FOTE09 Conference review #fote09

The future of technology in Education is obviously a very hot topic at the moment.

I took a few key things away from the conference:
  1. The future is on a huge range of devices
  2. The future is very “open” when it comes to sharing resources and content (This I’m 100% behind)
  3. FOTE is more for FE however it was worth while my attending (being that I work mainly with primary schools)
To the planners
The conference was very well organized and the food/tea breaks were perfectly placed. My thanks goes out to the hosts and the presenters.
Presenting the twits
Some of the presenters were great, some, not so.. I think the real time feedback during Twitter was fantastic and this lead to some very open, honest and sometimes heated debates.
Being offended
Apologies go to people who found some of the content on twitter offensive but this includes a very important reminder that you can chose to ignore comments you might like that. A few times during the conference people “devalued the degree”. Be it presenter or a tweeter this was not well received and I think that FE people may need to look at why some people (usually those working in IT) come to this conclusion.
Virtual insanity
I wish the talk on “Virtual Worlds” had some more real life opportunities for people in none FE to explore, I didn’t get what I wanted from the talk other than a sense of “it’s cheap but not as good as the real thing”. Most of the time in Primary the real thing isn’t “that” expensive
Will I be attending FOTE09 next year?
If the topics fall in my line of interest then yes but I wouldn’t expect anyone else in Primary Education to attend. I could also look at possible sponsoring with School Email which would be of interest to the secondary/college leaders.
Thanks to everyone who was involved, attended & tweeted. I was awake for 36 hours before sleeping… ouch

Review of Microsoft Family Safety Usage

This is an extension of my review of Microsoft Family Safety, in Part 1 you may remember I decided Family Safety’s installation process is too complication for the average parent therefore I pretty much gave it a big fat FAIL.

I felt I should review the entire product or at least try to understand its positives and negatives. I’m not going to write about what it does, go read Microsoft’s site for that.

I’m not sure that a google search for “girl” should be blocked.. but oh well, I will ask in person to get it opened..

The ask in person process works quite well, would be nice if it auto refreshed the “This page is blocked” once a parent has approved a site..

Interesting that if I goto images I get the images I want but if I click next to goto page 2 I have to re-request access.

I could of allowed all of google.co.uk but that’s not what I want.

Also interesting I could get to photobucket from that site.. So far its a big fat fail, however ads are getting blocked which is nice..

So it doesn’t filter content as I expect, lets see if I can get to some sites I want to get to..

I can get to most educational sites, that’s nice.. http://primarygamesarena.com and http://primaryschoolict.com worked, I’m guessing that’s because I have basic mode.

To summarize, Microsoft Family Safety is a resource heavy monster that restricts your child’s usage however it does show a certain sense of responsibility taken by you as a parent. You can use it however you want, it is fully customizable.

Do NOT make the mistake of thinking Microsoft Family Safety is the only thing you need to do. Speaking to your child is the key ingredient to all of this, they will not always have a filtered environment so teach them about responsibility internet usage.

Review of Microsoft Family Safety Installation

Today im reviewing Microsoft Family Safety with a consideration on e-Safety for parents

“With Family Safety, you decide how your kids experience the Internet. You can limit searches, block or allow websites, decide who your kids can communicate with when they’re using Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, or Spaces and monitor what websites they’re visiting…”

In this review I will be installing the package and looking at what this really means in real life.

The product is easily downloadable from http://download.live.com/familysafety

Once you have downloaded and run the package you get this installer screen:

I was shocked to see Photo Gallery, Toolbar, Writer, some outlook and some Live Add ins bundled. Also SQL Server CE 3.1 is required and some of my applications will be updated.
For me this is bloatware already. I want an application that does what it sais in the blurb so I am going to remove all of the additional programs except from Family Safety (However you may want some of this functionality).
With everything else removed the install is a quite large 109 MB. I hope this disk space usage is justified.
I needed to close MSN messenger to proceed and the install process took 8 minutes to complete on a machine with with an Intel Core2 6600 & 2 GB ram.
Once install is complete you are presented with this screen:
I have already set my search provider to google safe search and my home page to Primary School Safe Search so I don’t want to do that. I also don’t want to help improve Windows Live, not right now.
Now for a restart… Microsoft never seemed to learn that this is the most frustrating thing about most of their products for IT professionals however parents might not mind this restart as much.
After the restart I was prompted to “Sign Up” to Windows live but I already have windows live so I clicked Close. Nothing has been placed on my desktop or start menu and Windows Live Messenger has not opened as it usualy does. Very bad first impression.
I had to browse to Start – Windows Live – Family Safety, here I tried to sign in as a parent using my hotmail/live username/password. I was given an Error That I have not yet ereviews the Windows Live Terms of Use. No link was provided. I logged into my hotmail to look for the Live Terms of Use.. I clicked More then Family Safety and then clicked “I accept”.
Then I clicked Sign in again, now im in. Already im convinced this is too complicated for parents.
I am going to leave it here for today, it has been 30 minutes so far and the install is done but the configuration isn’t.
In my opinion most parents would simply not go through this entire process as it is too complicated.
Part 2 of this post will review configuration. Expect it in a few days.