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It must be that time of year as manufactures start to release various new products in time for both the Christmas and BETT 2011. Both Asus & Smart Technologies have new releases. 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.

Device Name: - Philips DirectLife Price: - $99 (which includes the device and four month subscription $12.50 every month normally). Other Information: - The device is only available in USA and Netherlands but there are companies that will act as an intermediary to get your packages back to the UK. Basic Information: - The DirectLife system is a fitness device that helps you monitor the amount of movement across your whole day and then highlight where you can improve and help people tap into a healthier them. The service comes with a personal coach who will monitor and provide support via email. The main device is so small that it can be worn on a belt, as a necklace, on your chest or in your pocket. It is also waterproof up to a depth of 3 meters which means that you can wear it while in water such as when you are swimming. The device has a light system that flashes which means that you can see how far or near your daily goal you are. It connects via a USB connection to synchronize your device with the website and to recharge the unit. Once you have activated the first step is an assessment period where you wear the device for eight days. On the eighth day you are shown the results of the assessment period in the secure area of the website. You are then assigned a coach (who in my case was a nice woman called Jen) who will set with you a goal for the amount of calories to be burned per day over the next week. The coach will look at where you had downtime in the last week and discuss with you ways of increasing your movement. The key to the DirectLife programme is not a focus on exercising (that is part of it) but to make sure that you’re moving as much as you can through the whole day. In my results, it became clear while at work I was moving at a consistent rate but had periods through the weekend when I did not move as much. Areas Done Well: ]The device has many positive areas. The coaching part was very good and Jen provided me with resources and advice to work out where I could make improvements in my week. The device recording is good providing information in fine detail, for example you can see your activity in minute blocks. They also have a community section (which they have just launched) providing a place to meet and make friendship requests to other users. You can send private messages to other uses and search for other people based on what information is in their public profile such as name, city and activities they like. They also have a team’s section (groups by any other name) in which you can create your own and join other peoples teams. Areas For Improvement: The device is very good and a couple of revamps would make the device even more useful. The community section needs extra features for example being able to match DirectLife users with contacts of common email services such as Gmail. Being able to search the profiles for users from a certain country would be useful. The profiles could do with some more detail. However, the community section is a new area and one they are certainly working on improving. Philips are targeting some of their marketing to large companies as a way of giving the company a chance to take part in the well being programme. I would also like to see the ability to define through different parts of the day the way I am wearing the device. At the moment you can change the wearing position for each day but for example, if I wear it on my belt and then decide I want to go swimming I cannot say that for those few hours I was wearing it around my neck. Final Comment: The device works really well and for the geek in me, I love new gadgets like this. The coaching programme really stands out from a couple of other devices on the market that do similar things. The service is useful for motivating and as that is often the major factor for people giving up any kind of well being programme the more the device and your personnel coach can push you along the path and help us geeks tap into a healthier you the better. Do devices like this motivate you into a healthy lifestyle and what other things motivate you? 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.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (all right it was Coventry in 2003) FITS (Framework For ICT Technical Support) was created by soon to be closed BECTA. FITS unlike its creator is far from closed and is growing stronger by the day. FITS is a framework for the education IT support sector based on a version of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and every education ICT support technician should have this framework in their arsenal . About FITS In 2009 in a smart move as part of making FITS an independently run, international standard for IT Support in education, The FITS Foundation was created as a spin off from Becta, which was a smart move in hind-sight, with the recent announcement of the closure of Becta. This also allowed for FITS materials to be reviewed and relaunched as well, to fit in with FITS becoming an internationally accredited qualification. The framework is run by the FITS Foundation, they have created a mechanism in order that educational technical staff become certified with an NVQ Level qualification. There are a number of training providers one of which is XMA, Nottingham based supplier of IT hardware, supplies, services & solutions who provide two different levels of training; Practitioner level that is designed for ICT support technicians and Advanced level, aimed at Network Managers who have undertaken the first stage. FITS Training Course Provided By XMA I was lucky enough to be given the chance to sample the training offered by XMA at their training premises in Nottingham by undertaking the FITS Practitioner course. XMA are putting a large amount of energy into providing FITS throughout the Midlands and North of England, They have assembled a team to promote and provide FITS to schools and to provide a truly great experience from when you first book until you leave the course. As soon as I arrived, one of the XMA FITS team welcomed me and took me over to the training room. Throughout the course there was always someone from the XMA FITS team available to ask questions and to guide and help you. The first thing to strike me was that XMA do not view this as just another course to sell. Everyone I spoke to at XMA about the course did truly believe the course could really help professionalise the IT support industry within the education sector, even on my course there were eight XMA ICT support technicians from the company’s Birmingham School’s team. An important part of any course is the facilities especially if spending two whole days there. The room was a perfect size, refreshments were available throughout the day, the location is easily accessible and even the lunch was nice. The training is split into two days the first day going over each area of the FITS process and how they interlink with each other. The second day involves looking at a number of case studies, dissecting them, time for revision and then the all important exam. Day 1 Day one started with the obligatory introductions including one from our trainer Steve. They say that a trainer makes a course and this was certainly true in this case. The problem when teaching any framework is that you can risk the training becoming dry. Steve from the outset made the course interesting, varied and most importantly relevant. In addition, the course materials provided are excellent. Copies of all slides are available and a reference manual for the FITS process carrying a wide range of information, are handed out to assist in implementing the framework within your school. The course is fast paced yet easy to follow and by the end of day we had covered all but one of the process areas. Day 2 The first part of day two was a recap of day 1 and followed by covering the final process section. Then the course gets down to some real work making sure you can put into practice the knowledge you have gained. We then split into groups and given case studies to pick apart and feedback to the class in which we compared and discussed our findings. This was particularly useful as it put the processes into context. After lunch we were given 45 minutes of revision time while they set up the room for the exam. This was probably the most nerve-racking part of the two days trying to make sure you can remember acronyms used and really understand the information in your head. The Exam The exam is taken online and is multiple-choice. The interface was easy to use and understand (a full demonstration is given). The overall experience of the course provided by XMA was excellent; from all the staff, the facilities (it is on the edge of a nature area which is useful for 5 minutes of peace in your break) to the trainer. I highly recommend the XMA FITS course to anyone working within ICT Support in education (even if you have done ITIL - the course covers information not on the ITIL exam) as it provides you with invaluable information that can improve every ICT support technician and team. More Information: http://www.xma4education.co.uk/Schools/school_FITS_training.aspx http://www.thefitsfoundation.org/training/fits-training-courses-schedule/ http://www.thefitsfoundation.org/accreditation/practitioner-accreditation-support/ 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.

Apparently as title says only 30% of smarts boards have the free warranty activated on it. 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.

Once again that time of year again. Happy Sys Admin Day from all at EduGeek.net. What are you doing on this special day? System Administrator Appreciation Day

Lancashire - Saturday, 26 June 2010. Lancashire - Saturday, 26 June 2010. EduGeek.net the hugely popular free website for IT support staff working in education is making its physical presence known in the USA. For the first time EduGeek will exhibit at the ISTE 2010 (formerly known as NECC), the USA’s premier education conference. ISTE is being held in Denver between 27th and 30th June where you will find EduGeek.net teaming up with web-filter specialists SmoothWall. Both companies can be visited at stand number 1484. The Denver conference will be EduGeek’s first major exhibit outside of the UK which reflects the popularity of the site amongst US visitors are our second biggest group of visitors outside the UK. When we were offered the opportunity to exhibit with SmoothWall at ISTE 2010 we jumped at the opportunity. Our presence at ISTE 2010 means we can meet our US members face to face for the first time and raise our profile amongst the educational IT industry in the USA. EduGeek.net was founded in 2005 and provides resources; peer support and facilities for IT support staff in education, and increasingly the private sector all for free to all. EduGeek has many different elements from our very successful support forums, our free IT software and also member created utilities through to our highly successful conferences and our work with external organisations, such as the UK government and Microsoft on issues that affect IT is schools. Central to our core has been the fundamental principle that everything we provide is free for people to access and use. We have a global membership of over 24,000 IT technical staff and we welcome anyone who wishes to join in or simply use the vast quantity of technical information contained on the forums. EduGeek.net CEO Chris Byers and Webmaster\CTO Shaun Garriock will be manning the stand at the show. If you would like to get more information on EduGeek.net then please use the contact details below. ABOUT EDUGEEK.NET With over 24,000 members worldwide, EduGeek.net is the world’s largest online support community for IT staff in education. EduGeek.net was founded in 2005 by Chris Byers with the aim of allowing IT technical staff in education to get first class support and advice from other IT professionals without having their personal details passed, on, sold or being forced to pay a membership fee. ABOUT SMOOTHWALL The SmoothWall family of Internet security solutions helps schools, enterprises and small/medium businesses to prevent internet misuse, block objectionable content and protect against web related threats. Delivered and supported via a global network of partners in over 60 countries, SmoothWall's commercial and open source solutions now safeguard more than a million networks worldwide. For further details and information please contact: [email protected] [email protected] Visit us on stand 1484 at ISTE 2010 EduGeek Unit 5, Albert Edward House The Pavilions Ashton-on-Ribble Preston Lancs, UK PR2 2YB Tel: +44 (0)1772 842137 Fax: +44 (0)1772 842179 Mob: +44 (0)7806785028 (you can use this number to contact us at ISTE 2010)

At this year’s Sims.net Annual conference Capita in partnership with Verismic showed a new solution that has the potential to save a secondary school with their power bills. The way the software can save you money is by using the tools on the Verismic Power Management software to manage the power on your computer. The software that provides an all in one solution goes far beyond just setting and enforcing power policies it provides a number of useful reports on what each policy is doing and what money you are projected to save. The most useful feature of the software however is to be able to see a breakdown of when a machine was off, when it is being used and more importantly when a machine is on but not being used by anyone. Another useful feature is the machine shutdown and startup component of the software. While there are a number of solutions that do this already one of the ‘killer’ features is the smart shutdown. This means that if a process is running or is using more than a specified percentage of memory or cpu it will halt the shutdown until that PC is ready. The current government has already said it wants ‘to be the greenest government ever’ which means local authorities will have even more targets and consequently there will be even more pressure for schools to look at how to make sure that IT is managed in a greener way. Verismic is just one way schools can start to look at the green IT agenda.

EduGeek.net today released a joint statement supporting the letter sent to Rt Hon Michael Grove MP in which the importance of ICT in Education is stressed. Attached is the letter and joint release. If you wish to get further details or comments from EduGeek.net then please use following contact details. --* Russell Dyas Tel UK 020 8133 4179 Tel UK Mob: *07884071535 Tel US 240 764 47 07 SkypeID: rdyasuk [email protected] EduGeek.net - The Front Page Naace Press Release Joint Statement 220610 v1 0.pdf Letter_to_Mr_Gove_Naace_22_June_2010 v1 0.pdf

729,000 students and teachers in 4,000 schools across Ireland will get the opptertunity to access Encyclopedia Britiannica Online. Implemented by the National Centre of Technology for Education (NCTE) as part of a €150 million, three-year plan to improve the quality of ICT hardware, internet services and high quality digital content in schools,students can now view hundreds of articles, illustrations, interactive games and multimedia resources to support and extend their learning beyond the classroom. Delivered in partnership with eircom, Ireland’s leading broadband and content supplier, Encyclopaedia Britannica is available free-of-charge to all Irish schools through Scoilnet and the Schools Broadband Network. Ian Grant, Managing Director of Encyclopaedia Britannica (UK) Ltd comments, “We are proud to be delivering to schools in Ireland both our huge editorial resources as well as our training and professional development support programmes to teachers,ensuring thousands of learners and educators have access to the most current professionally written and edited source of knowledge available.. Britannica’s digital resources will provide the firm foundation for modern learning experiences for today’s generation of school-children.” Encyclopedia Britannica Are BETT 2010 Stand L9.

Smoothwall brought to BETT 2010 for its official release the SWG-1200 series of its “Guardian” web filtering family appliances. The SWG-1200 is available for education customers that need a higher performance than the existing SWG-700. Accredited by BECTA the filtering technology that was one of the first to block flash based games already provides thousands of schools with state of the art filtering. Smoothwall product manager Tom Newton says: “The addition of the SWG-1200 means we can offer dedicated and reliable hardware-based appliance to more sizeable schools with much more complex network needs.” Hardware Specification Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor: 2.66GHz, 6M Cache, 1333 MHz FSB 4 GBytes RAM 4 x Gigabit Ethernet interfaces on PCI Express® bus 2 x 500 GByte RAID1 Mirrored disk drives Multi function front-panel LCD display with four push buttons for system information 19" 1 U rack-mount (width=16.92"/430mm, depth=16"/406.4mm, height=1.73"/44mm) CE, RoHS and FCC approved WEEE compliant

Reallusion bring their leading-edge software to BETT 2010 that provides schools the ability to do film studio techniques on a mainstream PC with the fraction of the learning curve with CrazyTalk 6. CrazyTalk provides you the ability to take any picture and animate it to provide a virtual puppet the software uses the advance facial morphing technology that in no time you will be creating characters that come to life. You can see CrazyTalk at BETT2010 on Stand T27 http://www.reallusion.com/crazytal

U-Touch Launches the Worlds First 82” Integrated LCD Multitouch Screen at BETT 2010 Interactive technology specialist’s U-Touch will be exhibiting on stand M19 at this years BETT show at Olympia, London to present their extended range of education related teaching and conferencing audio visual products which have been successfully employed in many learning centres worldwide. The centre piece on the stand will be the new 82” fully integrated LCD with Windows 7 compatible multitouch, a gigantic presentation tool engineered using the NEC 8205 LCD. Also on show will be a range of other integrated displays and large format overlays for both Plasma and LCD. BETT 2010 - U TOUCH LIMITED