Christmas giving to IT Schools Africa Charity

The purpose of this post is to create awareness for UK based charity IT Schools Africa.
I first became aware of the Charity whilst working for Network Si. A school we supply in Birmingham were using ITSA to ship their old kit out to Africa. I was pleased to hear the school are donating their old kit to such a fantastic cause, rather than having to pay a company to destory the kit charities like ITSA are helping provide IT for up to 3,000,000 kids in Africa.

IT Schools Africa mission statement is to "Transform IT education in Africa"


The leading UK based charity has both full time staff and a number of UK based volunteers. ITSA have already distributed over 20,000 computers to over 1,000 Schools in Africa including 500 schools in Zambia, all 350 state and faith based secondary schools.
152 schools in Malawi.
240 schools in Zimbabwe
69 schools in Zanzibar.
The charity under Tim Barnes (Program Director) instruction have trained over 500 African teachers in IT and establishing new programmes as I type this out in Egypt, Tanzania and Madagascar.



What I particulary like about this charity is the benefits are not only to the African students but also to the Cheltenham community as it provides valuable work experience for the locals including the long term unemployed who volunteer their time to help the Charity along with people with learning disabilities bringing them a sense of self worth completing basic tasks to build their confidence and experience in society.

I have pledged myself to create awareness for the ITSA by visiting Africa/Gambian Schools on the 29th of this month. I can safely say I have conqured my fear of injections having the Hepatitus A and B, Typhoid, yellow fever, Polio, Tetanus booster after where I went dizzy after hearing the nurses talk to me about the possible side effects! I had to lie down in the surgery and for around 5 minutes and then had a glass of water. Luckily I already had my MMR jab! I had to go elsewhere on another day for my yellow fever jab which cost and paying for the Malaria tablets, of which the side effects I will not go into - I know it will be worth it.

The costs of running IT schools Africa are substantial. A container of 480 computers costs £17,000 to source and process in the UK, and around £4,000 to ship to Africa.

How you can get involved:
Sponsoring the operations either in the UK or Africa, provides companies with the opportunity of being associated with an ethical, high profile project.

Can you donate pentium III desktop computers and above, or laptops (with their power adaptors)-Keyboards, mice and power leads.-Digital projectors?

IT Schools Africa is a registered charity 1051622 and is WEEE compliant along with US dept of Defence standard 5002-22 for data erasure and happy to provide certificates of erasure if you get in touch

Unit 8, Mead Road Industrial Estate,
Leckhampton,
Chetenham,
Gloucestershire,
GL53 7EF

01241 228800

Keep an eye out for our Gambian school photos which will be posted on our return early January.

You Tube Video of ITSA http://tiny.cc/itsavideo_SchoolLessons

Twitter Tweetup @Network_Si

The company I work for have been using Twitter as a Business tool www.twitter.com/Network_Si

We have an automated seach set up for local tweeters on Tweetdeck (third party app for Twitter) and to our suprise we come accross Oldbury Tweeter @simonhamp and @BostinBloke arranging a local intro twitter meeting.

We could see from the tweets Simon was technology focussed having running his Oldbury Business Flipstorm Ltd around the corner from our Oldbury Head office. He was having a tweet conversation with @BostinBloke about a local black country Bostin tea meeting.

Network Si are a business involved in technologies. The black country based head office is also home to many bostin tea drinkers, we felt it would be ideal for us prepare our conference facility room for a gathering of social Media activivists in Business for locals in the black country for mutual opportunities and of course a bostin brew which for those of you not familar with the black country terminology means a cup of tea :)

I sent @simonhamp a tweet joining in with @BostinBloke -After exchanging tweets during the day this concluded with us all having a a "Tweet up" at the Oldbury conferencing facility at Junction 2 of the M5
3 Demuth Way
Oldbury
B69 4LT

This is an informal networking event where we are asking visitors to bring along a gadget :-)

The agenda for tomorrow morning will kick off with a discussion on Social Media as a Business Communications tool. We will have the latest gadgets on display (Fizzbooks) (iTouch) along with technology enthuasts here inside of Network Si on hand to demo..

We are very much keeping an open mind as this is the first tweet up for in the morning with local Birmingham/Oldbury/West Bromwich twitter'ers which myself @Simonhamp and @BostinBloke arranged only last week!!!

It is already getting lots of conversations going internally and externally with a company in America wanting feedback on our tweet up before we have even had it. If you would like to come along and see what it's all about then give me a call direct on 0121 601 7035 or look out for the Twitter updates on the hashtag which will be announced shortly

Hollie on 21st Century Learning

Schools are slowly starting to embrace the way students learn, think and process information. The Internet born generation are accustomed to interactive, fun and challenging learning. Also known as Digital Learning.

Virtual environments offer a safe platform for trial and error of student learning and the technology such as Microsoft’s SharePoint platform gives a secure portal hub for students to share information to collaborate. The lessons learned are almost immediate and this is demonstrated with the increasing buzz around sharePoint in schools, and about time too!

Let me tell you a little story - My 13 year old brother Brad who asked me to help him with his IT homework –which may I add was not the easiest of homework! The subject was on email archiving. Brad knew he asked the right person as he heard about my recent email archiving learning at my place of work with our sister company. Brad was on the pc at the time as he normally would be, windows live messenger was minimised, along with facebook and TV quietly on in the background. I have to say I am amazed at my brothers muliti digital tasking skills, almost as good as me! I asked Brad to read out the questions which he did then together we discussed what the question was actually asking and then where we would be able to find this information. Internet was both our answers of course the question was which search engines do we use..
“Google” Brad said – "Yes" I replied and also recommended he use Wikipedia along with another site the Waterford Technologies email archiving website. Reading his way through this mass of information on the Web and filtering the relevant parts via the keywords in order to answer the question is intelligent learning in itself and I encouraged Brad to share this information with his peers online. Using The Great Barr School’s learning gateway id to connect to the sharePoint portal made his homework more interactive, fun and engaging. Bradley got top marks for his homework along with two merits - Well done brother I was quite chuffed about it all actually (maybe that's why I made this post!)

Half of teens create media content online. A third share this content.The web gives students a new form of intelligence the ability to interact with both people and computers is expanding students mental abilities. The literacy Trust says Reading from a screen is just as good as a book. Intelligence is heightened through collaboration with other people and machines. Let's support our students throughout the next generation of learning both at school and at home. Devices such as laptops and iTouch are in my eyes important interactive learning devices helping students engage with tools for learning whilst using something they are familiar with in a safe and secure environment set up and policed by experts inside and outside of school.Our kids are constantly learning both inside the classroom and outside of the classroom and many of them have handheld devices and laptops outside the classroom taking game based learning to another level.

- World of Warcraft. This can have a positive impact on learning. Adapting to an unfamiliar environment, the immense amount of co-ordination, data management, strategy.
-Facebook - The Farmville application, which my boss Dave Ricketts just mentioned to me, is a game based learning initiative which I wasn't familiar with personally but for me to learn what is "Farmville" I made a live Internet facebook post hoping to engage others in my network for a response..


Hollie Matthews anyone here use farm ville? Need some help with it -writing arctial at work..basically what is farm ville?????????????????
24 minutes ago · Comment ·LikeUnlike · View feedback (2)Hide feedback (2)

Kevin Wright
is it a rural french village with a farm attached?
11 minutes ago · Delete

Students hang out when playing games or using the Web interacting socially.

I am not a teacher but I can tell you as a learner of the net generation being a 23 year old of how I think, learn and process information. The internet is key in my learning. Not being dictated to by any one person who feels they are a master in everything. But by being supported with the tools and resources around me.

The Internet is my master teacher.
Searching the information coming to my own conclusions applying it to my learning and day to day productivity. Engaging with the communities drawing up my own conclusions.
The Net Geners growing up in this ditital age of learning are increasingly putting demands on their places of work, beggining to expect the environment around them to accomodate and keep up with the 21st century digital method of communication. I have wireless at home and I expect wireless at work. When I do visit schools and business' I expect to use my iTouch to connect to the wireless to access my work on the move.

-If no Internet/wireless then I want to know why not?
We all get frustrated when we have no internet especially us Net Geners who have become to rely on it for our daily communication with each other and in my case with customers and colleagues.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=player_embedded
-A good enough reason for a quality wireless solution that works?

Birmingham Technology College Goes Green

Bristnall Hall Technology College (previously Bristnall Hall School) Is a Secondary School with 1000 students and 150 staff located in the heart of Birmingham West Midlands, England. With Collaborative VI form and Technology Status for Design Technology and Maths and Science, it has been awarded "Outstanding" status, only a year after the appointment of Mr Stephen Venross as Head Teacher.

The Ofsted Inspection letter which was sent out to students included;

“We are impressed by your skills in ICT and the way that your teachers use ICT to make lessons more enjoyable”. Currently the College has 600 desktops and 200 laptops, all able to access the centrally held information, secure and protected.

This certainly emphasises the schools mission statement of "Bringing Technology into our Technology College"

An excellent example of a project to help raise the awareness of bringing technology into the college the pupils have set up an Advertising Agency to promote Design and Technology for the college -You can find more details here http://www.bhtc.sandwell.sch.uk/

Data Growth
As you can imagine the growth of the data has been continuous andPhillip Wakeman ICT & Network Support Manager decided it was about time to consolidate and manage the data growth as nightly backups were increasing and with data estimated to grow by 3GB per term this was only going to get worse.

Bristnall Hall Technology College are now able to discover, manage and ultimately reduce the amount of data stored across their primary storage. By using the File Archiving technology, smart stubbing and archive data chunking, it has been possible to reduce the total amount of data that is stored and needs to be backed up by 72%.

Phillip Wakeman reports that “Using File Archiver has allowed me to optimize my storage across the network, reducing the size of the nightly backups and overall storage space used across my file servers. I am saving money not needing additional backup media and equipment"

Aspects of File Archiver examined during decision process
- Ability staff to access files from the archive transparently
-Reduction total data backup on a nightly basis
-Level of reporting
-Search functionality
-Storage Medium agnostic
-Two way movement of stored files
-Automated operation
- Multiple array of archives.

Benefits of using File Archiver-
Free up expensive disk space by capacity optimization
Fully supports Virtual servers
Smart stubs allow applications with linked data to be archived
De duplicates expensive primary storage
Deferral of expensive hardware
Automates a number of IT management tasks
Green software technology,
Reduces energy consumption costs
Archives critical data


James Evans who works at the College as the IT & Network Support Technician / Virtual Learning Platform Developer says "Policies are now set, example you can select for the student coursework to be archived and encrypted securely in case it needs to be retrieved. We are also now compliant with freedom of Information Act requests, if say someone from an outside third party requests any data. We are also saving our school money on energy consumption costs and this is a software with no need to purchase any additional hardware which is always a bonus!"

Microsoft Partner SharePoint 8th Oct

Hello all,
First of all thank you to those that took the time out of their busy schedules to join us at the Network Si headquarters for our MS Partner briefing on Microsoft SharePoint.

Network Si and Novotronix both Microsoft Certified Gold Partners have a Partnership where by we are working together to help bring practical advise on implementations of the Microsoft Learning Gateway and to ensure schools are becoming up to speed with the 2010 target deadlines to enable them to deliver Parental Access.

We arranged for Industry recognised speakers Jon Novichi and Alex Pearce Microsoft SharePoint MVP to present. Alex demonstrated Great Barr School the largest school in the UK and how they are currently using the SharePoint technology - I was a pupil at Great Barr School funnily enough!

Steve Eyton Jones highlighted the SharePoint building blocks as well as giving an LEA example, Parental Reporting and Management Reporting as well as MIS integration. Steve really is a wealth of knowledge and has always been helpful to most us of us here at Network Si along with the customers of NSi.

Dave Rook from Charlton School presented as a SharePoint reference site.

Colin Winstone presented the implementation road map, decisions to be made, typical implementation example, delivery options, hosted/on premise, example of costs and ongoing support. I have always found Colin to be extremely professional and responsible in his dealings here with the customers at Network Si.

Well done to Robert Lister from All Saints Catholic High School on winning the laptop.

The feedback my end so far has been very positive, everyone I managed to speak with found value in one way or another and what I am particulary pleased about is the visitors making additional contacts for various other IT projects they are working on also. We are pleased we were able to add value -Thank you Dave, Martin and Steve for being of valuable assistance there.

In our experience of holding briefings we find the intimate briefings of 20 or so attendees means we can harness in and focus more to give attention to detail for the attendees and their individual needs and requirements.

For more detail on the morning please see the homepage on EduGeek a leading Educational Forum site http://www.edugeek.net/ where James Evans gives his overview report. James has also uploaded the master PDF.

Already we have had requests for additional dates and SharePoint 2010 Partner events, we will schedule a date soon to fulfill this -Watch this space for more details on that once the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas has finished of course!!

To get more SharePoint tips we recommend you have a look at http://www.learninggateway.net/

I would like to give a special thank you to the speakers for the help and assistance you have provided us. Last but not least thank you to all of my wonderful colleagues here at Network Si for the "Can do" attitude - It is a pleasure to work with you all as well as our MS Partners Novotronix you are a credit to our Partnership and we look forward to continue our successful working Partnership

staff productivity with Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 r2

Are you wanting better productivity from your staff?
Are you wanting to reduce expenditure, whilst maintaining best of breed technologies?

Look no further then Microsoft Office Communications Server.
OCS is at the forefront leading the way we communicate with colleagues/departments, outside companies, peers.
The features include- Telephone Exchange integration (meaning you can call your Exchange Server to check on emails, diary, tasks and all your other Outlook Functionality)- Voice,
file transfer, instant messaging, video communication
Software is used to increase and streamline all communications, inc the typical conference call.

Your staff can collaborate in real time to get more work done.

Microsoft staff themselves are using the latest Office Communications Server r2 and are saving on average 90,000 Million in travel costs alone.

A less biased example, 46, 000 staff at Lionbridge save 25hours each on average a year with OCS which equals 125,000 hours saved in total which equates to 60 additional staff to the organisation.

OCS gives Lionbridge that competitive advantage needed especially in todays climate.
Staff benefit from better work flexibility, which is easily adoptable -with an easy intuitive, single interface bringing your organisation benefits today, saving money, delighting your peers, reducing environmental impact and increasing productivity.
http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/business-value.aspx
If you want to see how OCS can benefit you today call Microsoft Gold Partners Network Si on 0121 511 1234 to arrange f0r an on site visit by one of our Certified Consultants.

Learning Gateway Conference and Novotronix

I thought it was about time I put this post up.
One afternoon in the Oldbury office when I first started with the company I picked up a colleagues extension and it was one of the Network Si customers...
“Can you help us with SharePoint...”
As I was quite new at the time and obviously not too familiar with what SharePoint was.
I decided to ask my colleagues as I would normally do here as who is best to help, (after hearing the full requirements) -three of my colleagues agreed we get a specialist SharePoint implementation company known as Novotronix out to see them.
I went on my colleagues recommendation as many of them have been working here many years and I respected what they had to say and put the customer in touch with Novotronix.

The IT Manager for this NHS group in the West midlands came back to me thanking me for the recommendation, I was quite chuffed “A flexible company with some good projects going on” was the comments given to me (as I'm not technical!) I was happy my colleagues gave me the right advice as I know how NHS dept IT can be difficult :-)

Just to show how IT is such a small world, 3 years later I bumped into Novotronix again!
This time face to face with one of the Directors Steve Eyton Jones, we was both at the Learning Gateway Conference in the West Midlands. I was on the desk helping sign guests in and I recognised the company name straight away and even managed to have a chat at the end with Steve as I was collecting the conference feedback forms, I asked him what interested him in attending on the day he explained the company he works for are able to provide sharePoint solutions in Education and talked me through some of his latest LEA wins he was very proud on the number of schools and colleges in the region his solutions are helping.

When I got back into the office I decided to check out Novotronix and did some of my own research, as you do -I asked a few questions to industry experts SharePoint MVPs everything they had to say on Novotronix was positive I thought well I will check on the EduGeek website and maybe there might be a few conflicting views..........it was all positive - I had to be 101% sure before I made this post!!

If you wanted to see the completed projects for yourself http://www.novotronix.co.uk/

Summer holidays and Microsoft breakfast briefings

I hope everyone is enjoying the well deserved summer holidays..
For those of you like me at work, let's have a look what is going on with the Microsoft Partners who have spent time listening to the customers (you!), their partners (us!), the MVPs and fellow Microsoft colleagues themselves.

Microsoft have spent significant time researching and developing, so let’s have a look at one area on everyone’s agenda
-Backups; common questions now spring to mind...
"Who can help me restore?"
"My backup product does some things well but protecting my advanced exchange isnt one of them"...

Data Protection Manager 2007 is key in this we are forever looking for better ways to protect and recover data from key applications like
-SQL server
-Exchange (in it’s various flavours)
-SharePoint
-File shares in windows 2003, 2008

Reliable, rapid backup and recovery - Data protection Manager enables this, delivering continous data protection for Microsoft applications and file servers.
DPM 2007 is a member of the Microsoft System Centre family of management products it's purpose is to help IT professionals manage their windows server infrastructure.
DPM sets a new standard and you have to see it in action to be fully appreciated.


Another one to bring to attention is Microsoft OCS 2007 r2 -not just because this is at the forefront leading the way we communicate with each other the features include
- file transfer,
- instant messaging
- Telephone Exchange integration (meaning you can call your Exchange Server to check on emails, diary, tasks and all your other Outlook Functionality)
- video communication

This is great for streamlining communications, just like msn messenger for businesses I hear you say, no more money spent having to cover long distance travelling you can use the web conferencing facility.
The R2 version runs solely on a 64 bit platform and is more scalable with the added new features like group chat.

Not only does OCS bring these benefits and more but what it actually does is drives down operational cost -about time and one of my personal favourites as we can work better in a more productively team environment and even remotely. So next time your staff “hay tissue” or [cough] “swine flu”, the poor individual can keep abreast of their inbox from the confines of their sick bed (if they choose to do so!).

These two technologies have to be seen to be appreciated, I am not technical (but I’m learning!) so I cannot give them the clarity and justification they deserve.
Network Si are to stage breakfast briefings and welcome you to these technologies, we are one of a handful of chosen MS Gold Partners hosting the breakfast briefings and for those of you that don’t already know our headquarters are in Birmingham, just off junction 2 of the M5 near Oldbury.

Invited to attend are IT professionals, briefing will cover public sector and Industry.
Question and answer exercise at the end from the MS product experts themselves.
Full breakfast included. I shall be meeting and greeting myself so I shall look forward to seeing a few familar faces. If you would also like to attend and want more information on dates and times, please follow http://twitter.com/network_Si Network Si on Twitter

Learning Gateway Conference

I was honered to be asked to help out at the Learning Gateway conference which happened recently at the prestigous Belfry grounds in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.

I greeted around 150 delegates mainly from Education and LEA backgrounds.

The days agenda consisted of innovative technologies being used in education including
-A keynote from Steve Beswick who is the Education Director for Microsoft.
-A session on maintaing your SharePoint and best practises
-Microsoft Unified communications for the learning gateway, office communications server, Exchange.
-Ask the 'Exports" which consisted of a team of leading independant experts including MVPs
-Informal SharePint at the Belfry bar afterwards to the chance to discuss with educational suppliers


My own opinons of the day were first of all shock to see so many attendees flooding us at the registration desk and some even before the desk was open at 8:00 and to even have attendees from other countries. People even showed up that wern't on the list (you all know who you are!) now that is when you know you have a good conference, the guest speakers had a lot to do with that! http://www.learninggatewayconference.com/

The day certainly helped me to increase my understanding of the future of educational technologies Microsoft in particular SharePoint and user adoption. I met with real world experts.

It was nice to see so many familar faces myself, Steve Eyton Jones from Novotronix who works for a SharePoint implementation company as well as Alex Pearce from the Great Barr School (my former school where I was a student!) Mark Berry who travelled all the way from the Bradford Academy, the guys from Edugeek, a few of the admins and those lovely moderators who keep us in line on Edugeek and many more, sorry if I've missed you off!

To read the educational forums comment post on the learning gateway conference you can view it on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-edugeek-news-announcements/38960-edugeek-learning-gateway-conference.html

I would also like to say a quick well done and thanks to the speakers for the knowledge and last but not least a special thank you to Alex and Richard for organising the conference and putting me up overnight in the Belfry. Let's all watch this space for the next one!

E-Safety Ofsted Inspections (Web Content Filtering)

The Internet is the most powerful educational tool ever created.
The Internet is the most dangerous place for a student to be.

The issue for education is both of the above statements are true. How do we balance the opportunity of the Internet and other IT with the duty of care to protect our students?

The Internet has opened this can of worms. For all the benefits Internet gives students for research, networking and communication. This great tool can also be dangerous for students as they are susceptible to unsuitable internet sites. Additionally, students are open to cyber bullying, paedophilia the list goes on..

The Schools, Colleges and Universities are becoming increasingly reliant on IT, with networks growing and becoming more complex. IT needs the resource and investment to keep on top of this. First of all IT needs that visibility of the growing network, the support, the man power that goes into managing, the growing number of products from different suppliers for security, storage, reporting, policy enforcement products etc

Question? Does anyone actually know of a single solution which can solve this?

Well, I have finally seen something that has exceeded my expectations, the solution is known as ‘Total Traffic Control’ from Lightspeed Systems. I made a point of going over to them at the BETT show in January 2009 -where we was greeted with an unbelievable attendance at their stand. Roland Malcolm my point of contact for Lightspeed introduced me to Earnie Kramer, who you may all be familiar with, he is very technical to say the least and very passionate about Total Traffic control and making a difference to students e-safety accross the globe.

I have since found out Lightspeed Systems are one of the fastest growing security company’s in education. This comes as no surprise when you look at what’s on offer in the product. The features and benefits of controlling spam, web content filter, malware protection, zero hour protection, Firewall, bandwidth management, email journal, application control, removable media control, policy enforcement, network usage reports, user activity reports, hardware inventory software audit and all from one product.

When we had our orignial web demo 2 years ago we had to see it in action to prove it really does do all of what it says. We were pleasantly surprised and amazed at the comprehensive reporting and functionality the product delivers with the web content filtering we could instantly see a benefit for other schools. It made sense for an evaluation to put it to the real test. It definately lived up to the expectations that were set in the demo.
We now benefit from a more streamlined security and administration for our network. Not only have we been able to reduce our annual costs year on year but more importantly as well we are protecting our students and right in time for those e-safety Ofsted Internet Inspections..

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/redirect-to/?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lightspeedsystems.com%2Fresources%2FLightspeed_TTC_Demo.html