Firstly, we have to a massive thank you to Graham Brown-Martin and the team who have allowed us to take part. In an off-hand comment about free stands he kindly not only offered EduGeek some tickets (and a discount for others) but he also asked Chris if he would like to have a stand at the conference to share the ideals of the community with others. So many people here have been impressed with EduGeek, but are surprised that, although they didn’t know more about us, they are eager to see how they can contribute and help.

Learning Without Frontiers is a slightly different conference to many that we have been to before. In previous years there have been the Handheld Learning Conference, Games-based Learning Conference and Digital Safety strands. These have been merged into a single conference in London, with others planned for USA and Ghana. It is all about the people that push the boundaries of things … getting them all together to share what goes on, how they do it, argue discuss the agenda in education and get things moving forward.

Many of the sessions from the conference have been filmed (many were streamed), and will be online on the conference site over the coming weeks. There will be plenty of notes from the various delegates around and about … we will try to collate as many of them together as over the coming week and hope you find them useful … remembering that these are the ideas that are reaching your schools and are getting them thinking about where they need to go next with technology.

Sunday saw The Sunday Service, the free day where delegates were encouraged to bring along their kids … and it was fantastic to see so many of them involved and leading sessions … and with people like Jason Bradbury and the Immersive Theatre group it is hard not to join in yourself. The evening saw another TeachMeet where you could see examples of technology being used in schools from blogging through to using the Nintendo DS, kids creating content and then sharing with other schools …

Monday and Tuesday were for paying delegates and with speakers like Karen Cater (Director of Educational Technology, US Dept of Education), Ed Vaizey MP (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries), David Yanton (General Manager, Nintendo UK), Ray Maguire (MD, Sony Computer Entertainment UK), the Digital Safety strand in association with the Nominet Trust …. and then we also have the teachers at the front lines themselves leading many sessions … it is not hard to see why it has been so busy.

Last night was also the LWF Awards … for those who fancy taking a break from the glitz and clam of the black tie of the BETT Awards it was a wonderful breath of fresh air. A wonderful night out in a trendy café might not sound much to many, but when you have wonderful food, good company, uni-sex toilets where the wallpaper is Fraggle Rock, He-Man or Ghostbusters (Shaun has the pictures to prove it), steampunk twitter and vanilla milkshakes … well … Peroni for Shaun and Chris … it sets up for a perfect evening of awards hosted by the irrepressible Maggie Philbin. Any person or company who was nominated could have won, but the deserving winners were heartily applauded by all. It was also good to see that Apps For Good and Mobl21, two groups we have had some good chats with, were amongst the winners.

As we come to the afternoon of the last day Shaun and Chris will be heading in to Lord Puttnam and Jimmy Wales … before heading over to the other big event this week … but Chris will fill you in on that.

Another issue over the festive was that it appears spammers have decided to spoof edugeek's domain to send mass mail to large numbers of users. The emails dont come from our servers etc but sadly that means there is nothing we can do. So far all the spam has come from fake @edugeek.net email addresses rather then any official ones and usually when looking at the headers the senders ip is from a adsl connection in the states etc.

Users are being tricked into clicking a link that claims to find their first ever Facebook status and post it on their wall. The post contains randomly generated content instead of the user's first ever status but one thing remains constant, they all have links to a malicious survey.

When filled in, this survey allows the scammers to sell personal information on and sign users up to spam E-Mail lists and premium rate phone services. The malicious link will also install a rogue application that posts spam messages on the user's wall that attempt to trick their friends into filling in the survey.

Sophos has a video of what to do if you become infected, along with further information of the attack, on their Naked Security blog.

The winner must:

1. Have more than 30 forum posts.

2. Have posted at least 1 month before the draw is held

3. Have been a member for over a certain period of time (say 6 months)

And the Winner of an Apple iPad courtesy of IDG Communications (not sure what version, so please stand by!) is:

Scruff

Well done, and I hope it makes a nice early Christmas present for you. If you could let us know your details please PM me. However is you are attending BETT we could do a little presentation then if you'd like

Chris

Please report any issues found in the Site Problems forum.

Until Google resolves the issue please switch to another non-tabbed theme by using the style selector at the bottom of the page or clicking the icon if you are logged in.

This has been fixed by google now, http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2010/12/dev-channel-update_16.html

I'd like to thank all of you out there for your support and feindship over the past 12 months, especially those who have made it to the confs, BETT and the ISTE show in Denver. We will always have time for a chat with you should you need to bend our ears or just have a chat.

So it just remains to wish you all well over the Christmas period and we hope that Santa brings you just what you wanted, and don't forget to come and see us at BETT and the Learning Without Frontiers conf in January if you can, and if you are in the US we shall be at the ISTE Show in Philidelphia in June if you can make it.

Merry Christmas,

Dos_Box and the admins and mods of EduGeek.

We think that in the future you're likely to see a more dynamic mix between on-site IT systems and cloud-based ones. And this white paper is designed to help identify, discuss and address some of the key considerations as more choices become available.

To read more and get the white paper please check out the Microsoft Schools Blog

This article was brought to your in partnership with the Microsoft UK Schools Blog

7.5 will be discontinued from March onwards

Products Affected:

• Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 7.x
  
• EM Library 1.3.x
  
• Enterprise Console 3.x
  
• Sophos Control Center 2.x
  

The desktop message will read:

Sophos Anti-Virus 7, EM Library and Sophos Control Center will be retired at the end of March 2011. You should upgrade computers running these products so that your network continues to be protected.

Messages will appear on all computers from the start of January 2011.

To turn off these messages and to learn more about the retirement, visit Sophos support knowledgebase article .

Full KB Article Regarding this can be found here: http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/112120.html

James.

1. Turn the slate over so the screen is facing down.

2. Applying downward pressure, push up (gently) on the small strip at the top of the unit, and gently remove.

3. On the exposed interior top you will see two screws. One on the left and one on the right. The one on the left will have an anti-tamper sticker on it as shown in the picture. You can either remove the sticker or punch through it with a screwdriver.

4. Unscrew and remove both left and right hand screws and put safely to one side (as they are rather small)

5. Gently slide the chassis and screen apart by applying pressure to the rear and sliding it slowly downwards. It should slide about 4-5mm.

6. Open up the tablet like a book, very slowly to reveal the innards. The copper coloured plate is the back of the screen.

Unfortuantely I cannot go any further due to lack of tools, but my first task on Monday when (if) I get in the office will be to remove some of the component covers and find out where the 3G modem is supposed to go, but given the size of the device and the limited space within I'm wondering whether it will be specialist component rather than a 'normal' mini PCI-e modem.

It will also be interesting to see whether the RAM can be increased or not. Also note the size of the battery, which takes up almost half of the internal space.

Previously and Windows 7 based tablets have been lacking in both power, memory and storage with low end VIA processors coupled with a measly 1GB RAM and a distinct lack of any significant storage and screen space.

RM Slate 100 Spec:

• Intel Atom 1.6 GHz (Pineview-M N450)
  
• 2GB DDR2 800Hz Ram
  
• 32GB SSD
  
• Windows 7 Home Premium Edition
  
• 11.6" 1366x768 Display
  
• Capactive Multi-Touch Display
  
• Bluetooth
  
• 802.11 b\g\n Wireless
  
• mini HDMI
  
• 2 USB Ports
  
• SD Card Slot
  
• Sim Slot
  
• Weight 995 Grams
  

Until now that is, with the RM Slate 100 we finally have a tablet that is on par with the capabilities of any modern netbook and low end laptops. With a weight of only 995 grams and a price of only £399 (ex VAT) it oozes value with great build quality and a rubberised coating on the back giving the well balanced chassis a great feel in your hands.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8894[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]8893[/ATTACH]

The only think overlooked (or more likely removed to save costs) is the SIM card slot is not connected to a 3G modem. If it is it isn’t showing in Device Manager or in the BIOS but that may just be a bug etc and sadly RM's site is lacking much documentation yet.

After a couple of hour’s initial charge and a short Windows 7 setup routine I was ready to roll. Sort of. It did take a little tweaking to increase the default icon and text size as my sausage fingers (think jumbo sausage. In batter) found it awkward to accurately press on icons and menu options. This wasn’t due to a lack of accuracy on the screens part but rather the small contact area that the screen presents by default. I suspect that small children won’t experience these problems, however I feel staff should possibly be issued with a stylus to assist in operation of the device.

The device also is fitted with an accelerometer to assist in screen orientation, but I have found this a little ‘laggy’ with the screen blanking for a second before being redrawn at the correct orientation. And when you start to push it a bit you can hear the fan kicking in. It's not loud, but it is noticable. I also began to notice the gaps in Windows 7 tablet capabilities about this point. Windows 7 was designed with tablet functionality in mind from the off, however the actual ergonomics and methods of operation are far removed from what we see from Apple and Android offerings, and once you start to use W7 on a tablet these become more apparent. For instance the on-screen keyboard is small and not very intuitive, especially when typing in passwords and hidden fields. Where, for example, the iPad\iPhone keyboard will highlight the latter pressed, there is no such indication with the W7 on-screen keyboard. It can however handily be resized and swiped out of the way when not required.

If Microsoft want to seriously offer Windows as a viable slate\tablet OS than they really need to polish it up a bit, as compared to their rivals it looks positively clunky. That is not to say it is unusable. Far from it, it just lacks the thought others have put in as to how we user touch devices differently to traditional keyboard and mouse inputs, and considering just how many users experience of touch screen devices differs from how they have to interact with Windows 7, hunt-and-peck will have to be replaced with hunt-and-prod-and-prod-and-prod.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]8892[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]8891[/ATTACH]

Note: These pictures are pretty bad and do not reflect the display quality which is very good.

I recall several years back that when we were kindly presented by RM at our second annual conf the UK’s first EeePC I said that in this product RM had something rather special. I think RM have done it again, and at a price that is more than reasonable for the level of hardware offered, and from this I can almost guarantee that you will see some of these in your schools soon.

Now, I wonder if it runs Ubuntu Netbook Edition?

RM Slate 100: Avalible from RM Direct at http://www.rm.com/shops/rmshop/Product.aspx?cref=PD1787832&rguid=f42c38ca-eb26-49af-afaf-b99c3111a591

Edited to add: It's been 2 days since I have started to play with this slate and I have to say I'm struggling to find many faults with it. The display impresses me more and more each day. It's very bright clear and vibrant, however you will find yourself digging into the advance power settings to get the brightness correct as you will be using this on batteries a lot more than plugged in, and the capacitive ability is very resposive without being overly so. What you must watch out for however is fingers accidentally contacting the edge of the screen when holding the tablet and inputting at the same time as random things happen!!. Battery life seems OK (I've not had time to run full stopwatch tests under load conditions yet) and I've been using it for regular internet browsing and running office 2010, and have always got over 3 hours from it, without completely running the battery down. As for faults I find it can get a little bogged down and 'pause' for about 10 seconds. I've noticed this when browsing with both IE and Firefox, but stangely not when using other applications.

Also using the Windows interface with just fingers is becoming more and more normal and I can now pretty much hit each icon and toolbar first time every time. I still think the interface needs a rework for slate devices though. I would also recommend you download the Microsoft Touch pack (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b152fadd-82e4-4ddb-a46a-aebe49944428&displaylang=en) to let you demonstate multi-touch and other aspects of the touch interface to potential users.

The video clip was accidentally played to the class after the teacher, who hasn't been named, brought a VHS Player in to the school to play an educational tape after the school's one had broken down. Unfortunately the VHS player belonging to the teacher had an adult film loaded and began playing the explicit content to the class.

Devon County Council have said the teacher was disciplined for the incident but parents are outraged, claiming they were not informed of the incident in good time and accused the school of attempting to cover it up.

And many of us would agree because *we* are the people who have done that rant ... and occasionally there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Over the last few weeks I've had a few interesting conversations with a number of resellers and it was brilliant to to see the news finally come out on Ray Fleming's blog earlier about changes to Schools Agreement licences.

Full details will be out around BETT 2011 but here is a short extract from Ray's blog with some important things for you to look at now.

What do you do now?

Firstly, let me remind you that this is advance warning of a change coming on the 1st March 2011. So you can't get this new agreement now.*But here's some advice on what you can do now:

• If you are going to renew a School Agreement between now and the 1st March, ask your Microsoft partner whether you'd be best to get a short-term extension for your School Agreement. This would give you 3 months of cover, to take you through until you can switch to EES. Your Microsoft Partner will be able to advise you if this is likely to save you money.
  
• If you're planning to buy any Microsoft software in the next year, then consider coming along to our BETT stand in January, and having a chat with us about your best option.*<em>If your Head Teacher is reluctant to sign off a day out of school, then point out how much you might save with the new way of counting (staff, not computers).
  
• If you're not buying your software under a School Agreement subscription already, then take a look at this, and have a chat with other schools locally that are. Although the new EES scheme isn't the same, you'll get a good idea of the benefits of subscriptions over other methods, and that will help you to make the right informed choice for next year.
  

So ... go and have a read of the details ...

Now, I know many people are against subscriptions ... and I have been there too. The idea of buying a perpetual licence sounds good to us all, especially if you don't upgrade with every new version of the OS or Office Suite when it comes out, so we would all be forgiven for getting frustrated with the cost of upgrades (especially when you don't get all the features with standard upgrade packages and need to cough up a bit more cash) against an annual cost. However, the new scheme actually comes out pretty good on the prices when you look at the cost of when you upgrade versions of your OS and various software packages ... for most secondaries you would find that it wasn't worth the cost to go to an annual model unless you had some major software replacement needs ... but now ... it is looking pretty good.

The full figures should be out in Jan (the scheme goes live for schools in March ... and is live now for FE/HE) but if you are looking at buying under Select licences (especially if you are using software assurance) then make plans to look at ESS instead.

Your reseller should be talking to you about the changes shortly, but if they don't then tell them you want more information. If you are already on the Schools Agreement then make sure that you only sign up for an extension and not for a full year. You need to make sure you get your extension in *before* your SA deal runs out. Make sure your reseller gets the forms to you sharpish.

So ... there you have it ... a major change in the approach to licences from Microsoft ... so, they obviously have listened. There will still be those that want it for free, and those who say you shouldn't use those products anyway ... but a reality check here ... people are using MS products and will continue to for some time so you need to keep an eye on this.

Will it ever be free? Who knows? All I know is that this is a chance for a lot of my local schools to save considerable amounts of money as well as getting more benefits too.

The first bit is about the Sharepoint Evolution event from earlier in the year. If you weren't able to make it you can have a box set of the DVDs via a prize draw at Dave's blog. Please visit SharePointEduTech 2010 Evolution Conference DVD Box Set Prize Draw for more details.

Also, there are other Sharepoint events which go on throughout the year and next year the European Best Practices Conference is in London. There is a discount available and more details are available via Dave's blog at SharePointEduTech European SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2011 Educational Discount

Good look to those entering the prize draw.

http://www.imperov3.co.uk/

As part of a campaign to poison search results for popular topics, criminals have been tricking search engines into linking to malicious pages that attempt to persuade users into installing a fake update for Mozilla Firefox. The fake update installs malicious software on to the user's computer which displays harrassing messages to purchase antivirus software from the scammers.

Websense has reported that 22.4% of search results in the Top 100 for big news stories are malicious links, overtaking searches for the adult industry at 21.8%. The same method has also been used in the past for other major news events such as Rememberance Day. Image results are also being used as an attack vector by scammers.

More information on the attacks can be found here.

SMART Technologies has introduced the SMART Board 800 interactive whiteboard series according to Smart ‘a next-generation series that will provide the most natural and intuitive user experience yet’.

The 800 series supports multiuser writing and common multitouch gestures currently recognised in Microsoft® Windows® 7 and Mac Snow Leopard®. SMART Notebook™ collaborative learning software will support certain features, such as freestyle interactions, touch gestures and full object awareness upon the release of SMART Notebook 10.7 software (expected by March 2011). Which will allow SMART Board 800 series users to take full advantage of gestures within SMART Notebook lesson activities

Using SMART Notebook 10.7 software will enable freestyle interaction, where two students can work together on the same interactive lesson activity and perform different tasks simultaneously – such as writing with digital ink and manipulating digital objects – anywhere on the interactive whiteboard surface

The European debut of the 800 series will be at the BETT Show in January. The 800 series – which includes the models 880 and 880i, and the widescreen 885, 885i and 885ix models – will begin shipping in North America on November 29, 2010 and globally on January 30, 2011.

Elswhere Asus have released the 10.1” Eee PC 1015PEM and 1018P includes some impressive specifications boasting up to 11.5 hours of battery life and according to ASUS the first in the market to contain the Intel’s latest N550 Dual Core Atom processor. USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth 3.0 and a webcam

The Eee PC 1018P is ultra-slim (only 18-21mm thick) with a brushed-aluminium casing. The Eee PC 1015PEM is available in four colours: red, blue, white and black.

Priced from £279 inc Vat for the 1015PEM and £349 inc VAT for the 1018P, these new Eee PC models will be available from PC World (http://www.pcworld.co.uk), Comet (http://www.comet.co.uk), http://www.ebuyer.com, http://www.amazon.co.uk and http://www.play.com from this week.

Russell Dyas is an Educational Technologist & IT Professional from the UK and has written for a number of publications such as Computer World UK and the USA publication Tech & Learning Magazine.

Of interest to those in the education sector are the following public bodies that will be cut:

- General Teaching Council

- Independant Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy

- Qualification and curriculum Development Agency

- School Food Trust

Other public bodies at risk include the School Support Staff Negotiating Body and the Training and Development Agency for Schools.

The BBC article, with accompanying PDF document listing the cuts and organisations under threat, is available here.

Just breaking on the BBC news website now. It appears that the higher-ups at CEOP didn't want to be assimilated as part of the National Crime Agency and so the boss has fallen on his sword so to speak.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11472033

The chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) has offered his resignation, the BBC has learned.

 

The Home Office confirmed the Home Secretary was aware Jim Gamble had sent a resignation letter to her.

 

The agency said it did not feel it was in the best interests of children and young people for Ceop to be assimilated into the National Crime Agency.

 

The merger proposal was outlined by Theresa May in July.

 

Ceop told the BBC it "does not feel that it is in the best interests of children and young people for CEOP to be assimilated into the National Crime Agency, as was announced a short while ago.

 

"This direction of travel does not seem to have changed and Ceop's CEO, Jim Gamble, has therefore offered his resignation to the Home Secretary with a four month notice period. We are not prepared to comment further."

 

It is understood that Ceop has made representations to the government since the announcement that its work was to become part of the proposed National Crime Agency.

CEOP, for those of you that don't know is a very, very good organisation that takes on child abuse oniine and provides some frightningly good training for schools and staff in this area. I sincerly hope the merger works out for the best as it would be a great shame to see the service it provided removed from the online spectrum.

As part of a campaign to promote public schools in the area, a large billboard went up promoting the "15 best things about our public schools." Unfortunately for the billboard's creators, not even four proof-reading sessions could prevent the letter L from being omitted in the word public and changing the meaning completely.

A picture of the offending billboard can be found here.

Adobe have stated in their news bulletin that updates are only available via the official Adobe Reader download page and not from any other source.

Time to get warning your users then. Thanks to Angry Technician for the heads up on this one.

The page can be reached by visiting https://encrypted.google.com but Google do stress that search results you click on can still be intercepted by an ISP unless the page you visit also uses the https:// protocol. Network administrators may also want to block the https://encrypted.google.com subdomain as it can interfere with web filtering systems.

More information can be found on the Google SSL Details page.

Smart Technologies are running a campaign which ends on 31 August 2010 that has been designed to raise the awareness of the benefits of registering for the SMART Board IWB’s warranty. Schools registering for the warranty will be selected each week for a range of prizes including a laptop trolley filled with 30 Fizzbook Spin 10.1" mini tablet PCs with WIN7 starter, one of 75 SMART Response PE 32 handset kits and one of 100 SMART Slate units.

Schools wanting to take part in the promotion should register online at http://www.activatemywarranty.co.uk using their unique activation code. Any enquiries should be addressed to distributor Steljes Customer Services on 08450 747 007.