Study is going under consultation with a view to being scrapped by September 2012. No hanging around waiting for alternatives to be formulated, discussed, dissected, tested, implemented and reviewed ... but a quick change to let schools get on with doing what they know best. There is still a requirement to teach ICT, but no prescription about what / how.

And for the schools who still need help and support? There are plenty of folk who can help with this, ranging NAACE to fellow schools, commercial suppliers through to consultants, and a number of special interest groups. Comments from others at the speech ranged from "About time, we have been giving examples of where it could be better for ages" through to "Oh yes, another chance for people to profit at the expense of schools!"

Of course, it is worth saying that some of what Michael Gove was saying raises even more questions. The repeated bashing on about the ICT curriculum being poorly taught to bored children seems to a little away from demonstrations I saw at the show, from what I saw at the TeachMeet, with what I see in local schools. I am not saying there are not times when it is boring and mundane, and is merely hoop jumping for tick box curricula ... we all know that some courses and work can be done that way, but it doesn't mean that it is *all* done that way ... and the knocking of ICT by some to promote other agendas (including Computer Sciences) seems to have been jumped on by our political masters. Of course, we can argue that this would not be done without evidence and cause, but I worry about the good being thrown out with the bad. At least now, after the speech, I can hopefully say that those schools who are still doing good stuff with ICT will continue to do so.

But Computing ... that is the next big thing. Lots of reports abound about how we are missing the skills for this and the various groups working on dealing with this are coming from different positions. Ian Livingstone spoke at the recent Microsoft Partners in Learning event about the role of computing and creativity (linked in with the games and creative industries), with STEM ambassadors stressing the link with science ... and naturally you will come across many IT Professionals who will push computing / computer science with a greater understanding on the use and management of computers.

I am not saying that any of these are wrong or any is more right than others, but it does come across at times as a bit fractious and people are grabbing for control ... sometimes losing some of the benefits of joined up work. Recent discussions on the Computing at Schools group have shown this too me ... people annoyed at the perceptions about others possibly charging for access to a robust curriculum, in spite of this being something that Mr Gove was clearly promoting ... buying in resources, expertise and structure ...

And so we get back to the core of the Speech. Mr Gove says that Computing is important ... because lots of notable people and some important reports say so. No direction will be given on exactly how this will turn out but references to work from BCS (actually from CAS, which BCS are helping to co-ordinate, but supported by Microsoft, Google and others), mention of NAACE and talk about commercial firms providing knowledge and expertise.

Nothing on Open Source, other than an oblique reference in a section heading ... no real mention of what it means and even possibly mis-representing how open source products can be collaborated on with developmental forks and code being rolled back into a single project ... in fact the opposite of what he says about things being in a single document. Nothing explicitly about examples of collaborative sharing. In fact ... you could say that this opportunity to mention the Big Society seems to have been missed as well ...

So where does this leave us? Or rather where does it leave IT Professionals working in schools?

If computing is going to have a larger role in schools then we have to make sure that schools have ready methods of allowing computer studies / computing / coding to take place. There have been a number of comments to me that teachers in some schools (thankfully a small number but still over 100 in the last 2 years) have experienced problems with their IT Support staff blocking changes. Yet I know of many schools where teachers and children code on a regular basis. When asked about this at the NAACE conference last year I had to explain that there is no standard way of saying to schools, "this is how you do it" ... because there is no standard for IT facilities in schools ... not even in those with managed services under BSF.

And after the speech we know that there will be a number of different ways of enabling the different options for computing to take place in schools ... in fact it is an important part of the speech ... no central prescription ... schools choose what they think is best. So the only way it will work is if IT Support staff and companies become even more flexible. It means ensuring that you are actively talking with other staff in school now about what they are planning, it is all about instead of saying 'no' to something tying to explain what the issues are, what compromises can be made and making people aware of the legal requirements which you have to comply with no matter how important the educational needs are. It is about talking to other schools in the same position. It is about taking part in the planning of the curriculum as well.

One comment that has stuck with me, from Miles Berry (Senior Vice Chair of NAACE), was that IT Professionals in schools are in a pretty unique position to work with teaching staff. Their wide experience of technical expertise, planning, scripting and understanding of UI almost makes them perfect to help develop what happens with computing in schools ...

So I look forward to the next 12 months and what it brings to IT Professionals in schools and the impact of Mr Gove's speech. hopefully it also brings more professional recognition as well as fostering closer working between them and teaching staff.

(originally published at grumbledook.org)

The point to look at now is based on the recent Apple Education event, led by Phil Schiller at the Guggenheim Museum, New York. It was interesting to see the international league tables appear ... I half expected a certain Secretary of State of Education appear ... but part of this was to stress the importance of taking action to stop the "flatlining".

The video of teachers, administrators, from US schools showed the downside that they are experiencing at the moment. However, it initially failed to show the good things that Apple and many other tech companies are already doing, but Phil did stress how there are lots of resources already being used and this includes the iPad ... but more needs doing and no single company or group can fix it all. It is also worth pointing out to non-US readers that some of the problems will having fingers clearly pointed at the rigid curriculum that can be dictated by school boards. Now, this is not the National Curriculum as we know it in England but far more rigid, with text books centrally prescribed and lessons being taught by rote. From talking with colleagues in various US states they will point out that this varies from district to district and school to school, but that sounds all too familiar to us over here, being told that our ICT lessons are boring.

So, the scene is set. We are told that things are bad, stuff needs to change and teachers need more help and freedom. Apple's answer is based on rebuilding student engagement ... via the iPad of course.

Rebooting the text book

Text books are good ... and the source of knowledge and information. Apparently the publishers have said this is true so Apple are now reselling these materials now so they can be used on the iPad. There is no denying that the the new books available via iBooks 2 are far better than looking at a plain text book and Roger Rosner, Vice President of Productivity Software, demonstrated how the new books can have a raft of features ... some of which we have already seen via interactive materials already delivered to computers from Pearson, Nelson Thorne, etc ... but put together with the extra features such as highlighting sections of text to create notecards for revision (study cards, flash cards ... whatever you prefer to call them). The organisation of the layout after rotation, the use of multi-touch gestures to aid navigation ... these are tweaks that make a good improvement to ideas we have already seen before.

And here we hit my first query. A quick delve into the background of the iBook will show that this is a special format belonging to Apple to allow you deliver specially formatted resources to iPads. This is similar but vitally different to an ePub formatted eBook. Thomas Baekdal covers some of the difference quite extensively but the first query is about whether it is right to lock down resources to a single platform or, as it turns out, a single device.

But I'm The Author ... Aren't I?

Apple have been thorough ... they don't just want the big names to provide the iBooks though, they want classroom teachers to create resources too. Thank $deity for that. A WYSIWYG tool to help educators collate and build fantastic resources that simply works. We all know the effort Apple go to when making things as simple and as quick as possible, and, having looked at building eBooks for some time, I had opted to go to Pages to do most of the work with a little bit of tidying up in either Calibre or Sigil. My initial thoughts on iBooks Author was that it followed suit, not surprising when you consider Roger Rosner heads up the team dealing with productivity tools like iWorks. Users of iWorks are now hoping that this shows that Apple will be taking more of an interest in the other tools instead of just doing limited ports for iOS versions of Keynote, Numbers and Pages, especially as iBooks Author will use Pages and Keynote resources. Reading Vicki Davis' blog she found it pretty simple too.

And with such a fantastic tool, which is free, you have to wonder if there are catches. Apparently people have spotted some and time will tell what it will mean. The main thing some people have concerns about are who owns / controls the resulting materials. The EULA of iBooks Author includes some specific instructions about what you can and can't do with resulting work. John Gruber over at DaringFireball.net has a number of blog posts looking at the EULA, Dan Wineman examines some specific sections on the restriction along with Cult of Mac and Audrey Watters. Now that is a lot of links to go through and most of it is opinion and interpretation. My take is as follows.

The EULA appears to say that if you use iBooks Author to create work then you have 2 choices. First is that you create works and make them available for free. If this is the case then you the iBook Author created file can also be given away for free from anywhere, including the iBooks Store. The second choice is that you want to sell your resulting iBook and to do this you *have* to publish that file via the iBooks Store, and Apple take a 30% cut of that.

Don't get me wrong ... I have no issue with Apple taking a cut. They are operating as a publisher, are charging a commission at a published rate and if I want to do any differently and still have it go out via the iBooks store and earn from it then I have to go to another publisher who has a commercial arrangement with Apple ... and knowing Apple there will still be a 30% cut *and* whatever my publisher wants to charge. I would expect the same with a physical book ... the publisher takes a cut as does the book shop. I have no problem with it being 30% either ... as an unpublished author I would find this reasonable, knowing that other means of publishing are out there ... but ... and this is key ... if I want to make full use of the wide range of options in an iBook then I know that I have to agree to working in Apple's closed arena. If I feel that I don't need to do that and that other ePub creation tools will do the business then I am free to do that.

The areas that I need an explicit answer on include the following.

If I create an eBook and have 2 versions of it, one created in something like Sigil and the other in iBooks Author, can I sell the iBooks version via the store and the Sigil version in other places? They are different works, but include the majority of the same text, images and resources. The difference is the creation tool.

If I take an existing book I have produced and I am selling elsewhere can I also create an iBooks version and still sell the original?

The presumption on the EULA is that the individual (i.e. the End User) has agreed to it. As well all know, most schools will deploy software to computers via central management tools. With Macs this will be a combination of DeployStudio and Apple Remote Desktop in most places but the agreement has already been agreed on behalf of the end user ... and this is point number two. Does a school have the right to agree on the behalf of their employees to the EULA on how things will be published? Does it also have the right to agree it on behalf of children? Does the network manager / IT support team have the right to do this on behalf of the school? I know that EULAs are routinely agreed on behalf of the school but this one has some specific restrictions and perhaps people need some training around this or at least a policy? And this clearly steps on the toes of how schools deal (or fail to deal) with IP.

And this brings up another concern I have.

I mentioned about children creating and publishing ... when we look at the whole event I only heard from marketing people, product managers, schools administrators, teachers ... we saw lots of children using laptops and the provided resources ... other than highlighting text / taking a few nots in an iBook (perhaps under direction from a teacher?) I didn't see any creation from children. When I went to the Apple Leadership Summit last year a key area covered was children as creators / co-creators / collaborators. At least there we had good examples of using the Wiki Server section of Lion Server for sharing and collaboration, but this was missed at this announcement. If you are not going to talk about children, as learners, as creators and collaborators then you have failed as a company engaging in education.

iTunes U is a fantastic tool and it is easy to see that it is targeted to gain some of the market from people like Blackboard, but if schools start to rely on this as the single delivery mechanism for resources, then you remove valuable tools from the hands of learners.

So, my summary ... the new iBooks are going to be a fantastic resource. iBooks Author is a powerful, yet simple, tool for putting together these resources. iTunes U will be a good way of stringing a series of resources together. The caveats would be that we should not limit ourselves to a single platform or device (from what I have seen / heard / tried you cannot get the new format iBooks onto anything other than iPads ... ruling out iPhones and iPod touches), that provided resources are only part of the equation, that you should not forget to give learners opportunity to collaborate and create, that there are technical / legal concerns that have a lot of opinion around them but perhaps need an official stance ... but we should also not be scared to try something new. If you are concerned then continue to produce your resources with tools such as Sigil and Calibre, publish as standard .ePub files and make the most of them. There is still a wealth of tricks to make these eBooks wonderful anyway.

(originally published at grumbledook.org)

Addendum

After my recent blog post about the education announcement from Apple I mentioned that I had some questions about where this left the ownership of created resources. I did send some queries out to some folk who had done education work with Apple in US schools and found they had raised similar questions ... and had the response of, "We can understand your concern and will get back to you."

It was pleasing to see an email on 3rd to say to keep an eye out for the update of iBooks. Sure enough, an update was released and the major change has been captured by a number of sites but my favourite has to be from 9to5mac.com (and already mentioned by Arthur in this thread).

It clears up about the use of PDFs you export (i.e. do with them as you wish) and makes it clear that the iBook format is locked in to the iBooks Store for sales ... but as I mentioned previously, if Apple are operating as your book publisher (vanity or otherwise) then you can expect them to take a cut of your money.

The questions not answered ... in a school the EULA is likely to have been agreed on behalf of the end user by someone such as a Network Manager. What happens if the school haw one rule but the creator of works does something different? I know, I know ... not Apple's problem but that of the school and what they do for dealing with IP and who has the right to sell or resell work done by staff. I was asked why I had raised this previously as surely the idea that the school agrees the EULA for software on behalf of the user is common ... but I still say that the direct link into a platform for selling work makes it different enough to worth special consideration. I think this is one I might ask Leon Cych about this as I think Apple have not caused an issue here ... just highlighted it.

The other question I have is about ePub3 ... I still like open formats for those who *want* choice (even if that choice is to go for a more locked in system) and for all the pushing that Apple did with HTML5 I just want them to use a bit of fair play here (and not use FairPlay). I'm happy to use iBooks Author and iTunes U, but don't want to lose a good standard as things get fragmented.

(Originally published at grumbledook.org)

To this end, Next Gen have now had their concerns acted upon and this report, 'The Government's response to Next Gen. Transforming the UK into the world's leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industry'

Download from here (PDF/RTF): http://www.dcms.gov.uk/publications/8646.aspx

I’ll not go into detail here about each item, but I have copied the main areas which the government is addressing to save you trawling through the entire document. There are several areas that are not really relevant but I felt I had to include them all to provide the overall picture.

Government Policy

 

1. Next Gen listed 20 recommendations for action. Our specific response to each of these is as follows:

 

Recommendation 1: Bring computer science into the National Curriculum as an essential discipline.

 

2. As outlined within the Next Gen report, ICT is currently part of the National Curriculum at all four key stages (ages 5 – 16) and allows for the teaching of some of the skills associated with computer science. However, the Government recognises that learning the skills to use ICT effectively and acquiring the knowledge of the underpinning computer science are two different (albeit complementary) subjects. Furthermore, the Government recognises that the current ICT programme is insufficiently rigorous and in need of reform.

 

3. The Government is committed to introducing a slimmed down, more focused, and more rigorous curriculum. As part of this commitment, a review of the National Curriculum was launched on 20 January 2011. The review aims to develop a new National Curriculum which clearly sets out the core knowledge that all children should acquire, while giving teachers more freedom to decide how to teach and design a wider school curriculum that best meets the needs of their pupils.

 

4. Department for Education Ministers announced at the outset of the National Curriculum review that English, maths, science and physical education would remain as subjects within the National Curriculum in all four school Key Stages. They are currently considering the place of all the other subjects that currently feature within the National Curriculum, including ICT, and will bring forward proposals shortly. If ICT were to be included as a discrete subject within the new National Curriculum, then work on a new Programme of Study would begin next year. As part of that process the review will consider the teaching of computer science within ICT. The Government recognises that, in the event of ICT not remaining part of the National Curriculum, attention would still need to be given to ensure children could acquire computer science skills. The Government would work with the sector to find the best way to achieve this.

 

5. The Government recognises that the IT GCSE is in need of reform, and will be looking at ways to improve the course. The Government welcomes e-skills UK’s “Behind the Screens” project which aims to trial a possible reformed IT GCSE curriculum. e-Skills UK are aiming to establish a new way of delivering IT in secondary schools, initially concentrating around Key Stage 4 and bringing in employers to provide a bank of resources as stimulus materials for the projects. TheGovernment supports the alignment of industry interest in computing curriculum around this pilot activity.

 

6. In addition to the curriculum review and the pilot IT GCSE the Government recognises the potential developments such as the Raspberry Pi computer project have for stimulating and motivating children to understand basic computer science in schools. Much as the BBC Micro inspired a generation of computer programmers in the early 1980’s the Raspberry Pi could provide the platform for teachers and pupils to gain hands on programming experience. Raspberry Pi is an example of how games developers are finding innovative and affordable solutions to tackle the perceived issues highlighted in the Next Gen Report.

Recommendation 2: Sign up the best teachers to teach computer science through Initial Teacher Training bursaries and ‘Golden Hellos’.

 

7. The Government recognises the need for more high quality computer science teaching and will, over the next few months, be looking at the best ways to achieve this.

 

Recommendation 3: Use video games and visual effects at school to draw greater numbers of young people into STEM and computer science.

8. We believe that teachers are best placed to decide how to teach and what resources to use. However, more could be done to make teachers aware of the different resources available, and to encourage their use. In his speech at the Royal Society on 29 June, the Secretary of State for Education said that “we need to look at the way the very technological innovations we are racing to keep up with can help us along the way”. He paid tribute to innovations such as iTunesU and the Khan Academy that are putting high quality lessons on the web, and computer games developed by Marcus Du Sautoy that are enabling children to engage with complex mathematical problems. The Department for Education is keen to engage with the sector to develop ways of encouraging the use of these, and other, exciting innovations.

9. The Department for Education is also working with the Li Ka Shing Foundation and the Stanford Research Institute on a pilot programme to use computer programmes to teach mathematics. Stanford say it is one of the most successful educational projects they have seen.

10. e-skills UK have made progress through Computer Clubs for Girls (CC4G) which has engaged 135,000 girls in 3,800 schools, bringing IT to life in a context to which girls can readily relate. CC4G could be further enhanced by developing a partnership with the video games industry which would introduce girls to the principles of video games, and the exciting potential of a career in the industry through fun activities and offline learning challenges.

Recommendation 4: Set up a one-stop online repository and community site for teachers for video games and visual effects educational resources.

 

11. Government welcomes industry’s commitment, through the Next Gen Skills Steering Group, to look at delivering an appropriate web resource for teachers and students, providing educational resources and careers advice to those wishing to pursue a career in the video games and VFX industries. This would undoubtedly be of value.

 

Recommendation 5: Include art and computer science in the English Baccalaureate.

 

12. The English Baccalaureate is designed to recognise the achievement of students in a core of academic subjects. The “omission” of art and ICT from the suite of subjects within the English Baccalaureate does not mean the Government views either subject as unimportant. The Government expects all students to study subjects which are outside the English Baccalaureate; and fully recognises the value that such study will bring. The coverage of the English Baccalaureate has been kept small enough to ensure that other subjects can be studied alongside it.

13. The English Baccalaureate will be only one measure of performance, and should not be the limit of schools’ ambitions for their pupils. Schools will retain the freedom to innovate and offer the GCSEs, iGCSEs and other qualifications which best meet the needs of their pupils.

14. Pupils will also be able to achieve vocational qualifications alongside the English Baccalaureate. With the proper structures in place through the reform of the National Curriculum, the introduction of the English Baccalaureate and changes to school performance tables to focus on the most valuable vocational qualifications, schools will have the freedom and the incentives to provide a rigorous and broad education for all.

15. The Department for Education will monitor the progress of the English Baccalaureate. The Department does not rule out entirely the future inclusion of other GCSEs in the EBacc, should they be of sufficiently high standard and form part of a core education.

 

Recommendation 6: Encourage art-tech crossover and work-based learning through school clubs.

 

16. The Department for Education already helps to support a network of after-school STEM Clubs in England and there are around 2,000 such clubs across the UK. STEM Clubs allow young people to explore, investigate and discover STEM subjects in a stimulating learning environment, away from the constraints of the school timetable or a prescribed curriculum. They allow pupils and their club leaders to work together and explore many different ideas and activities. They can motivate and build confidence in young people who struggle with STEM subjects, and provide an extra outlet for pupils who already show aptitude and are interested in furthering their learning. They can encourage a crossover between art and technology but the focus of clubs varies according to locally determined priorities.

 

17. It is clear that STEM club activity is already supporting extra-curricular engagement with a broad range of activities associated with computer science. Whilst schools are free to do what they want in their clubs, advice is structured enabling them to diversify and make cross curricular links, particularly with non-STEM subjects such as the arts. Examples include animation techniques, graphics and image editing.

 

18. Since the inception of the network, many clubs have included computer science related activities in their portfolio. In particular, there are a number of schools using different forms of logic control such as PICAXE and several have taken this a step further to investigate different applications of robotics.

 

19. Several clubs have taken part in the recent STEM Challenges, inspired by London 2012 and managed by STEMNET. One particular challenge was to design a mobile phone app for London 2012 and another asked pupils to build a website for Rachel Morris, ahead of her competing in 2012. Students had to think about end-user experiences, graphics and functionality for each.

 

20. However, the Department for Education is keen to encourage even more such clubs and looks forward to working with the sector to develop ways of achieving this.

 

Recommendation 7: Build a network of STEMNET and Teach First video games and visual effects Ambassadors.

 

21. The Government fully endorses this recommendation as highlighted in the Plan for Growth. The effective follow up of this can make an important contribution to the aim of improving the supply of STEM graduates. The VFX and video games sectors are engaging with the STEM Ambassadors programme. Government welcomes this development and would encourage further engagement with STEMNET from businesses and individuals across the sector.

 

22. Since the launch of Next Gen there has been a strong response. When the review was published in February 2011, there were 38 STEM Ambassadors stating they had worked or were working in the video games sector and just one in the VFX sector. There are now 70 STEM Ambassadors from the video games and VFX sectors.

 

23. STEMNET has achieved this by close collaboration with both the video games and VFX sectors. On VFX this has included working with companies such as Double Negative, Framestore and The Mill to recruit STEM Ambassadors and support them in making links and volunteering with local schools. There are now 27 STEM Ambassadors registered from the VFX sector and more are expected to join the Programme over the coming months.

 

24. STEMNET now has a partnership agreement in place with the UK trade association for Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) which supports their Video Games Ambassadors scheme (a sub set of the STEM Ambassadors Programme). There are now 25 STEM Ambassadors who are part of this scheme (some of which were STEM Ambassadors before the review was published) and in total 43 STEM Ambassadors now state that they are working or have worked in the video games sector.

 

25. The report also highlights the role the UK's VFX and video games industry professionals have in supporting Teach First participants as coaches. The coaching initiative comprises an aspect of the two-year Leadership Development Programme, which all participants undertake in schools facing challenging circumstances. It is part of the offer to those corporates, trusts and foundations, which provide both funding and in kind support to Teach First. The charity Teach First will therefore look to explore brokering new relationships with organisations in the VFX and video games sectors who may be interested in becoming official supporters.

 

Recommendation 8: Introduce a new National Video Games Development and Animation Schools Competition

 

26. The Government welcomes schools competitions as an important way of inspiring young people. The Department for Education is already committed to introducing two new engineering prizes, as set out in the White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, published in November 2010.

 

27. We are pleased to see there are already a number of industry-sponsored initiatives in this area. For example, the BAFTA National Young Games Designers Competition, sponsored by BAFTA, NESTA, EA and Dare to be Digital at Abertay University. NESTA is also sponsoring the Animation 12 competition. It will report back to government and industry with evaluation data on the effectiveness of these competitions.

 

28. Likewise, The British Informatics Olympiad, sponsored by Lionhead Studios, an annual competition in computer programming for secondary schools and sixth form colleges continues to challenge students offering them opportunity to represent their country at the International Informatics Olympiad.

 

29. Bournemouth University is organising a new VFX competition supported by Skillset and UK Screen. This will develop into an annual event hosted by the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) that celebrates maths, science and art as the core VFX and Animation skill set.

 

 

Recommendation 9: Design and implement a Next Generation Video Games and Visual Effects Talent Careers Strategy.

 

30. We want to continue to use technology to improve careers guidance services for young people, to help them tackle the barriers they face to progress in work and learning. We are working to align young people’s online provision with the adult provision as the National Careers Service develops.

 

31. We do not however believe that central provision and promotion of specialist websites is an effective use of public funds and we have adhered to the Varney Report's recommendations to reduce the overall number of government websites and to provide citizens with a single point of information and online transactions through Directgov.

 

32. Schools will be placed under a duty from September 2012 (subject to the passage of the Education Bill) to secure independent, impartial careers guidance for their pupils and will be free to make decisions about the kind of support that meets the needs of their pupils, engaging as appropriate in partnership with external, expert providers.

 

33. All the international evidence is clear that, in order to raise standards, we need to trust head teachers and teachers to make decisions in the interests of their pupils. They know their pupils best and are best placed to decide what form of careers guidance is most appropriate for them.

 

34. The Government will not prescribe what schools should do. As part of providing independent, impartial advice about options, schools may choose to bring in external careers professionals either for particular pupils or at particular stages, but this should be for the school to decide. We will trust schools to make a professional judgement of how best to meet their duty, including determining the balance between web-based and telephone services and face-to-face support.

 

Recommendation 10: Provide online careers-related resources for teachers, careers advisers and young people.

 

35. The Government welcomes the industry’s engagement with this recommendation and encourage further partnering to take this forward. For example, working with STEMNET to share new resources produced for schools by the video games and VFX sectors with teachers to increase awareness and use of these resources in schools.

 

36. There are already many excellent sector specific careers portals with useful information which can be easily accessed through the internet. e-skills UK’s BigAmbition website for example features a variety of video games content which gives students a full and realistic picture of what it is like to work in the industry. BigAmbition has over 7000 registered users and 300 registered teachers who can access over 240 hours of online teaching resources for 14-19 learners, mapped to a range of Key Stage 4 and 5 qualifications, plus accompanying downloadable support material.

 

37. The Government looks to industry to work with careers advisers and teachers to help young people make the best use of these resources but are not convinced that further resources are needed.

 

Recommendation 11: Develop kite marking schemes, building on Skillset accreditation, which allow the best specialist HE courses to differentiate themselves from less industry-relevant courses.

 

38. The Government agrees that graduates are more likely to be equipped with the skills that employers want if there is genuine collaboration between institutions and employers in the design and delivery of courses. All institutions should be involved in some form of collaborative partnership with employers. The Government has asked Professor Tim Wilson, until recently the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, to look into how the benefits of joint working between business and higher education (HE) can be maximised in support of the enhancement of graduates’ employability. His response is expected early in 2012.

 

39. The Government are encouraging universities to work even more closely with employers to co-design, accredit or “kite mark” courses. It has been shown that kite marking of courses, where schemes have benefitted from real backing from industry, can lead to much better employability outcomes for graduates – this is a win-win for both employers and graduates, and helps promote universities' understanding of exactly what employers are looking for in all future recruits.

 

40. We recognise the success of the Skillset programme for accrediting computer games courses, whose students were almost three times more likely to be employed in this sector than graduates from other computer games courses. Given the value of this data to potential students, it would be interesting to know the destination of all the students involved to see where these industry valued skills have taken them. Abertay University is continuing to collect and review data which can support any future metrics used to support kite-marking and we look forward to seeing the results of this analysis.

 

41. Skillset have also received funds from the Growth and Innovation Fund and Employer Investment Fund that are enabling them to pilot 'Extending the Tick' extending their accreditation and benchmarking work to benefit the wider ‘feeder’ courses for the industry. It also allows them to look at addressing Further Education (FE) courses as ‘feeders’ for HE .

 

42. Skillset has also received other Employer Investment Funds to address key skills issues across the Creative industries enabling them to prepare co-investment bids for the new Growth and Innovation Fund on behalf of the VFX and Computer Games sectors.

 

43. e-skills UK will be developing a kite marking scheme for software development degrees, and already have in place a software development apprenticeship. Both of these will improve the pipeline of software engineering talent into the gaming environment.

 

Recommendation 12: The Higher Education Funding Council England (HEFCE) should include industry-accredited specialist courses in their list of ‘Strategically Important and Vulnerable’ subjects (SIVs) that merit targeted funding. Industry commits to these courses through industrial scholarships and support for CPD for lecturers.

 

44. In the new funding system from August 2012, those subjects which are the most expensive to teach (such as medicine, science and engineering) will remain a priority for HEFCE funding. In addition, through the grant letter to HEFCE and more recently through the White Paper, The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has charged HEFCE with identifying those subjects which may be strategically important and vulnerable in the future, and with determining what further support is required for such subjects to avoid undesirable reductions in the scale of provision. HEFCE’s concern will be to identify the minority of areas in which there is robust evidence that the public interest in relation to subject provision may not be achieved through the student-led funding system alone. Industry accreditation of courses will not provide evidence that a subject area is vulnerable. It will however, be an important part of the information provided to inform student choice in the new funding system, and will be included in the Key Information Set.

45. HEFCE is running a two stage consultation on the arrangements for teaching funding for 2012-13 and beyond. The first stage of this consultation, which closed at the start of September 2011, outlined broad plans for supporting high-cost subjects and for developing a new approach to SIVS. A subsequent consultation early in 2012 will cover the funding arrangements for 2013-14 and beyond. Against this background, HEFCE has already begun discussions with key umbrella stakeholders about the future risks to subject provision, and how these could be monitored and addressed, with a view to determining a future approach to SIVS. HEFCE’s Chief Executive has already met with Skillset to discuss course accreditation. HEFCE would welcome further dialogue with Skillset regarding the future risks in this area of provision.

46. However, as previously stated, the Government welcomes industry’s endeavours in promoting the types of provision they want and support. What we would like is much more contact between employers and the HE sector to ensure skill needs are addressed. We are already seeing great examples of the large employers such as Blitz Games, BabyCow and IBM, backing specific courses or direct engagement through academy sponsorship, internship programmes and apprenticeships.

 

Recommendation 13: Raise awareness of the video games and visual effects industries in the eyes of STEM and arts graduates.

 

47. Schemes such as the STEMNET ambassador programme provide a direct link between industry and education, exposing learners to industry and vice versa. Likewise, greater collaboration between industry and universities will raise awareness amongst under graduates and those aspiring to continue their learning about opportunities the digital and creative industries provide.

 

48. Greater awareness will come from encouraging further collaboration between industry and universities in the courses provided and the information available. Encouraging greater and closer collaboration will align the supply with the demand as demonstrated by the Information Technology Management for Business (ITMB) degree. ITMB ensures students graduate with a mixture of technical, business, and interpersonal skills that are valued by employers.

 

49. ITMB is a sector-supported honours degree programme developed in response to demand from employers for IT graduates with both a solid grasp of technology and the business-related and interpersonal skills to work effectively in project teams and client-facing roles. Employers collaborated with universities to develop a curriculum based on equal contribution of technical, business, project and interpersonal skills content.

 

50. The ITMB degree is supported by over 60 employers and is being delivered to over 850 students in 14 universities in England and Wales. 32% of students on the degree are female – more than double the proportion of female applicants to all IT-related degree courses and in a recent survey 90% of ITMB students were reported as feeling that they are either 'well prepared' for employment or already 'work ready'.

 

Recommendation 14: Give prospective university applicants access to meaningful information about employment prospects for different courses

 

51. Linked to recommendations 9, 10 and 17, the Government welcomes proposals to provide clarity of information for those wishing to pursue a career in the games and VFX industries and would encourage employers and universities to work closely to achieve this.

 

52. The HE White Paper announced plans for each university to provide a standard set of comparable information items for each course, on university websites, by September 2012. This is known as the Key Information Set (KIS). The Key Information Set will provide comparable information, at course level, on student satisfaction levels, progression rates, employment prospects and salaries.

 

53. All accredited universities offering video games courses are members of UKIE. Employers on the UK Screen and the Skillset Computer Games Skills Council are also working with Skillset to enhance and expand the accreditation process to more courses and universities.

 

54. Another trade body for games, Tiga, highlights information about video game courses in its publication on careers in the video games industry and on the Tiga website, in order to give students meaningful information about courses in general. Tiga hope to gather valid employment data on graduates from relevant university courses and publish it in the future.

 

55. Tiga will also be introducing a new service connecting university and colleges with guest lecturers from the UK games industry. The pool of industry practitioners will intensify industry-academia links, promote knowledge transfer and enhance the quality of higher education provision, ultimately benefiting students and the wider games industry. Some universities and colleges do not currently have strong connections with the games industry. This new service will help to address this problem.

 

Recommendation 15: Develop a template for introducing workplace simulation into industry-accredited video games and visual effects courses, based on Abertay University’s Dare to be Digital competition.

 

56. Government welcomes this recommendation and recognises the activity already in evidence, particularly with regards to Abertay University and the Dare to be Digital competition.

 

57. NESTA has supported Swedish Digital Media trainer Hyper Island http://www.hyperisland.se/ to import their new entrant training programme to the UK. The programme launched in Manchester in May, enrolling 16 British students aged between 18-25. NESTA is keen to understand how the programme may provide lessons for Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to understand the potential for industry-led education.

 

58. Staff from Abertay University’s Business Support team are engaging in outreach activities to promote workplace simulation through the Dare to be Digital model and using graduates placed on prototype grant funded projects. This includes the provision of prototype funding for universities to work with SMEs across UK to establish real world work opportunities. A particular feature of the prototype fund is the development of a graduate Talent Pool for those seeking real world work experience on the prototype fund, thus increasing the availability of industry relevant work experience

 

Recommendation 16: Leading universities and Further Education (FE) colleges sponsor a high-tech creative industries University Technical College (UTC), with clear progression routes into HE.

 

59. We welcome Next Gen’s acknowledgement of the importance of UTCs. The Department for Education plans to establish at least 24 UTCs by 2014. UTCs have a 14-19 age range and are sponsored by local University and industry partners. As the Government response to Alison Wolf’s review into vocational education made clear, they are an important part of how we are reforming the schools system. Their unique partnership between university and industry will give young people the opportunity to develop technical expertise that will set them in good stead for their future careers and deliver the skills that our employers need.

 

60. The Government encourages an application by industry to establish a high-tech-creative-industries UTC in the next round of UTC applications. UKIE is advising Hackney UTC on the development of their digital media curriculum. As Next Gen Skills continues to make progress UKIE will ensure any activity it undertakes with the UTC is joined up with the wider skills coalition and activity.

 

 

Recommendation 17: Kite mark FE courses that offer students the best foundation in skills and knowledge to progress into Higher Education.

 

61. BIS is seeking closer employment engagement with the FE sector across a range of issues and this would fit into this pattern. It is essential learners know the value of the course they are undertaking and engagement by employers, learned societies or sector bodies, who are aware of the best opportunities for them to achieve success, are a key component. As FE institutions can’t award their own qualification it will be for employers and their representative bodies to engage with the relevant ‘awarding bodies’ to take this approach forward.

 

62. The FE STEM Data report has mapped the availability of courses in STEM subjects across colleges and we would be delighted for employer bodies to engage and make use of this material to promote excellence in their sector.

 

63. Tiga publishes information about its FE college members on the Tiga website and in relevant press releases, in part to provide useful information to prospective students.

 

Recommendation 18: Skillset Creative Media Academies and e-skills UK’s National Skills Academy for IT to work with industry to develop specialist CPD training for video games and visual effects industries.

 

64. The Government welcomes proposals for Skillset and the National Skills Academy for IT to work with Industry to develop Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training for video games and VFX sectors. The Skills Academy has strong backing from IT employers and is well placed to engage with them.

 

65. Any new areas of work would need to fit with existing commitments in its 3 year business plan, agreed with the Skills Funding Agency.

 

Recommendation 19: Support better research-oriented university-industry collaborations in video games and visual effects.

 

66. The Government welcomes the connection between the video games and VFX industries and universities and hopes they can work positively together within the agreed remit of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) business plan. The TSB is committed through its digital team, which covers the creative industries, to assisting in increasing the collaboration between technology teams of all kinds and creative industries companies including video games and visual effects businesses. The TSB’s remit is to encourage the commercialisation of technology and as such is already wedded to the same vision that the Next Gen report has portrayed. The TSB continues to work with academic and other research partners to strengthen the transfer of knowledge into the commercial world.

 

67. Providing the funding for collaborative R&D projects, feasibility studies, and large scale consortium projects will continue to be part of the TSB remit. The organisation is committed to strengthening technical knowledge and creativity in the creative industries and increasingly to seeing that value applied across many other areas of the economy.

 

68. Over the last four years, of all the creative industries projects funded by the TSB some 40 (21%) have been games-related, equalling over £3m in collaborative R&D grants and fast track feasibility studies.

 

69. Collaboration with IC Tomorrow and the TSB to produce the Future Games Contest using the prototype fund – means that graduates will work on “gamification” projects with the TSB’s digital test bed project.

 

Recommendation 20: Continue to treat the 18 visual effects occupations on the Government’s shortage list as shortage occupations.

 

70. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) provides expert independent advice to Government on migration issues, including the regular review of the shortage occupation list (SOL) to ensure it is up to date and reflects current labour market needs.

 

71. There is one main SOL covering the whole of the UK and a supplementary list of additional shortage occupations in Scotland. The lists include jobs which the MAC has identified as suffering from labour shortages and that it is sensible to (a least partly) address those shortages through migration. All jobs are graduate level or above. Inclusion on the SOL means that an employer wishing to sponsor a non-EEA migrant through Tier 2 does not need to carry out a Resident Labour Market Test as by definition there will be no displacement of UK labour. In addition, if the Tier 2 limit were over-subscribed, jobs on the SOL would be given priority. Employers can still sponsor Tier 2 migrants for jobs which are not in the SOL, provided they first carry out a Resident Labour Market Test and the job is in a graduate occupation.

 

72. The MAC has recently performed a review of the entire SOL and, in line with evidence from the VFX and video games sectors, recommended that the following job titles within visual effects and 2D/3D computer animation for film, television or video games be retained on the shortage occupation list; animator; compositing artist; computer graphics supervisor; matte painter; modeller; producer; production manager; rigger; systems engineer; technical director; texture artist; and visual effects supervisor.

73. The report also recommended that the following job titles within visual effects and 2D/3D computer animation for film, television and video games be included on the shortage occupation list: 2D supervisor; 3D supervisor; software developer; shader writer and stereo artist.

 

74. Finally, they recommended that the following job titles be removed from the shortage occupation list; animation supervisor; editor; R&D tools; R&D software; rigging supervisor and software engineer.

 

75. The Government has accepted the MAC’s recommendations and the revised list came into force on 14 November 2011.

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The afternoon also contained the Hands-on workshops and I opted for the technical strand, ably hosted and run by Chris Jinks from Apple. Out of my 5 Questions, a number of them were linked to the technical strand ... not because I am a Geek, but because this seems to be one of the major areas which is a barrier to adoption of new tech. Lack of information and advice can be a key reason for failure of using any technology in an educational environment. it detracts from the benefits of the tools and the reason they are there in the first place. This is true no matter where the technology is from and is in no way Apple specific as a problem. However, the approach which Apple has taken in the past has sometimes been open for question. At a previous BETT show, Russell Dyas and myself were at the press briefing from Apple and when asked about giving more advice to schools on the technical side we were told that schools shouldn't need to use in-house staff but buy the expertise in from ASEs and partners. That obviously went down well.

However, there is more information available to schools ... if you know where to find it and who to ask. ASEs, ADEs and AASPs are still the first point of call for many areas but events like today are starting to fill in the gaps.

The session was a two-hour version of what is usually a full day training event. We knew it would be a tad sparse in some areas and Chris apologised about that, but there is a lot to squeeze in. Again, Apple like to breakdown the areas covered and look at it in the following blocks.

• Mobility with Apple
  
• Creating Content
  
• Distributing Content
  
• Managing Devices
  
• Infrastructure for Learning
  

What is mobility? It is about my content. Anytime. Anywhere. Video, Audio, text, applications ... things I create and consume (I was feeling like I was listening to Graham Brown-Martin from Learning Without Frontiers actually). This is about whether in a lab, at home, on the move, etc ... important to remember the difference between 3G, WiFi, LAN. We looked at having to consider the broadest audience ... desktops, laptops, mobile ... think of who you are reaching and how. Consider the delivery mechanisms, work to standards and understand why some are moving away from certain tools. This is where the Flash-bashing started. Earlier in the day I had raised about the issues with the lack of Flash in education since there are many resources in Flash (with few plans to change from talking with some vendors) and the push is very much that Flash might have been very good once, but now is just not suitable because things like killing battery life, CPU overhead, etc. Likewise, when conversation go onto standards HTML5 was up there are the way to go ... and I had to point out that it isn't ratified, that there is the risk that it might go down a route Apple don't want and that time / money could be wasted. However, Chris did ask what the alternative would be then ... and after you rule out the use of Flash (and we can have a long discussion about Flash and open standards) there is little left to go for. As an aside, I have been party to a number of rants about how bad Flash is, especially for updating, things breaking and not being open, yet when someone decides to drop it (such as Apple or Microsoft for the Metro interface of Windows 8 ) you get an outcry of the masses ... sometimes I think you just can't win!

Back to the session though, and we looked at what were the building blocks (Text, Audio, Video) and the construction areas (podcasts, web, apps). Again, stressing the use of open formats, text comes in 2 forms - PDF and ePub. I did query (via Twitter) about whether Open Document format (ODF) should be included in there and after some research it is indeed a standard for office documents along with OOXML and even the UK Govt has previously stressed ODF and open standards should be used as standards for sharing documents ... and it has support from Apple but iWork still does not support ODF. We already know that PDF is fine when used in it's simplest form but as soon as you start adding other objects into it (video, etc) then you are relying on additional code to make it work ... and there in lies a problem. In schools it is so frustrating to receive materials as PDF from an exam board only to find you need a particular version of Adobe Reader to open it and that it will not open in any other PDF reader. This is where ePub comes into its own. It gives a greater user experience, allows for more user control such as changing font, text, colour, flexible orientation, etc. Personally I like to use Scrivener or Calibre to create ePub files. When looking at audio we talked about the importance of compression vs quality. MP3 still wins out as a format for many. For video we looked at the difference between Codecs and Containers, H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 : m4v, mp4, 3gp, mov, avi, etc ... and looked the simplicity of selection within the Apple toolset. Assembling all these parts together is the construction bit ... and this is what makes the difference.

The Web is standards based ... HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. At least these are where Apple technology is centred ... mainly because it works and keeps things simple. We looked at the use of apps v web and a hybrid approach, but Chris was keen to say that Web Apps give the best method of dealing with a broad audience. We looked at using Pages to create ePubs and it does work extremely well ...

Distributing content is an important factor in education still. As much as we might love the idea of user created content and co-creation as an approach within the pedagogy of your curriculum, you are pretty much guaranteed to have some content to distribute to the users / pupils / students. There are 2 ways to get content onto devices, via cable or via WiFi. Cable requires plugging in and using iTunes. This is suitable for personal or 1:1 devices but is a pig for class sets. Even setting up the small technology toolkits we have had going out to schools takes up time and I was glad that Peter Ford was doing it rather than me! I have to admit that iOS5 and Sync over WiFi has been very handy for me on my own devices ... but again, that comes down to personal responsibility. When it comes to WiFi there are a number of tools for hosted shares for accessing WebDAV style solutions ... WebDAV Navigator can be a handy app and many apps have tools to allow you to save to WebDAV too. I did ask about the use of iCloud and the Data Protection Act and at the moment there is no direct guidance / advice. As always with these things, if you have concerns or cannot confirm you are not covered then you should not use such services. On a personal note I think iCloud to a local server would be a good option ... but I doubt we will see Apple do that for a variety of reasons, including security. The methods of ensuring that published apps are done via Apple's services are also part of the locked down environment and I'll leave it to iOS App Developers to give better explanations of how and why this works. As far as those deploying solutions in schools go ... you are not bundling your own apps and pushing them out GPO style.

We then started to make use of a locally deployed Lion Server. This was key to how the workshop continued but with a bit of careful thinking a number of the features can be delivered via other options. We started by accessing the Wiki Server, an easy way of getting resources made available by the class teacher, in this case it was hosted on a local MacMini Server. Interestingly I was discussing the use of Wikis with Tom Rees (@trees2066) and we both agree that this is one of the best co-creation tools out there. Unfortunately, as far as I have been able to find out, Wiki access is a bit clunky still in Lion Server. If anyone has a good guide to allowing student control of the Wiki I would appreciate it.

Then we get onto controlling the devices. Yes ... I know most are thinking the same I was ... about time, but it really did make sense why the session followed the structure it does. You need to understand what type of resources may need to be used and how they are accessed first.

The session talked about the 3 options ... the personal device (in a 1-to-1 situation), the institute owned device assigned to an individual (still 1-to-1) and the shared device. With a shared device it is a fixed setup, only admins make changes ... and you have to return to base (i.e. the SysAdmins) to reset, update or redeploy.

With any 1-to-1 setup you are going to get a mix of institutional and private data. Apps could be owned by the institute (gifted?), provide updates one recovery capabilities ... but there is a massive amount of user responsibility. The User is in charge, can do pretty much anything and chooses to accept the configuration to be part of the educational environment ... but more on that later.

All new devices (or when devices get redeployed) have to go through 4 steps. Activate, update, configure and sync. Who will do these steps really depends on the model used. Mobile Device Management tools are key. It seems that Apple's MDM tool actually uses the same provided sub-set of controls as the larger commercial offerings out there. There is a difference in the UI and when you buy in a commercial package you get told how it will work ... I suppose this could be viewed as the same as using parts of RM's CC3/4, which bolts on / controls aspects of Microsoft's Active Directory.

A key aspect of using MDM though is the Certificate Signing Request. No matter what you use, this is a must (again, going back to the security mentioned earlier) and is needed as part of the Apple Push Notification Service ... Security of updates of configurations is carefully thought out here ... and yes, it needs to be thought out and planned, the central server / controller needs to be available ... and at this point you realise that if you don't have a central machine then you are going to struggle. If you already have an OSX Server to control any desktop / laptops from Apple ... then this is where to start.

Centralised configuration can do a lot ... sort out wireless settings, proxy settings, email, calendar ... and much more. A number of these can also be provided on OSX Server, but you can also use other providers too. Exchange is big one in many schools now, but I have recently seen a setup accessing a hosted Sharepoint / Exchange solution from a VLE provider too. But back to the configuration ... One important thing to remember ... you cannot stop people removing apps via the central configuration, it is a setting you have to do on the local machine (Settings > General > Restrictions ... then Enable Restrictions and turn Deleting Apps off).

The main config tool you will come across is the iPhone Configuration Utility to create Profiles of how devices will be configured. These are then initially pushed to connected devices (via cable) or pulled by the user. This is where OSX Server comes into play. The same box running the Wiki Server also enables devices to connect to a configuration service. Pretty simple really. Set up a guest wifi in your school which only gives you access to the config server. Connect to the server via a web page. Pull down the config (if you are allowed too ... security starts with User Authentication) by authenticating, install the provided certificate and then the encrypted config comes down over the air. The details of what can be controlled via the iPhone Config Utility are covered in detail in Apple's documentation and there is quite a bit covered there. This new config can then have the *real* WiFi network settings in it.

Those of you who have experience of dealing with .plist files for controlling Apple OSX devices via WGM or .adm files for GPOs will not be surprised that the settings are just XML strings ... but the config tools do all the work for you.

The session showed some examples of over the air changes. We had YouTube running ... and then it was gone. The app closed and was then gone from the device. Access to particular WebApps / resources pushed out as weblinks. Device access to OSX Server provided WebDAV used to show uploading of pictures and documents created in Apple apps such as Pages.

The session really did only touch the tip of the iceberg, and I think that even doing a full day would not cover all the questions many of us would have. Like many things, it would only be after a few weeks of hands-on testing of a deployment that we would have a good idea about the full extent of what can and can't be done, the different places you have to go to to make changes, the extent to which Apple security controls so many things ... and so we come onto the positives and limitations of central deployment.

I'm not going to strictly put them in order, because so many are linked.

The ability to have some control is needed and what you get is kept as simple as possible. This keeps the background load on the device pretty low, which has the positive affect of longer battery life, etc ... let's face it, we have all moaned at some point about the load AV software or certain middleware applies to devices ... and it also means that there is less chance of conflicts of settings. The limitation is that you have to operate within boundaries of the tools and settings you have ... you can't suddenly think of a new tool or setting. If the option is to turn YouTube off then that is what you have ... not just limit it to particular sections. For that you have to use another tool such as a proxy server / filtering solution. You can't stick remote monitoring tools on there such as you might have on desktops (Impero, NetOp, AB Tutor Control) or the security key loggers (Securus, Policy Central) as this is not what it is designed for.

As a device which can be personalised you also have to accept that the user can choose to turn of your centralised controls. If they do then they loose access to all those settings you have loaded onto the device ... the wireless, the email, weblinks, etc. Now, I know many will be screaming at the screen right now about that being useless in class environment ... the disruption as yet another student needs to go to see IT Support to get things fixed ... but surely this is just another bit of classroom management. If a child doesn't turn up with the right PE kit, or damages equipment in Design Technology ... then surely it is a discipline issue, not the problem of the equipment / technology. And yes, it does go back to what has been mentioned before about carefully thinking about which model you are going to use.

Personally, I can see a class set of iPads only really being usable if there is an OSX Server device in the same room and accessed by the class teacher. There will be some admin tasks around this and I can see that being a problem due to some restrictions about how much tech support / admin teachers should be doing. I think you do need this personal access to the OSX Server too as this will be a key tool for providing access to resources and pushing things to the devices. I do also worry about how files / resources on a class set of devices would be tidied up / cleaned out. This needs a bit more thought and planning really. In a 1-to-1 scheme this is the responsibility of the user, and you could say that tidying up the device could be seen as an activity by the child in the same way they would tidy up the classroom before leaving a lesson ... but we all know things get missed. All it would take would be for one naughty child to find a dodgy picture or, probably even worse, take an unsuitable picture and maliciously leave it for someone else (another child) to find. This is not just a concern I have about Apple devices ... far from it, I worry about the misuse of any handheld device ... and the lack of pretty much any control on Android devices worry me even more. We'll have to just see what happens when Windows 8 comes out too, but based on previous experience of working with Microsoft tools ... I think this will be a bit more thought out.

So, a summary.

iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads can be centrally controlled in an educational environment. It is best designed for a 1-to-1 scheme rather than class sets, but that doesn't mean it can't work and work well. No matter what model you choose you will have to think carefully about how you want to deliver the curriculum, how you will push out access to resources, how you will change some of the school procedures to take into account the growing use of handheld devices and this really does mean thinking about how classroom management will deal with things rather than relying on technology to fix things for you. You need to look at how you deploy and control your wireless networks.

I would honestly recommend anyone looking at either class-sets or 1-to-1 schemes to talk with other schools already doing it. You must also talk with at least one Apple Solutions Expert or AASP. They will help you with access to Apple Distinguished Educators who can work with you to think about your curriculum to make the most of the investment made in the kit. It is not just about the cost of the equipment alone.

ASEs will also help you access other things too ... including things like information / support from Apple Financial Services. If you are serious about going to a 1-to-1 scheme then the finances need to be carefully thought about. I have seen too many 1-to-1 schemes fail on that aspect or fail on the curriculum design.

There are plenty of good resources on the Apple site to go through (some already linked) and the case studies make interesting reading ... and with enough time in-house staff will be able to deliver good, workable and stable solutions ... but I would still like to see a comprehensive guide as to how to deliver this. However, we have already covered how Apple tend to deliver things ... and, being honest, the expertise of ASEs is usually worth the investment in time and money.

Originally published on Grumbledook.org