Category: ICT

Explaining the #edchat poll options – Need help!

Posted on by primaryt

I found some of the options for the #edchat poll a little confusing so I figured someone else must too.. Please help me try to clarify the options.

Option: Should teachers digitally open their gradebooks to parents?
Explanation: Teachers and educators assess pupils performance constantly throughout their education, do you think that this information should be constantly available to the parents of the pupil throughout their entire education, some of their education or not at all?

Option: What edtech standards should be included State wide?
Explanation: Some states are starting to incorporate standards for using technology. However, these standards are not uniform and often filled with difficult jargon. What standards would we include if asked by our schools to come up with standards? What should students be able to do with various technologies- problem solve, collaborate, etc.?

Option: How should administrators and school leaders take an active part in edtech Professional Development?
Explanation: How should school administrators and leaders be trying to encourage other teachers and leaders to improve on their technology skills

Option: How do you prevent burnout on Social Media?
Explanation: We become much busier as the school year starts. However, teachers still want to keep up with their Twitter, Ning, LinkedIn, Facebook,and other social media accounts. How do we balance our lesson planning, grading, personal lives, etc. and still keep active with our personal learning network?

Option: What objectives are necessary for effective edtech integration?
Explanation: What goals are necessary for effective technology integration into education? How can we assess these goals and decide what they should be? Can be it “Graded” or is it a mistake to think a grading system will not get dated quicker than a system is implemented?

The poll is available here: http://twtpoll.com/oh1hfj

Please provide comments to help me update this post! Some updates thanks to Shelly

Microsoft SESP Licensing – The reality

Posted on by primaryt

I read through all the Becta and Microsoft schpeil on their new licensing model (SESP) and how it is the best thing since sliced bread for education so I wanted to put it through its paces.

The first Edular I worked with refused point blank to quote me on SESP as it wasn’t in their system etc. They knew nothing about SESP – even its existence was a shock to them.

I went back to my MS licensing contact at Microsoft via Twitter and asked him if he had a recommendation on another Edular to try.. I also recommended he managed communication and training better with future education licensing models, he agreed.

The second Edular admitted they knew nothing but said they would investigate. A few days later after hearing nothing I rang them back to ask for an update, they sent me through a Select quote but not a SESP one so I emailed and rang back requesting SESP, 4 days later, still no quote….. On the 5th day I vented my frustration online and a third Edular (I didn’t know so many existed…) got in touch via twitter saying they can help and dropped me through ane email asking what I was looking for so I sent them an email with my requirements.

On the 7th day I was told by the Edular they were having some problems getting the actual pricing from Microsoft.

12 days later I still didn’t have a quote so I wrote a few tweets online which were picked up by some Microsoft people who then scurried away to ask the licensing team why Edulars couldn’t provide a quote.

14 days later I eventually have a price, thanks to Richard from Bechtle for all their hard work in helping me obtain these prices.

One of the things that’s different between Select and SESP if that you need to know the total amount of devices, amount of pupils and teachers inside of the school – as far as I’m aware with select licensing you just need machine count.

Lets compare the old vs the new pricing model

I have requested 2 pricing structures: Select & SESP.

For this experiment I’m supplying the Edular with machine and pupil counts for an average size 2 form entry Primary School in Bradford (480 pupils – 28 staff members) and requested the following licensing:

  • 2x server 2k8 standard licenses
  • 30x office 2k7 standard
  • 90x XP desktop cals

Basically in this model it works out at 5 pupils to 1 device. At this point in the article I think we should consider the value of this licensing prior to reading on to find out the actual costs..

Please take a few moments to think to yourself what you would pay for these licenses…

If you are like me you will want to pay about £30 per office license, £100 per server and £1 per CAL so a total of £1190. You will also take into consideration that in 3/5 years time your school may need to spend this level of money again to relicense newer versions.

With the SESP licensing you must annually renew each license.

The pricing I recieved was (rounded up/down):

£50 per standard server license

£13 per Office Enterprice license

£1.15 per CAL

So my total costs were:

£100 on servers per year

£390 on office per year

£103.5 on desktop cals

Total annual cost of a school licensing model (excluding any oem licenses) is £593.50.

These licenses include software assurance which is basically spin for receive the latest version free.

To summarize

Over a 5 year period schools under a SESP agreement will be paying £3,000 on licensing where as before they were paying between £1200-£1600.

Hopefully someone has made an error on pricing and I can update this article…

UPDATE: 06/12/2010  this article was never updated because MS sat on it and didn’t do jack ish.  They now have a new licensing model out.

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Top 5 ways people in Primary Schools can contribute to open source projects

Posted on by primaryt

People working and learning Primary Schools benefit greatly from open source, with limited budgets available to spend on software since the e-learning credit pool of excessive levels of money were available schools have been shocked to find the reality of the cost of software so have opted for free hosted solutions which build their revenue from ads and other alternatives.


Open source tends to mean not for profit and this tends to mean the school pay nothing for the service, this is only possible if people who use the software contribute back to the community to improve the service.

How can you or someone in your school help the open source community?

1. Tell the community about your experiences using the product/service.

2. Proof read for bad grammar and speeling mistakes and/or write documentation for usage.

3. Create resources for the service (if applicable).

4. Recommend the service/product to a friend.

5. Donate to the organization providing the service/product.

If you do just 1 of 5 of these for each of the open source services you use then you are making your life slightly better each time.

How Bradford Primary Schools use Open source without knowing it

Posted on by primaryt

We find lots of schools opting for services provided by hosting companies that are based on open source. So open source is popular, but why?

If you asked a school if they knew what they were using open source they would glaze over, closed or open source isn’t of concern in a Primary school. The reason for this is that Primary Schools do not have the resources to invest in someone who can manage the code for the open source projects so open source is not a concern of theirs.
Free is good, this is the tipping point. “Owt for Nowt” as its often called in Bradford is supplied in many different ways.
The majority of the schools use an open source fault logging, hardware and software inventory and server monitoring service which is free & open source and available as a hosted service to any UK primary school.
On top of that many Bradford schools wont realize that the management/admin of Primary Email is actually open source and has been since Primary Email was first conceived. This wasn’t working too well in Primary Schools but when Primary Email became School Email and the secondary market showed interest in the source, Primary Email began to nurture a few contributors who now write modules for future releases, improving the service for both Primary and Secondary schools.
Do we expect Primary Schools to begin contributing to open source projects?
Yes, but in a different way. Secondary schools employ people who are technical so we can expect some technical feed back. Primary Schools should try to give as much guidance and leadership feedback to open source projects, leading the project developers so that developers can focus on code with a clear strategy and vision implemented by the school itself.