January 2008 - Posts

• Industry Insiders Blog Post

  I was asked by Viral T (Microsoft SharePoint Evangelist) to write a few articles for the Technet Industry Insiders Blog.  My first one is on SharePoint Learning Kit and SCORM.  Hope the next one will be on the Microsoft Learning Gateway.  Please read and leave any comments  http://blogs.technet.com/industry_insiders/archive/2008/01/29/introduction-to-scorm-and-sharepoint-learning-kit.aspx   Posted Jan 29 2008, 11:18 AM by apearce with no comments

• SharePoint Learning Kit: Where is the best place for the My Assignment Web Part?

  I've had a few people recently ask me where I would recommend putting the My Assignment Web Part?  With in the pupils My Site or somewhere else?   Well it depends on how you intend to use your site. Personally - I have it within the pupils site where they can also see announcements, calendar, documents and other custom lists that are relevant to my pupils.  As for the staff - they are the same.  They can access all the information they need from the staff site including the My Assignment Web Part.  If your a pupil your IE home page takes you to the pupil site so they receive all the information straight away I have been to schools recently that are using the My Site as their home page instead so pupils can access their My Documents and using RSS and Content Editor Filter to deliver the information from other areas with their SharePoint environment. So where is best?  I don't think there is a write or wrong answer - its all about your configuration, individual schools needs and training/awareness.  If you let your users know where its going to be - they will find it. Technorati Tags: MOSS,SLK Posted Jan 28 2008, 06:04 PM by apearce with 1 comment(s) Filed under: SLK, MOSS, Education

• Silverlight with SharePoint and Excel for Education

  During BETT Microsoft presented several areas which included the Microsoft Learning Gateway and future technologies such as SilverLight, Surface and PopFly.  Another one of the presentations was on a new graphical interface the UK educational team are working on for excel tracking sheets.  The aim is for it to work both with Excel and SharePoint. The interface is built with SilverLight and pulls information on the pupils from fields and deliveries it both to pupils and staff. The teacher can see the pupil's data including attendance, average grade and emotional intelligence and can also filter these by sex, reading age above/below average and grades above/below average. The image below shows the front page as a staff member would see with average grade and no filters.  The image below that shows a filter with just females.     It may look like the images of the pupils are random but the higher they are to the top right the better score they are receiving according to their attendance and average grade. The interface also allows you to select pupils and compare them, click here for image 1 and image 2. You can also see each pupil in a report view - taking the image below you can see the attendance for the user and see that his attendance isn't the best.  Where there is a 1 an intervention has taken place.  Whether this is a letter home or just a chat you can see if a difference has be made by looking at the line graph.   Other features at the moment are a careers program that the users have to fill in while the member of staff can help and monitor their progress.  Information can be sent to the parents and the pupils mentors around the school. Can't wait to get this on my SharePoint - I'm really starting to like SilverLight more and more.   Posted Jan 17 2008, 10:17 AM by apearce with 8 comment(s) Filed under: MOSS, Education, SilverLight

• BETT 2008: Closing Thoughts + SharePoint Video

  Well BETT 2008 has closed.  Day 4 was very good but also very quiet.  We still filled the stand when we were presenting the Learning Gateway which I am very happy about. This was my first experience working with Microsoft and I have to say I have had a great time.  The people with in the education team are just great and I also loved the tech guys on the tech desk.  I would like to take this oppertunity to thank Microsoft Education UK for inviting me down and hope to be involved again next year! During my presentation entitled 'Connected Learning Gateway' we showed how my school has been using SharePoint to connect parents to data. It was shown on BBC TV on Wednesday and we also used it in our presentation.  Click Here to see the video/report in action. I would like to mention a few names as thanks Neil - Thanks for inviting me and supporting my school Leighton - My fellow presenter - thank you so much Gordon and Ray - Thanks - your great Eileen - thanks for the presenting tips - Click Here to her blog <-- must read Viral - Legend - Click Here to see his blog <-- must read And the rest of you - Thank you so much for a great week. A few photos This is the presentation stand - every presentation had this amount of people - amazing to see. The demo area The tech desk! I'll off to rest my feet - still hurt after 4 days of standing on the demo stand. Updated 22nd January BETT finished a few weeks ago now but Microsoft have just released all the presentation slides from the 4 days. Do have a look and see what is going on in education.  Many of you have asked for copies of the presentation and you can find this under Connected Learning Gateway (includes SharePoint screen shots). http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/events/bett.mspx Posted Jan 12 2008, 03:01 PM by apearce with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Education, BETT

• BETT 2008: Day 3

  Well its coming to the end of day 3 of BETT and I've spent the whole day giving demonstrations not just on SharePoint but also the other elements of the Microsoft Learning Gateway.  There are some people who want to know how exchange and office communications server 2007 can be intregrated and delieved throught sharepoint.  Also got some questions on Unified Communications and how they can work within the school.  The main trick is to take the business process and look at the your school processes and how technology can be used to help. Lots of questions on the price of SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) for a school.  Its simple - can you put a cost on how much sharepoint can help a pupil in their learning?  Is there a cost of a pupil education?  I talked about how if I go and turn a server off in my Microsoft Learning Gateway (the sharepoint server) my school would not be able to teach - is there a cost to that? 1 day left - hope to have a look around at some point - not had chance but have lots of contacts to help develop Sharepoint in Education and also talking to Samsung on some hardware developments. Also got a lot of content to blog on and how silver could be used to site on top of a educational sharepoint site. Posted Jan 11 2008, 05:29 PM by apearce with no comments Filed under: BETT

• BETT 2008: Day 2

  Today has been really busy and have spoken to lots of you who are using SharePoint in your school.  Its great to see what you are doing, how you are using the software and other the aspects of the Learning. I've started talking to different leads about setting up a Microsoft Learning Gateway forum in the same way as the SharePoint User Groups.  The TechNet team here have agreed to help out in venues and marketing of events that we will hold.  If your interested in getting involved please do send me a private message. When I get time I will publish some slides on the Microsoft Building Schools for the Future which is a great silverlight application. Also met Sir Bob Geldoff today who owns shares in another company here. There are more people expected tomorrow so maybe more celebs. Posted Jan 11 2008, 10:07 AM by apearce with no comments Filed under: BETT

• BETT 2008: Day 1

  I've just finished my first presentation and it went well even though the mic died 3 times and the slide clicker didnt work.  But never mind.  I've not had chance to look around yet but hope to over the next few days.  Had a few requests for demonstration on the Microsoft Learning Gateway. There are some great Microsoft technical evangelist here so come ask them a questions if you have problems. There are some great stands here and from where I'm sitting now I can see Channel 4, BBC, Apple and Serco. Things to look out for if your coming. Building School Future presentation on the Microsoft stand Demonstrations by Hillcrest School, Kind Edmunds 7th School and Phillip Morant on the Microsoft Learning Gateway and Office System 2007. Hope to see you.     Posted Jan 09 2008, 01:36 PM by apearce with 3 comment(s) Filed under: BETT

• SharePoint Presentation: BETT 2008

  I will be presenting my sharepoint solution at the British Educational Technology Show (BETT)  in London, Olympia from the 9th - 12th January on the Microsoft stand. www.bettshow.com We are presenting the Microsoft Learning Gateway (Read Earlier Post) and my focus is on SharePoint and how it is being used in my group of schools.  Come watch my presentation called Connected Learning Gateway and please do come and say hello and I will be more than happy to give you a full demonstration of all the aspects of the MLG. I'll post of a few sharepoint solutions I'll see as some of the largest sharepoint sites are in Education. Hope to see you there. Posted Jan 06 2008, 01:26 PM by apearce with 1 comment(s) Filed under: BETT

• SharePoint and SharePoint Learning Kit on IPod Touch

  For christmas I got a brand new IPod - something I wanted as I had filled my old 4GB one.  I got the new IPod Touch with a capacity of 16GB.  I can now fit all my podcasts on there and listen to the music I want instead of having to select before going out. For those of you who dont know the IPod Touch looks the same as an IPhone but without the phone features.  It does come with a wifi connection which I connected fine to my home network with WEP encryption.  You can then connect to youtube and watch videos that are streamed to your ipod. IPod Touch and the IPhone both come with Safari as their web browser.  I put in my MOSS address - got the log on screen which is form based from ISA 2006 and it took me to my home page for MOSS.  The layout was the same - no slowness to load the page.  If you turn your IPod from vertical to horizontal it also changes the screen that way as well.   One of the features with the safari web browsing is the you can double tap on the screen and it will zoom into that part of the screen.  You also get a full standard onscreen keyboard and if you are typing away the screen will move to where you are typing in.   I could add annoucements, view the calendar and update my internal blog.  I also got onto my mysite but encounted my first problem.  I have a inbox, calendar and contact (Exchange/OWA 2007) web part within my first page and these didn't load - got the error message - "Access to Calendar folder from Outlook Web Access Web Part is supported only for Internet Explorer 6 and later".  Within one of my SharePoint Site I have a page viewer web part which loads OWA with in it.  This loaded fine as the light version and if I go straight to OWA it works as well. SharePoint Learning Kit didnt work - I first tried to assign a SCORM learning resource to myself but when I did elearning access it errored.  The webpart loaded fine - no issue with that.  I saw a learning resource was assigned to me and it tried to open the IMS file but then sat at Please Wait.  Nothing happened.  It now on my wish list to get sorted - the IPod Touch and IPhone could be a really asset to education.  A list of things that did work Search All default master pages Adding Annoucements Adding calendar event - but you have to type any dates in manually - eg 07/04/2008 load images an image in document library load txt file Update blog add links. Things that didnt work OWA web parts SharePoint Learning Kit View word, powerpoint documents - error message says - safari could not download this file Posted Jan 04 2008, 12:09 AM by apearce with 15 comment(s) Filed under: SLK, MOSS, IPod