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!
About Me
- Cygnia Technologies
- The company was set up 5 years ago by two of the Directors of System Software Solutions and Netstore giving the company a foundation of over 10 years IT Security know how. All of our people have a minimum of 5 years IT Security Experience.
Tuesday 28 July 2009
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
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
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