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Hi Edugeekists! Does anyone know how a school might stand legally should they show a currently popular (musical) film at the school's Xmas ball? I choose my legalese carefully Cheers Andrew

I arrived to the Unplugged event about ten minutes late due to a misguided right turn on the road before the venue which led me several kilometers away to the end of a long queue of traffic which added fifteen minutes to my travel time. I’ll summarize some of the things that I found interesting which you may or may not know about Office 2010. First up Office Web Access, this is an online implementation of the Office applications that replicates much of the functionality of the full Office suite in any standards compliant browser using HTML and JavaScript. Although not full featured it does appear to have a large amount of the functionality and the same UI as the desktop version. To get access to it all you need is a Professional or Standard version of Office 2010, your documents and Office Web Apps can be hosted for free on MS Sky Drive with a Windows Live ID or locally inside your own network on a server with either the free SharePoint Foundation server or full SharePoint Server. The sky drive implementation allows for multiple users to access and edit the documents at the same time. SharePoint goes much further with version tracking, searching and other features. A big thing that I will find useful is the fact that you can embed full Office document views into web pages for easy viewing or printing in any modern browser. No more PDF newsletters or forms, given the rights control on Sky drive you should not even need your own SharePoint server to do this. Just a live ID. The software itself has also, like Windows 7 been written for speed, the minimum requirements were quoted at just 256MB or RAM and a 500MHz CPU on Windows XP SP3 or above. It does apparently use 1.5GB more HD space but I am unsure on this as the Beta was smaller than 2007. Other big global changes are the ribbon, for one the Office Orb is gone - replaced with the trusty File tab for the less adaptable. The ribbon is also fully per user customizable allowing you create whole new tabs on the ribbon with your own choice of commands. These are all stored in an XML file and are deployable with the initial installation, they may also be deployable with Group Policy but I have not confirmed that yet. A small upwards arrow is now also included on the bottom right hand corner of the ribbon to minimize it. You could minimize it in Office 2007 by double clicking any of the tab names in the ribbon but I like many users had not found this feature. Backstage and the ribbon are now in all Office applications too, backstage is the new term for the area that allows you to share your document by printing it, saving it, publishing it to SharePoint or your Sky Drive. This area organizes all of these tasks into an easy common UI to simplify these tasks. One feature that I am excited about in this is the print feature and its automatic preview. The print action will bring up a print preview beside your printing options showing you live what the pages will look like. I don’t know about others but I have tried many times to get users to check the print preview first so they don’t waste paper, this shoves it in their face as a matter of course which is a great improvement. OneNote, the note taking and organizing program is now included in all editions of Office which is another positive step as it is a very good tool for gathering and processing information. Its tasks also still follow you into Outlook to remind you to follow up on the content. PowerPoint has quite a few new tricks, the first of which is an entirely rewritten graphics engine based on DirectX9. This means much fancier and smoother transitions and effects, probably even over an RDP connection as RDP now encapsulates some DirectX stuff. This should still run on a PC without a DX9 GPU though as it can be rendered in software so it won’t stop working on older machines. There are new graphics tools like the easy background removal tool which can usually strip out the background of a photo with very little effort; this little trick was picked up out of MS research’s bag of tricks. Thanks to the new graphics engine and the new video features it is now easy to grab a video from somewhere and crop out the beginning or end. You can also apply transforms on the video of shape, color or other enhancements just like you can with images. PowerPoint now also includes a broadcast feature which will turn your slides into an HTML and JavaScript version then upload them to a space on Sky Drive giving you a link in return. You can send this link to you participants and as you progress through the slides on your PC they progress on the participants PCs to. This feature does not include all of the flash transitions because of the lack of the DX9 engine the web solution and will not transport your voice across but is still quite cool. SharePoint Workspace is the renamed and upspec’ed version of the old Groove collaboration tool. It is like an offline files feature for your SharePoint server allowing you to check out and work on documents then sync them back. This uses intelligent file management and tracking so that only changes are synced, very important if you are working remotely and change two words in a 500MB PowerPoint stack. This can be controlled by group policy and configured to work in a peer to peer fashion like Groove also. Outlook has been much improved, behind the scenes and in front. It now supports up to ten Exchange Server accounts in a single MAPI profile allowing you to have Outlook connecting to different schools Exchange Servers if you deal with more than one site. The nickname cache (.nk2 files) feature where Outlook remembers all addresses that you typed in the “to” box is now server side meaning no more complaining users (about this fault) when their profiles have to be reset. As it’s on the server it follows you between clients and even to webmail. The favorites have also gotten the same treatment allowing for the same experience. Quicksteps are another new feature, kind of like macros for Outlook allowing you to complete a string of common tasks with a single click, one of the built in ones are reply and delete but you can customize and add more to suite your work flow. Outlook Social Connector is an extension that is built in to Office 2010 but is downloadable for 2007 and 2003. Personally I don’t think that the name does it justice as it is more of a compiler of information. By default it will show you all previous emails from the contact in question and pull personal information on the contact from your local SharePoint if it exists. The big feature for me is that is also shows you in a list all of the attachments that you have received from the user and allows you to go right to them something which has eaten far too much of my time in the past. There is a plug-in for LinkedIn which will grab details from there too but this is about as close as it gets to the Social aspect of its name. Excel has seen a large amount of performance tuning allowing truly huge datasets, massive with the 64bit version and access to even more ram. One of the demos was a comparison of the graphing engines when faced with a huge dataset (hundreds of thousands of rows I think). Office 2003 rendered it but took several seconds and the redraws were slow and jerky, Office 2007 crashed like a champ after about ten seconds and 2010 rendered it in less than a second with very quick redraws. It could even resize it smoothly. Are there file format changes between 2007 and 2010? Yes but these are minor between Office 2007 SP2 and 2010, they should still open fine. Will there be an Office 2010 Compatibility Pack for Office 2003? Possibly. What about security warning dialogue boxes? Outlook now runs automatically in sandboxed mode allowing the user to see a non active version of the document without a warning, they will only be prompted to enable the document if they open it and want macros. This can be turned off in group policy.

Barracuda Networks have organised their own “No Limits Bus Tour” which will be travelling across 9 countries and 23 cities. The events will provide an opportunity to meet security experts and find out about the latest security intelligence and product developments. We thought we would extend this invite to EduGeek and see if anyone is interested in attending. The events will cover two main areas: 1. Stop Web Threats How to defend you school against todays advanced web threats emerging from the social networking explosion 2. Protect Critical Data Discover how to combine onsite storage and de-duplication for rapid restores with offsite storage for fail-safe disaster recovery. The UK dates are as follows: London - Monday 3rd October Birmingham – Tuesday 4th October Manchester – Wednesday 5th October Leeds – Thursday 6th October Reading – Friday 7th October If you would be interested in attending any of the days or have any questions please send us a PM and we will arrange entry for you and answer any questions.

Hi everyone-- We’d like to invite EduGeek members to learn, connect and share with Google for Education at the Back to School Summit (event site: https://goo.gl/VYV5gS) Come along to this free one day training event featuring a jam-packed day of learning across four different strands of hands-on training delivered by educators, for educators, over five hours. Suitable for beginners to advanced users, you'll also benefit from the open surgery strand where you can ask questions and get answers from the UK's leading Google experts. You'll leave the day empowered to use G Suite meaningfully with your students. Before you head home, why not stick around for networking drinks to meet other attendees and trainers from the day? Due to the limited number of places at this event, only staff working in educational institutions may attend. We may limit attendees to a maximum of two per organisation. You'll hear back within a week to confirm your place. To avoid disappointment, please don't book travel until your place is confirmed. Kind regards, James

Windows 8 offers unparalleled new opportunities for application developers to build and sell apps world-wide via the Windows Store. In this event, Microsoft will deliver developer-level, demo-driven sessions that give you an accelerated entry into what it means to design, develop and publish exciting, modern, polished, world-ready applications for next-generation devices running Windows 8. Microsoft are hosting a special one day event for UK Students only at: Microsoft Customer Centre Cardinal Place, Victoria 80-100 Victoria Street SW1E 5JL London United Kingdom Friday, June 8, 2012 from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM (BST) Register Now Level of knowledge required: 1. Beginners Welcome. 2. A familiarity with .NET development and Visual Studio would be advantageous but not required. Agenda (subject to change): 09:30 – 10:00 - Registration Opens 10:00 – 11:00 - Windows 8 for Modern App Development 11:00 – 12:00 - Metro Design Language 12:00 – 12:30 - Lunch 12:30 – 13:30 - "Metro Style" Apps - The Power of the Device 13:30 – 14:30 - “Metro Style" Apps - The Power of the Cloud 14:30 – 15:00 - From Idea to Store – Next Steps on the Journey Enjoy! Register Now Regards, James. Source: Be one of the first to help create an amazing experience for Microsoft

£18,200 dependent on experience and qualifications Full-time, 40 hours per week We currently have a vacancy for an Events and Audio Visual (AV) Technician to be responsible for providing a robust and reliable technical support service for Events and AV across the whole College. The key purpose will be to: promote the use of AV and provide technical support to all users across the College campus and at events; set up, operate and maintain all IT and AV equipment; help the Venue Technician in setting up and operating theatre equipment, audience/performance staging, and managing and coordinating lighting and sound for productions, lessons and school events. To be successful, you will: be educated to at least GCSE Level standard; have an active interest, knowledge and experience in AV; be highly organised, with the ability to work well under pressure, have good interpersonal and communication skills and be prepared to work flexibly. The hours are 40 hours per week, usually Monday to Friday, for 52 weeks per year. There will be a requirement to work flexibly, including evening and weekend work. The salary is circa £18,200 dependent on experience and qualifications. In return, you will join our pension scheme, receive death in service benefit, private health insurance, access to our sports and leisure facilities, childcare vouchers, meals, school fee remission and salary sacrifice scheme. To apply, please visit: http://www.ardingly.com/Vacancies Closing date: Thursday 16th August 2018, although application will be considered on receipt. Expected interview date: w/c 20th August 2018. Ardingly College - an independent co-educational boarding and day school for boys and girls aged 2½ -18, a member of the HMC and a school of the Woodard Corporation. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. All employees are required to undertake child protection screening appropriate to the post including enhanced DBS checks.

I hope this is allowed by admin. We are involved with organising a Free Google for Education event at Google London. We are reference school for Google using G Suite for education and have a 1:1 scheme with Chromebooks and will have 1500 students involved with this by Easter 2017. Take a look at the flyer below and sign up through our Google partners page.

exabytes - I'm currently organising a new technology in education conference to take place at The Midland Hotel, June 23rd in Bradford. It's a not-for profit event sponsored by Exa Education, with lots of hands-on workshops to share strategies for using technology in education. More information about the event is available at http://exa.is/exabytes If you're interested in the event and would like to know more - I'll be happy to answer your questions. While I've organised lots of training events for Computing and community events like Hack To The Future, Raspberry Jams etc. this is the first event of this kind that I've organised and I'd appreciate any support you can offer in terms of spreading news of the event. I'm a relative stranger on this forum, (occasional posts since 2011) and I would appreciate any suggestions or advice you can offer with regard to promoting, planning and organising the event. We're hoping to attract 200-300 delegates, but I have the feeling lots of people have other priorities at the moment.

Hi all, I would like to extend an invite to a free 'Future of Wireless' event or to give it it's correct title "802.11 Alphabet Soup: The Current Recipe for Your Next Wi-Fi Network" at the new £20m conference centre at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University on 22nd October. The speaker is Matthew Gast, author of '802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide' (O'Reilly). He is a member of the IEEE 802.11 working group, and serves as chair of 802.11 Task Group M. As chair of the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wireless Network Management marketing task group. Matthew will be discussing the current standardization efforts and what this means for Wi-Fi networks over the next five years. THIS IS NOT A SALES PITCH, it's a technology overview. The event is FREE to all Education IT Professionals, breakfast is served at 9:30am and the event kicks off at 10am. Please PM me to reserve your place, including your full email address,name and orginisation so that I may send you your formal invite. There are 140 spaces, 50 of which remain as things stand.

I was surprised to find that nobidy had created an EduGeek group on Flickr for the sharing of all our wonderful photos. If you've been along to an EduGeek-related event and taken a snap or two, please feel free to share your photos with the group. The group can be found at Flickr: EduGeek for those that fancy a browse

Hi All, A quick note to pass on details of the event we're hosting at the Microsoft campus in Reading on 21st August. Maybe this shows "there is such a thing as a free lunch. It's a Windows 7 workshop, where you’ll have the chance to hear about Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and to explore what they mean for education. The agenda includes: - James O’Neill from our Developer and Platform Evangelist team - Richard Lane, one of our Account Technology Specialists - Gareth Hall, Windos Server 2008 R2 product manager for the UK - Asif Jinnah, who runs the Microsoft IT systems in the UK (he'll talk about what we've done internally) - Alan Richards (fellow EduGeeker who's rolling out this summer) - Dave Coleman (ditto!) We aim to explore how the new products launched this year can help you to streamline your ICT infrastructure and improve the ICT management and user experience. With Windows 7 available to existing School Agreement customers from the end of this week, and Windows Server 2008 R2 available from the 19th August, it seems like the perfect time to take a day out of school to understand how it fits into your future plans. There are already a number of schools planning to implement Windows 7 this summer, and so we hope to make the day as interactive as possible, with plenty of time for discussion with your peers from other schools, to compare notes and experiences (there will be schools attending who’ll have implemented Windows 7 by the 21st, so hopefully they’ll have practical advice for us all!) To allow for those making longer journeys, we’ll start at 10am and finish by 3pm. Full details of the event are on this webpage

Does anybody know how to hide old/redundant event types (detentions, merits, etc) from the select box on the event entry screen in ePortal? Can this be done through Facility? There are a whole load of event types we don't need (and also some we don't use any more but don't want to totally delete) - I just don't want them to show up as an option. Unfortunately you can't style s with css or I would just hide them that way. If there isn't a 'nice' solution I can hide them with javascript, but I'd rather not...

** FREE GOURMET COFFEE GIFT PACK FROM A LOCAL ROASTER WORTH OVER £20 FOR ALL ATTENDEE'S ** This month we'll be talking to Mark Solomons, Founder of Welbee. Welbee help school leaders to transform their workplace culture, so their staff always feel heard, valued, and supported. They share insights, expert knowledge, and processes for world-class leadership, to keep teachers in the classroom. and all staff in school. Welbee make wellbeing simply part of what happens every day; and as a result, leaders have raised their results, increased staff retention, and put staff wellbeing at the forefront of their workplace culture; utilising surveys that are recognised by the Staff Wellbeing Charter. Putting staff first is the best way of ensuring pupils achieve the best outcomes. 20th of October 1pm-2pm When Wed, Oct 20, 2021 · 1:00 PM London (GMT 1:00) Sign up here - www.bigmarker.com/securly/Safely-Securly-Ft-Welbee?show_live_page=true Agenda Intro's Ensuring wellbeing starts with staff Psychological safety and emotional wellbeing Templates and useful tips Q&A