Coretek Educational Blog

The yearly BETT Educational IT trade show had some fantastic insights into the products and trends that will be big in ICT this year.

As always, SMART had some really innovative audio-visual gadgets on display.

Perhaps the most exciting of these was the LightRaise 60wi interactive projector.

These days, almost every school in the country has an Interactive Whiteboard and projector. These have now become the main teaching tool in the classroom in which teachers base their lessons around. Now the interactive projector has arrived and is looking like being the biggest step forward in AV technology in schools since the interactive whiteboard come on the scene.

Instead of a projector to project images and an interactive whiteboard to handle touch, the interactive projector handles everything. So no more whiteboard! The interactive whiteboard can project straight onto a white wall or a standard dry-wipe board and is still interactive! SMART previewed an earlier prototype of this product last year called a 40wi but it could only be used with a single pen. The new LightRaise 60wi not only supports dual-touch but the pen is no longer compulsory – finger touch now works too.

Using a finger touch to control a mouse cursor and move objects around on a plain wall is very cool indeed and undoubtedly will inspire pupils and teachers alike. The fact that the LightRaise system does away with the whiteboard is also a massive selling point for education – that’s one less thing to go wrong.

The LightRaise 60wi is due for a April 2013 release.

SMART also previewed their new SMART Table 442i.

These comprise of a touch enabled 42″ screen that comes with a cut down version of SMART Notebook. The idea being that this product is a more social tool, where a number of pupils can sit round the table and work together. This makes it ideal for the primary school market.

It is also wifi enabled to allow access to SMART’s online resources and for content to be sent between the table and a SMARTBoard.

So far so good. The only downside is the price. The SMART Table 442i’s predecessor was priced around £5000 and the 442i looks to cost around the same figure. Whether this will resign the SMART Table to be more of a classroom luxury rather than necessity remains to be seen.

If you have bought into SMART’s ecosystem with their various products, another one worth considering is the SMART Document Camera. This is SMART’s take on the visualiser and of course, integrates fully with the various models of SMARTBoard’s so its easy to show images up on the board and manipulate these.

The camera is an impressive 5MP, allowing for decent quality still images and HD video recording.

A new iteration of SMART Notebook is due for full release in Summer 2013 (currently in beta).

The big advantage of this release is full Windows 8 compatibility. This is a very exciting prospect considering how touch-oriented Windows 8 is. We are certainly looking forward to using a Windows 8 laptop on a SMARTBoard with the latest Notebook software.

SMART have also made some huge steps forward to allow viewing Notebook files on a number of different devices.

iPad users can now download the new SMART Notebook App from the App store.

For other devices such as smartphones, SMART have developed SMART Notebook for web. Simply browse to the smartnotebook.com site and open Notebook files right in your browser window!

Windows and Mac users can also download the free SMART Notebook Viewer.

Finally from SMART, comes the XC (Extreme Collaboration) tool.

This was one that we were particularly impressed with. XC is an add-on to SMART Notebook that allows anyone with an internet enabled device (iPhone, iPad, laptop) to interact with a SMARTBoard. Text and images can be sent straight to Notebook at the press of a button. This is very useful for creating interactive lessons and getting pupils involved with real-time surveys.

Many schools have voting systems such as ActiVote or SMART response, which can be very expensive for one per pupil. Now, the same functionality can be achieved for free using devices that are readily available in most schools like tablets, laptops or phones. Plus, pupils are already accustomed to these devices so it is even easier for them to contribute. Impressive stuff.

If any of these products are of interest, have a look at the following videos. Each is very short (around a minute long) and provides a great overview of how the products work.

SMART LightRaise 60wi Interactive Projector

SMART Document Camera

SMART Table 442i

Do the projectors in your school look like this?

Notice the black dots, dark shadows and lack of clarity across the image. All of these are signs of poor projector maintenance.

This image was taken at a school we have recently taken over. The scenario is not a new one. Many schools neglect their projectors and leave AV equipment un-maintained for months or years at a time. The dust build-up can adversely affect projector image quality and decreases lamp hours, seriously affecting the longevity of the bulb. We have seen extreme cases where the additional heat has actually caused the bulb to break.

Schools often only realise once it is too late. By this point, the only option is to spend hundreds of pounds on a new bulb or even a complete projector.

So, how can this be prevented?

Prevention is simply a case of a regular maintenance schedule. This consists of cleaning the filters of dust and hoovering out the projectors. Interactive Whiteboards require a quick clean with a damp cloth and the hoovering out of pen trays to keep them in a good running order. For schools that have DLP or LED lampless projectors, these are even more efficient but bear in mind that they still require regular maintenance.

Coretek now include this service as part of our Total Care Package. We will come out every three months to ensure that your AV equipment stays in prime condition. We have our own equipment and are fully ladder trained so you can leave the whole thing to us. In addition, this will all be done out of school hours to minimise disruption. The time used will simply come off your Support Credits.

For schools who wish to opt out, we would strongly recommend keeping your AV equipment properly maintained by following the advice in this blog post. If you require further information, detailed advice is available in the whitepaper below.

Promethean – The importance of Projector Maintenance

Coretek can now offer even more competitive pricing for EES Licenses thanks to finding a new distributor. EES licensing is a way for schools to buy a site license for products such as Office or Windows at an affordable price. It also includes free upgrades as part of the cost.

If you would like more information, see our Blog post: Cut the costs of Microsoft products with EES

Coretek are an Authorized Education Reseller, so please contact us if you have any questions or would like a quotation.

1. Windows 8 touch

Obviously the most obvious difference between Windows 8 and its popular predecessor is the user interface.

Windows 7 supported touch, but it wasn’t ideal – the controls simply weren’t good enough. However, things have improved immeasurably in terms of the touch support in Windows 8. First of all, touch support on the Desktop is far, far better and you can even close windows and select menu items without issue – Windows has built-in intelligence to tell it what you are trying to do.

Secondly, the new Start Screen is an interface that’s built for touch. That means tiles instead of menus and much quicker ways to get to the programs you want. There’s also greatly improved on-screen keyboard and handwriting recognition.

You don’t need to have a Windows 8 touch PC – the interface still works on non-touch machines, and many track pads have support for new Windows 8 gestures. There are also peripherals such as touch mice and track pads from Microsoft and Logitech (among others) that support Windows 8 gestures.

2. Windows 8 Start screen

Microsoft the familiar Start menu is a Start screen which features the same kind of live tiles and data as Windows Phone’s home screen,

When you open an app that needs the desktop you still get the familiar Recycle Bin and Taskbar, but the Start button – which now only appears when you hover in the bottom left corner with your mouse – takes you back to the Start screen.

The Start Screen can be used as an application launcher for desktop apps, or Windows 8 Modern UI apps (that’s what Microsoft is currently calling the new interface).

3. Better multiple monitor support

Microsoft has decided that, with more of us using multiple monitors on our PCs, that it needed to overhaul its desktop management.

That means you can now have the Start Screen on one monitor and the desktop in another, or choose to have the Windows 8 Desktop and taskbar on both screens.

You can also put a different background on each screen if you have multiple monitors. Windows 8 also enables you to split screen between Modern UI Windows 8 apps, so you can have both your Windows Messenger on a third of the screen alongside your Desktop. This takes a bit of getting used to!

4. Windows 8 charms

A key arrival for Windows 8 is what Microsoft is calling “Charms”. These appear when you mouse to the right-hand side of the screen or swipe in from the right on a touchscreen.

They enable you to access the Start Screen on a touch device (although many touch devices will also have a physical Windows 8 button on the bezel of the screen or a Windows key on the keyboard).

The other buttons are Search, Share, Devices and Settings and provide quick access to these functions on touch and pointer-driven displays alike.

As well as searching your apps and folders, charms work across different apps, so for example a social app can tap into the Share charm so you can share files to that app quickly and easily – it’s contextual to the app you are using.

The Settings charm gives you quick access to basics such as volume and brightness controls, as well as putting your PC to sleep or restarting it.

The search and devices charms are fairly self-explanatory, but the share charm is interesting.

5. Windows 8 Search and Social

With the Start menu gone, search is available not only through the Search charm but also through the Start Screen – just start typing and the results on screen are for programs and files.

As with Share, the Search charm is contextual, so you can search inside any app – for example you can do a web search from here, or look for a destination using the Travel app. Doing a web search is powerful and quick, it’s a simple way to launch a browser and search speedily.

As for social, Windows 8 supports Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter natively, so you can browse social updates within the People app and elsewhere.

6. Windows 8 cloud integration

Microsoft they are keen to make cloud integration central to Windows 8.

That means the potential to sync data to SkyDrive – there’s a SkyDrive app as well as the ability to save data to and from your cloud storage. Office 2013 apps have SkyDrive capabilities included, too.

Microsoft also syncs settings your Windows 8 PCs – including your browsing history in IE, for instance. Photos can also be shared across multiple PCs.

7. Windows RT and Windows ARM

There’s an important caveat when it comes to Windows 8 on x86 chips versus Windows RT on ARM processors. Because most of the software written today is for x86-based processors, almost all current software should be able to run on any desktop, laptop and tablet using Intel chips.

For Windows to run on ARM processors, however, Microsoft had to basically rewrite Windows to work with these chips. That means that no x86 software (sometimes called legacy software) will run on Windows RT. It all has to be rewritten !

Windows 8 RT (which comes on the new Microsoft Surface Tablet) only run Metro apps, this version also can’t connect to a network.

So, if you’re looking for a new tablet ensure it’s running Windows 8 Pro, and this will mean you can connect it to your school network, access all your files and run your software!

8. Windows to Go

Windows To Go allows users to deploy a bootable Windows 8 environment on to a USB flash drive (32gb and higher drive needed). It’s a full-blown copy of Windows 8 including all the features you need. It is sealed off from the physical machine and can be protected using BitLocker. So you can take your Windows 8 PC wherever you go, and use it securely in any PC.
 

We have been made aware of internal school communications from the county advising Schools that they must upgrade to Office 2010 by the year’s end. This has caused confusion and concern amongst some of our clients so we wanted to cut through the rhetoric and provide some clarity to the situation.

The reason for this change is that Hampshire IT are due to update their SIMS system from Office 2003 to Office 2010.

If schools wish to open Office 2010 documents from SIMS, they have the following options:

1. Upgrade to Office 2010 by purchasing single licenses for the admin staff only

The first option is to buy an Office 2010 license for each admin machine. This will be the cheapest option but the most expensive per machine. If you get a site license further down the line, this money will be wasted.

2. Buy a site license under Microsoft’s EES licensing

The second option is to purchase a full site license under Microsoft’s EES scheme. This option will allow you to install Office 2010 on every machine in the school.

Although this may sound like an expensive option, it can actually provide much better value per machine. The reason being that the EES scheme only counts the number of full time employees and therefore can be very affordable for smaller schools. Also, bear in mind that every school usually has far more computers than staff.

Another benefit of EES is that free upgrades to the latest version of Office are included in the price.

Here is some more information explaining EES licensing:

http://www.coretek.co.uk/educational-blog/index.php/cut-the-cost-of-microsoft-products-with-ees-licensing/

3. It is still possible to open Office 2010 documents using Office 2003. A free 2010 convertor is available and each school supported by Coretek should already have this installed.

The downside of this option being that any Office 2010 functionality will be lost in the conversion and this configuration will be unsupported by Hants IT from Spring 2013.

Summary:

Firstly, don’t panic! You will still be able to use SIMS with Office 2003, even after Christmas. You just need the Office 2010 convertor to be installed.

However, certain 2010-only features will not work in 2003. Therefore, we would strongly recommend planning an upgrade to Office 2010 now. We can provide prices for both individual and site license and advise the pros and cons for each option.

If you have any particular questions not answered in this post, please contact the office and speak to one of our Educational department who will be happy help.

So does having access to Microsoft Office sound ideal to you? Well thanks to a company called CloudOn it’s now possible.

CloudOn has recently expanded it’s service to new countries including the UK. They offer a way for you to edit your Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents using your favourite tablet. You’ll need to have an iPad running iOS5 or better (any version of the iPad basically) or an Android Tablet with Honeycomb (3.1) or higher. Sorry not currently Blackberry Play/Hp Touchpad.

CloudOn taps into existing storage providers so you have easy access to your files whether you’ve got Dropbox or Skydrive plus all the other “cloud” applications out there !

When you first launch the app it gives you a quick how to guide and away you go.

Get CloudOn for iPad      Get CloudOn for Android

Let us know how you get on!

After the release of the much anticipated release preview, Microsoft have revealed that they will be launching Windows 8 on the 26th October this year.

Windows 8 includes many promising new features that have the potential to increase educational value in the classroom. The new Metro touch based interface, coupled with devices such as tablet and slate based computers could well provide pupils with a meaningful interface that is quick and intuitive to use, minimising confusion and time wasted in the classroom getting lessons up and running.

Some of the many new tablet based devices that will come with Windows 8 include Microsoft’s new Surface range of devices.

The introduction of Windows 8 tablets will also help bridge the manageability and integration gap with existing school systems, ultimately helping to provide a seamless working environment for both pupils and educators alike.

Microsoft are offering a completely free cloud-based email service for schools called Live @ Edu. What’s the catch? There isn’t one.

We know that most of our schools already receive hosted email via their SLA with Hants IT. That’s fine but if your school does not already have hosted email (or is looking to change), you really should check out Live @ Edu. This service has the potential to save your school a considerable sum of money.

Firstly, as this is a free offering from Microsoft, there are no monthly hosting charges like you will experience with other providers. Secondly, as this is a cloud-based service, you don’t need an email server on site. So you are saving money on server hardware and electricity costs too.

Now you may be asking yourself “Isn’t this just Hotmail with a different name?” No it isn’t for two very good reasons. With Live @ Edu you get to keep your current Domain. So if you current email address is joe.bloggs@hampshireprimaryschool.co.uk, you can keep it. No one need even know that your email is hosted with Live @ Edu. In addition, you can brand the Live @ Edu page with your schools logo and colours.

Live @ Edu also offers some great additional features. Each user gets 25Gb free online data storage with Windows Sky drive and an access to Office 365 (more on this in a minute) where you can edit your Word and Excel files from within your web browser!

Here is a breakdown of the features of Live @ Edu courtesy of the Microsoft UK Schools Blog:

• Provide a co-branded hosted Exchange solution at no cost with Outlook Live (10GB mailbox per user)
• Equip your students for the real world with Microsoft tools
• Help to keep your students’ data private and promote online safety
• Excite students with 25GB of free file and document online storage on Windows Live SkyDrive
• Simplify online collaboration and document sharing with Office Live Workspace (Office 365)
• Give your school a reliable and easy-to-manage Microsoft solution with enhanced security
• Be supported on all popular browsers on Windows or Mac, including Firefox and Safari
• No, there is no advertising on the email
• No, your data doesn’t take a transatlantic trip.. We keep it in our EU-based data centre in Dublin.
• Yes, you can set it up so that email is filtered for banned words (or even set it up with a third-party system to do email filtering etc – as LGfL have done)
• No, we don’t charge anything. It’s free.

Some of our schools have already moved to Live @ Edu and are we are getting great feedback.

Transition to Office 365

Microsoft are currently in the process of migrating the Live @ Edu service over to Office 365 for Education.  Schools currently using Live @ Edu will be migrated over to the new system automatically.

Although the name has changed, there is no need to panic as the core service will still be free. It will also still offer the same great features; like hosted email and Web-based viewing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. This is essentially a re-branding exercise to bring all of Microsoft’s hosted Office products under the Office 365 banner.

The new service now offers an optional upgrade to the full version of Office 365 – the online version of the Office suite. Of course, there is a charge if schools wish to upgrade to upgrade to the full Office 365. This is outlined in the links below.

Office 365 for Education Overview

Office 365 for Education Options

Coretek are pleased to announce the introduction of a new Secure School Remote Access solution called Secure School Gateway. Designed to meet the ever increasing budget restrictions set out for our schools, this solution makes use of modern server technologies such as Server Virtualisation* which ultimately has the ability to reduce procurement costs and lower energy consumption.

The need for affordable remote working

Coretek are aware of the fact that school staff require secure and easy to use access to resources from home. Access to school resources from home or out of school is now part of the modern work style and for some schools, is absolutely necessary. Access to planning resources and other such information whilst out of school can present a headache, with staff usually having to take work home on a memory stick to conduct such tasks.

In the majority of instances, enabling remote access can prove costly, with some services requiring additional and unnecessary costs for every new user added. In situations where flexibility is required, such measures can prove unworkable.

Traditionally, hosting a remote working solution in school has always been a costly undertaking. Additional Server Hardware, Firewall and security requirements can cost thousands, effectively rendering such efforts unaffordable. However, with the inception of HPSN2, schools now have the ability to publish internal school resources safely and securely. This service is included free of charge with your Hampshire County Council HPSN2 Service Level Agreement. When coupled with modern technologies such as Server Virtualisation (which omits the need for any additional physical server hardware) and the new Microsoft EES Licensing Model, low cost, secure remote working for schools is now a reality.

The Secure School Gateway Service

Working away from school can sometimes present problems when data and resources just aren’t available to you from home. For this reason, Coretek have invested a lot of time in developing a robust, secure and easy to use remote access solution which fits around the needs of education. Access to Secure School Gateway is possible from any machine on the Internet via a secure Web Portal.

Below is an example of the Secure School Gateway portal:

The goal for Coretek was to develop a remote access solution that is easy to use and above all, secure. When taking into account the sensitive nature of pupil information and other such data present on school networks, security concerns had been at the top of the agenda during development. For this reason, several security measures have been implemented that make this solution both usable and safe.

Key features at a glance:

Below are the key features that the Secure School Gateway solution offers:

• Aligns with requirements for secure data access as set out in the OFSTED eSafety Policy.
• Access to local Drives and data whilst working remotely – allows easy transfer of work between home and school.
• Ability to print to locally attached printers from home.
• Full access to School resources including network drives, home folders and applications.
• Access to either a full remote Windows Desktop or individual seamless “RemoteApps”. These can be great for quick access to applications such as Schools Cash Office.
• True “Access from Anywhere” topology.
• Industry standard security – Secured with 2048 bit SSL encryption.
• A password and account lockout policy will be configured for all Remote Users. – This will thwart any attempts from unauthorised users who attempt to gain access. No access will be granted for Administrator accounts, thus further enhancing security.
• Ability to restrict use to certain groups of users, thus controlling access.
• An entirely virtualised* solution – No additional physical servers are required to implement the Secure School Gateway service.
• No special tools required – All components of this solution are based upon technologies already present in the Microsoft Windows Operating System which eliminates the need for additional, expensive software.

*So what exactly is Server Virtualisation and what does it mean for me?

Server virtualisation effectively allows multiple workloads to be consolidated onto less hardware, thus increasing return on investment, reducing hardware costs and lowering energy consumption. In the majority of cases, Server machines spend their time idle, with very little utilisation of hardware. It is a fact that most servers will go through their working lives with an average resource utilisation of 5 – 10%. By consolidating workloads, hardware can be better utilised spent doing useful work, with less time being spent doing nothing. Server hardware available today is extremely efficient, with power requirements much lower than their older counterparts. For this reason, a noticeable cost saving on energy bills will be noticed with new equipment in conjunction with server virtualisation. This will then have a knock-on effect of reducing the schools overall carbon footprint.

With regards to typical Remote Working systems, a second, physical server, dedicated to providing the remote working service is required. This is an expensive piece of hardware, which for the majority of the time (especially through the course of a normal school day when nobody is using it) is spent at practically 0% utilisation. This means that during the time that this service is not being used, this hardware is spent doing nothing other than wasting electricity. For schools who use older server hardware to fulfil the remote working role, these running costs can amount to a significant amount of money over the course of a year. In short, server virtualisation results in lower hardware procurement costs, better utilisation of current hardware and lower energy costs.