UPDATE

Leicestershire County Council and Leicester City Council are holding joint presentation / discussion sessions in January. For details of dates and contact information, please check EIS, your internal e-mails or fill in the contact form on this page.

Schools in Leicestershire have received notification on EMBC changes which may take effect between April 2012 and October 2012.

What should they do and what does this mean?

It’s important to understand the information that’s there.

What is known

Schools have already paid for their EMBC connections up until April 2012. So perhaps the immediate message is “Don’t Panic!”.

Therefore, there is a window between October 2011 and April 2012 to allow schools to find more information.

Broadband connectivity and services currently provided by EMBC will, after October 2012, be provided by emPSN (East Midlands Public Service Network). emPSN has negotiated a framework of suppliers from which schools can make individual choices from a menu connectivity and services.

• You will be able to choose who your link to school is with (edge connection)
• KCOM will handle links from this to the core network
• You will be able to choose who provides your services (filtering, email, website etc)

This is illustrated below:

Prices have not yet been published.

“Okay. I’m a headteacher. What do I do next?”

Between November 2011 and February 2012 gather as much information as you need and can understand. There will be a myriad of potential internet specialists who have never seen the inside of a school promising you Nirvana for the cost of a chocolate bar. You will be bombarded with techno babble literature. You do all have shredders?

Local authorities will be running workshops – we will flag up any we are aware of. We will be running workshops – if you’d like to be informed when and where they will be, please complete the form below.

If you’d like someone to chat with your family of schools, please call us on the number at the top of the page.

Update November 25th 2011

For Leicestershire schools the proposed cut in funding from April 2012 (which would have meant that schools would have had to meet the full cost of broadband connectivity) is not going ahead. The proposal was rejected. Schools will still need to find the services element at approx 7/12ths of the cost of this year’s service costs.

Fill in the form below if you’d like to be kept in the loop.

The session which we ran was based on a PowerPoint – I’ve recorded it and added some new material. Caution – it is 15 minutes long and is not (yet) TED standard!

While I was processing this video I was in a discussion with a gentleman with 2 young children who’d just lost his job in a local warehouse. The message takes on a whole new meaning.

During  the workshop we covered lots of useful links and sites which may be helpful for delegates and other interested groups.

The seminar we previously attended was Locality 11 – and you can find details  here

The main Social Media session was run by Will Perrin (@willperrin on Twitter) and he introduced us to his first use of the web on local issues http://kingscrossenvironment.com/ and then he worked through some of the projects which http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/ had worked with.

There was then a fantastic session with staff from http://www.birminghamsettlement.org.uk/ Including a thought provoking ‘Can a blog replace e-mail?’

A quick session followed with Toby (@tobyblume)  from http://www.urbanforum.org.uk/ (quick – but very valuable!).

It was valuable to add the ideas from the workshop to some of the comments made by main speakers the next day -

Julia Unwin (@juliaunwin) from the Rowntree Trust showed how there is a global crisis of Trust – who do we trust?
Whilst digesting her ideas, Nick Wilding from Carnegie UK highlighted this quote from Milton Friedman

“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”*

One of the speakers introduced a Ted Talk from Rachel Botsman (one of the longer TED videos, and definitely worth watching) – click on the picture below to go to the TED site – beware this is a long video and may take a few minutes to stream.

* Is Social Media the “ideas lying around” and – if so – here are a few thoughts.

A couple of American authors have produced some great ideas. Here’s my links to them – Chris Brogan and Scott Stratten (note these personal reviews also include affiliate links).

The starter moves I’ll be discussing are here

Sometimes you see something so many times you just don’t see it. This tree is in the field at Thomas Estley Community College.

This page shows the same tree from (almost) the same location at different times of the year. The pictures on this page are low resolution – this helps the page load much faster in your browser.

If you’d like the high resolution version, simply click on the picture – this should open the original file. You should then be able to right click and ‘save as’ to save any of the pictures for your own use.

Winter

Spring

Late Spring

Summer

Autumn

The autumn picture was taken in early autumn – the windy weather suggested that the leaves would be gone very, very quickly.

Can you help by adding any information or descriptions I could use here?

All these pictures are free for you to use under creative commons.

Please add the following text somewhere on pages where you use the pictures.

Pictures provided under Creative Commons Attribute. Originals can be found  http://www.systemed.co.uk/2011/09/life-cycle-of-tree/ 

Can photosynth help with a simple maths lesson? And can technology be used in a way that would be nearly impossible without it?

The video below was created with PhotoStory 3, using images from Paint and Cropper. The websites are Photosynth and the Ordnance Survey links in Bing Maps.

The links given at the bottom of this post are direct links to the websites required. In order to run the Photosynth you may need to download Silverlight when / if prompted.

The Video

The websites

Photosynth of the quarry

Direct link to Bing Maps / Ordnance Survey

Is this helpful,and can you use it in your own class? How would you add extra investigation work?

With the introduction of Windows 7 eighteen months ago we are seeing a steady decline in the number of packages supporting XP. The time to upgrade may be approaching.

The information provided is for guidance purpose only.

You will need to ensure all back ups are carried out first.

First thing – check if Windows 7 will run on your existing machine. To do this Microsoft brought out a neat bit of software called Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

This is a download and will install the software on to your PC/laptop.

It might take a few minutes to give you the results.

At the end you’ll receive a summary report from Microsoft.

If you’re using Microsoft Windows Vista and your PC/Laptop meets the criteria for upgrade then you can upgrade with a Windows 7 upgrade disc for a comparable version.

For example, if you’re using Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, then you will need Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

For a Windows XP based laptop or PC which meets the criteria for upgrade, a fresh installation of Windows 7 would be needed.

We’re often asked to recommend photo editing software. There are some fantastically powerful packages available with learning curves to match. Sometimes a few simple modifications are all that is required.

If you have Office 2003 or 2007 installed, then it’s very likely you have Office Picture Manger.

Here it is..

On my desktop I have a photo – let’s call it before. If I right click the relevant icon and select ‘open with’ then one choice is Microsoft Office Picture Manager

This opens the picture, ready to edit (clcik the picture to see fuller copy)

The picture is looking a bit washed out (Whernside in Summer rarely tends to offer a clear view of anything).

Looking on the top menu we can see the edit pictures button – along with auto correct and the (pretty essential undo button).

Auto-correct often does a reasonable job

Clcik the undo button then select edit picture for more options

The controls are now on the right hand side of the screen.

In this case some changes to the brightness, contrast and midtones gives a fairly resaonable improvement

The result

There are many more options in the colour correction options. (being colour blind, I tend to concentrate on brightness and contrast!).

If you have Office Picture Manager – it is certainly worth a look.

In a previous blog post I had a look at Bing Maps and 3D. Since then it has developed quite a lot and there are some fascinating additional tools.

Bing incorporates Multi-Map and so has access to the Ordnance Survey data. In addition, through various features, 3rd parties have now added additional facilities to Bing Maps.

Try these on your own information (your school, your next school visit) and see if they help.

Bing Maps 3d is a download from here and installs fairly quickly. When you first use it you are taken to a web page as shown below

If you’ve used Bing Maps you’ll notice that there are a few extra icons on the screen

It’s easiest to get near your area of interest before using the new tools – and then to get to the 3D facilities select ‘Birds Eye’.

It seems that Bing then layers the aerial photographs on to the contour data from the Ordnance Survey datasets to create the 3D pictures.

Here’s Bing 3D of Croft Quarry –

Here’s the same view using the ‘National Grid’ Map App by Alistair Aitchison

The coloured squares on the screen correspond to the relevant National Grid square size.

Could Bing Maps 3D and the Grid tool be useful in your school?

During our free summer workshops we’ll be including Bing3D, OS and Google Earth. Here’s the dates

There will be additional material added to this web page from different parts of the UK.

A few days ago I showed one of my flickr pictures to some teachers. The picture below had the caption that one thousand pounds invested in 1888 could be worth over £4 million now – if left alone at something like 7%.

Over that period 7% is a reasonable estimate. (remember the mortgage rates in 1994?).

And the calculation is easy to do with Windows Calculator.

To show how it works imagine we have £100 invested at 10%.

At the end of the year we have £100 plus 10% of £100 (£10) – which makes £110.

At the end of year two we now have £110 plus 10% of £110 (£11) – making £121.

Another way of saying ‘add 10%’ is to say multiply by 1.10

Our money is growing by 10%(the interest) multiplied by itself – like so -

Final money = £100 multiplied by 1.10*1.10 = £121.00

1.10 * 1.10 is 1.10 squared, which is often shown as 1.10^2 (in this case 2 = number of years)

Seven per cent interest for 2 years would be 1.07*1.07 or 1.07^2

7% interest since 1888 would be 1.07^years or 1.07^123 (number of years between 1888 and 2011).

Here’s Windows calculator – this is going to take a lot of tapping in – unless you click the view button and select scientific

Now you can see a button showing x^y. In our case x is 1.07 and y is 123. Simply type 1.07

press the x^y button

type 123

press the equals button -

What is shown here is the compounding effect on £1 – the effect on £1,000 is to multiply the answer by 1,000.

We recently received a domain renewal notification for one of our domains. We’d seen these before and realised then how easy they were to fall foul of.

The BBC news website has a story including mail like this. The figures involved are frightening – Police say an estimated £3.5bn is scammed from UK citizens each year, and about £2.4bn of this is believed to be as a result of mail scams

The images below are from last year’s “opportunity”. This year the prices have increased to £25, £40 and £75 respectively.

Here’s a copy of the first letter I received from the ‘Domain Renewal Group’. It looks very official and it looks just like a bill. So much so that when I put it on the desk at work, one of our folks was quite happily going to process it.

The attached image really is worth looking at – I have obliterated a few personal details.

The terms and conditions are very worrying. The section on ‘Credit Cards’ shows their true colours. $200 re-instatement if you run a credit card charge back which they can charge ‘solely at our discretion’. Here is a pdf of their Terms and Conditions for Internet Scam Fortunately Adobe Reader has a zoom facility

Their address is certainly worth a look at ..
56 Gloucester Road – is simply a mailboxing company (The BBC site refers to ‘Virtual Offices’).

Post moved and revised June 25, 2011 (original post 28th June,2010)

Do you have similar experiences – and what could those consequences have been?

I was at a business training session with an internet specialist yesterday. It was an excellent session with fantastic people.

In the session, we analysed a few of our own websites. On one of the websites we spotted spelling and grammar mistakes.

Is this important, or were we being a bit too picky?

This page from the BBC shows just how important this is.

Photo (c) www.sarahmcsharry.co.uk