GrumbleDook

Most exhibitors will stay over and so either park at their hotel or have used arranged transport to get there. The spaces tend to be used by visitors to shows (or at least that is how it was explained to the Visitors Advisory Group when ExCeL was looked at as an alternative venue).

Once you are in you have to come to stand B290 and ask for @GrumbleDook ... the payment is decent chocolate (Hotel Chocolat and anything by Paul A Young that doesn't have coffee in it) ... once you have paid you will be left alone to go on your way! ;-) On a serious note ... no, the event is free to attendees. Looking forward to seeing you.

@Domino ... shhhh ... don't tell him the secret! No-one must know that the cluster has been expanded from just @Geoff to include @localzuk and @FN-GM oh ... oops

Steam for Schools? Does it need to tie in / support any part of the curriculum (eg to support G&T, to promote computing, targeting disengaged learners, etc)? If you are running it then I would make sure you are a member of a union purely for legal / insurance / allegation protection.

The K-Team are fantastic, award-winning, serious party people ... and if you can get Ray to demonstrate some Irish dancing all the better!

It was funny when an email hit my desk that had been passed around internally. It seems that BT had invited folk to meet one of their partners at BETT and have a look at their wonderful MIS ... a certain ASPEN. @GREED I officially have a reason to come over and heckle you now!

*Do Not Accept .region.sch.uk* To have a valid certificate you should own / manage / control the domain being used. You do not control .region.sch.uk ... no-one does (except Nominet). Your CA should be validating the ownership of the domain prior to the issuing of the certificate and if you let them proceed it can take flaming ages to get them to realise the mistake they are making. As with @j17sparky ... the voice of bitter experience of having to help out schools over the last 5 years!

I had always previously built it onto a machine prior to imaging ... I'll go and ask the foo at PiL to see if they have any ideas.

To clarify ... *everything* is a domain. TLD means Top Level Domain and it is controlled / managed by given organisations. .uk TLDs (.sch.uk, .me.uk, .org.uk) are dealt with by Nominet (some are delegated such as .police.uk and .gov.uk) and are not a true ccTLD (one of the reasons why I've always been told to refer to it as a cTLD instead) as they are an exception to ISO 3166. The next zone to the left of the TLD is the Second Level Domain. For .sch.uk this is a hierarchical zone to regionalise domains and so they are not used to register a domain (I believe that there are a few historic examples due to previous conversations with nominet but never been told what they are). The Third Level Domain is that which is registered via a Registrar and is considered as the 'domain'. The changes since RFCs 1480 and 1591 were written have been prodded and poked a number of times but perhaps RFC 3071 is an interesting one for folk to read to try to understand how things change, whether through gradual change due to need or simply due to change because that is how things ended up happening.

school.region.sch.uk is the domain ... vpn.school.region.sch.uk is the Fully Qualified Domain Name. region.sch.uk is not the domain (though the CA is treating it as such). A domain is the entirety of what is registered via a Domain Registrar. Some vendors have had a tendency to take the cTLD and treat the next zone as the domain, despite very clear instructions.

If you are no longer part of the LA then you have to have your own agreement and so are not able to log into their agreement. Licences can be transferred as long as there is not a clause in the agreement which says they cannot be transferred, or if there are clauses which require you to pay something such as an annual cost tied to that specify agreement. Operationally (from talking with some EdLARs) you get your own agreement, buy nominal licences to be able to access the software you need, ensure that you have documentation to say you purchased the originals via a previous Agreement and then a letter from the designated person in the LA to say the assets are being transferred as part of the conversion process (which will probably have a line in there about any transfer being dependent on MS agreeing to honour the licence, etc). This is how I have seen it done so far but is obviously subject to any specifics within any agreement. I would speak with a decent EdLARs about this when setting up your new Agreement and talking them through the above and see what they think.

No one using ME? Must go and rectify that Well done guys ... Still loving every minute on here.

Due to weather problems the session tomorrow has been cancelled (formal notification is being sorted atm and I'll link to it as soon as I have the notice) and it will be rescheduled. Sorry for the late notice but we have only just had the conversation with folk in the local area. @Gonk ... if you are coming to BETT let me know ... there will be sessions there too.

NB Declaration of Interest : I am presently working as a consultant to LP and WG on this. 1st line tech support for the HWB and HWB+ sites is via LearningPossibilities. However, there are always going to be times when support staff in schools will deal with or manage the issue on behalf of the teacher / learner with the problem. Local support for things like reseting passwords, etc are always going to about, even when they are also done by the LP 1st line desk or the LA. If a system was being rolled out where a school *didn't* have access to do things like change passwords, control access and permissions to given areas then folk would be rather unhappy (talking from experience on both sides here). Once this round of sessions has been done with LAs they will have more information for schools and I would advise folk to keep an eye on the page which Gareth has linked to above. LearningPossibilities do have an account on EG but are trying to work through the designated channels with the WG and LAs to get information out. There are folk like Gareth who are keeping a keen eye on what is going on so you will hear more from other members as they get involved. If there is anything I can share I will do but LAs and WG are the first ports of call. @Gonk I'll see you on Friday.

Mrs Reilly in my last year at primary who understood what dyslexia was but didn't tell me or anyone else her thoughts because she didn't want to label me. Instead she taught me a range of coping techniques and helped me understand that I wasn't slow, that I was actually bored during lessons and gave me hope again. Mr Smith, my Biology teacher in secondary and also form tutor ... who gave me kicks up the backside when needed, a love of problem solving and the understanding that education is a vocation ... not a job.

There are a few folk in Northants you might want to chat to if you can stretch travelling that far.

There is the same problem with twitter as well. A few years ago one friend booked two badges, the second one with his twitter ID ... and so people were able to connect Drew to @ digitalmaverick ... the next year some folk had their twitter IDs on t-shirts. There are extreme cases when people resort to becoming their avatar (Facepaint Friday!!!! must poke @Domino to bring along the kit!)

I do a fair bit of work via Lync or Skype now ... and still take part in regular edtech webinars using Google Hangout. I even drop into FlashMeeting too. They can all work, but it puts more pressure on organising paperwork beforehand. If people are using VC for governors meetings then making sure that paperwork is with people in advance and that they have read it is very important.

Whilst updating my bookmarks earlier today I came across a section of the JISCInfoNet site I had forgotten about (looks like it was updated late last year). Change management - Jisc infoNet is a pretty good infokit for those looking at change management, even if you don't have experience of it. It gives a good run down of the history, types, methods and helping you implement it. For those who have looked at / done FITS then you will see some common areas, and so will those with ITIL / PRINCE2 experience. It is worth following it through as if it was a self study guide, and try to think about one major piece of change you have done in the last 2 years and work out how you might have done it differently.

Or if you are on Office365 use Lync, or on GApps for Edu then use Hangout.

Having a support desk solution that allows you to put in SLAs also allows you to show why you might fail to meet KPIs, including the lack of appropriate staff. When you do your 5 year planning (refresh of kit, planned upgrades, etc) you should also try to indicate the staffing levels needed to deploy and maintain each area. This way you can get it in early when a school is expanding and even have set triggers so that if you school has put in 3 extra rooms, 2 extra trolleys of slates, etc ... SLT automatically know that you have hit a magic number and need to recruit before any further expansion / change.

No doubt some EG members will be chatting to MS at BETT, and this will come up. It would be good to see feedback on discussions.

If you put your name down with an address then expect to get some marketing materials. Entrance is no direct cost ... the indirect cost is the marketing guff you get as a result.

@rad PM sent

File Transfer needs to cover VM to host, VM to external storage (USB 2, USB 3, FW, etc) VM to another iMac via BlueTooth, VM to another device via LAN and VM to another device via WLAN.