Supporting IT Schools Africa Charity

As many of you will already know myself and my colleague Rebecca Purchase (forensic science student at Teeside University) have recently returned from a trip to Africa, a place called The Gambia. Gambia is one of the safest countries in Africa the African peace talks are held annually here. It is a very religious country with 95% being Muslim and 5% christian whom, all live in harmony with one another -This was actually the very first thing we noticed about The Gambia, how helpful and friendly the people are.

The schools we visited were mainly Primary schools to start with. Most of which were taught English and English history with some of the teachers coming from Ireland. Gambia was a British colony.

One school in particular which stood out was Prospects Daycare and Nursery School which has been established in 2003 firstly as a nursery school then becoming a Primary School. The head teacher Mariama Kunda explained that the next nearest Primary school was over 5.5 KM away which was the reason he felt it was neccessary to set up the Primary also. The children at the school were full of energy and with bigger smiles on their faces than some of the kids back at home in the UK - Then again it was a PE lesson at the time. It was amazing how smartly dressed the students were, all wearing their uniforms.

The kids were asking me and Becky lots of questions keen to learn about us, including asking for our email address which I was quite surprised at as I couldn't see any computer let alone an Internet connection.

Just outside the school at the market the young children followed me and Becky around, curious to know where we were from and what football team we supported and then for our email address. I thought this was great that the kids wanted to stay in touch with us and via technology. One person I met was even studying for an NVQ in IT and showed me his paper work to show this, he was very proud.

Becky and I left pads and pens at the schools. We are actively encouraging people their old kit out to schools like this for example Aston Manor School have already donated over 200 desktops to the IT schools Africa charity.

Why shouldn't the kids in Africa have computers?

Why shouldn't they be able to share information with the West?

Let us encourage peace throughout the world, a connected nation.

IT Schools Africa are a UK based charity who work with schools out in Africa, can you help them to donate pentium III desktop computers and above, or laptops (with their power adaptors) Keyboards, mice and power leads.-Digital projectors?

Can you help us, contact Phil direct at IT Schools Africa below

Unit 8
Mead Park
Industrial Estate
Mead Road
Cheltenham
GL53 7EF
+44 (0) 1242 228800

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.