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Mike Herrity Profile |
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Twynham School Learning Gateway 2007-10. Serialisation on SharePoint in Education.
Mike Herrity
Â
Firstly, I hope you dont mind indulging me this morning but a little context is needed.
Twynham School is about to reach its three year anniversary of working on e-learning in education with a Learning Platform. Lots of things were already happening when I arrived in September 2006 on the e-learning front: the school had SharePoint for staff and student gateways; podcasting was very well developed especially in languages; streaming media was in place; a wide range of web technologies were be [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 22nd '10 |
An open letter to Samsung re: Samsung N510 issue. My mobile is switched on.
Mike Herrity
Dear Samsung
thank you for getting back to our supplier regarding the issue with your faulty Samsung N510’s within 1 working hours of me sending you the first open letter. This is indeed a very speedy response and you saved me the cost of a stamp which I am sure will please our school finance officer who is currently doing her frantic end of year sums. My nan did after all say, ‘Michael, look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.’
 Our supplier has [read].
Posted: Fri, Feb 12th '10 |
An open letter to Samsung re: Samsung N510. Lessons from the Prius.
Mike Herrity
Dear Samsung
As you will know we have recently become customers of yours through our purchase of netbooks, specifically the Samsung N510. Since October we have purchased two sets of these Samsung N510 netbooks with three years warranty. My rationale for purchasing your netbooks is well founded given your reputation in this category but not without challenges. Our school has only ever purchased Dell machines in the last ten years due to the reputation they have established in the school as a prov [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 10th '10 |
SharePoint Products and Solutions: Muhimbi
Mike Herrity
One of my favourite SharePoint companies at the moment is Muhimbi. I came across them during 2009 via twitter and found them to be one of those companies who have created something special- really useful products which meet a clear need. Since then they have extended their product range further and have a number of high quality products, three of which I wanted to share with you today. The great news is the first one is free!
SharePoint Infuser
Have you ever added a custom content to a Shar [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 9th '10 |
Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. Staff connecting with the Learning Gateway.
Mike Herrity
Does the Learning Gateway support staff working when the school is closed.
Of course the Learning Gateways are used by both students and staff and so one of the other questions is did staff find it helpful on the snow day? The Gateway contains a separate area for all our staff including support staff to get key notices, look at their timetable, search for a student and access relevant data about them and whole classes and access key school documents. As well as this they have staff only subject [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 4th '10 |
Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. What happens when you further engage students?
Mike Herrity
What happens when you further engage students in aspects of the Learning Gateway?
One interesting thing about the timing of the snow day is the fact that it followed a major launch the day before. On Wednesday 6thJanuary we launched our new Online Options system to the whole of year 9 in assembly. We have had an Online Options system for three years at TwynhamSchool but a new build aimed at further engaging students with a face lift and new videos was quietly made live on Monday 4th January. Aft [read].
Posted: Thu, Feb 4th '10 |
Uploading a video to SharePoint 2007 in seconds
Mike Herrity
A quick post to show you my favourite feature on some of our new SharePoint solutions. The video below shows a system we have built which allows you to upload a video to a SharePoint page in seconds.
Related posts:Video week on SharePoint in Education Well in the madness of educational life it has been...
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 3 In part 3 of our series on basic features for...
‘Apologies for the blanket email’ and staff briefing. Will SharePoint 2007 not [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 3rd '10 |
Snow days and the effective Learning Platform. Students connecting with the Learning Gateway
Mike Herrity
Closure day 7th January 2010. How did students connect with the Learning Gateway
On Thursday 7th January when the school closed the notice on the website reminded parents and students that the Learning Gateway was available to support students with their study during the closure day. Whilst we do not expect students to use just the Learning Gateway as they had homework and textbooks available the Learning Gateway hosts a rich range of learning resources to support students. With A-level and GCSE [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 3rd '10 |
Snow days and the effective Learning Platform
Mike Herrity
The following series of posts on our recent snow day will cover:
Part 1 The use of Twynham School’s SharePoint website during a snow day
Part 2 Does the Gateway support students with their learning during a snow day?
Part 3 What happens when we further engage students with the Learning Gateway?
Part 3 Does the Gateway support staff and allow them to work during a snow day?
The use of Twynham School’s SharePoint website during a snow day
January 2010 saw a turbulent start to the yea [read].
Posted: Wed, Feb 3rd '10 |
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 4 of 4
Mike Herrity
Part 1 of this series can be found here
Part 2 of this series can be found here
Part 3 of this series can be found here
In the final post on this series we look at the final parts of the Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint. This includes the video demonstration of Admissions, Newsletters and the ‘I joined’ video clips.Â
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 4 best viewed in 720p
Related posts:Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 1 of 4 During the autumn term the develo [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 2nd '10 |
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 3 of 4
Mike Herrity
Part 1 of this series can be found here
Part 2 of this series can be found here
In part 3 of the series looking at the Twynham 6th Form Site we look at the additional features in the bottom navigation. This video covers the following sections: Student life, Gallery and ‘Getting to a Top Uni’.
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 2 (best viewed in 720p)
Related posts:Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 2 of 4 Part 1 of this series can be found here In...
Twynham 6th Form [read].
Posted: Tue, Feb 2nd '10 |
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 2 of 4
Mike Herrity
In the second part of our series on the Twynham 6th Form site built in SharePoint we look at the courses carousel. This also covers the underlying architecture of the SharePoint subject sites and shows the powerful editing functionality which can be used by all end users.
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 2 (best viewed in 720p)
Related posts:SharePoint as a feature rich and beautiful website One of the projects our development team have been working...
SharePoint Best Practices Post [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 1st '10 |
Twynham 6th Form site in SharePoint part 1 of 4
Mike Herrity
During the autumn term the development team at Twynham spent some time on one of their favourite projects- building external websites in SharePoint. The challenge on this occasion was simple- to take a beautifully designed site and prove that it could maintain its beauty when built in SharePoint. The website in question is undoubtedly the school’s most important- the 6th Form site. This is our key marketing tool for what has become a 400 strong 6th form and any failure to produce somethi [read].
Posted: Mon, Feb 1st '10 |
Social Computing and SharePoint 2010
Mike Herrity
One of the significant improvements in SharePoint 2010 is in the Social Computing section. Whilst I don’t want to contradict myself with my post on SharePoint 2010 and the Lost Generation I do believe that there have been some significant improvements over SharePoint 2007. At the end of the day what we have in SharePoint 2010 is what we have. If I think social computing then my SharePoint expert would be Dan McPherson who owns Zevenseas, a SharePoint consultancy in Holland. I heard him spe [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 31st '10 |
‘Apologies for the blanket email’ and staff briefing. Will SharePoint 2007 notices bring them to an end.
Mike Herrity
A fairly simple post and perhaps only interesting for education people. Like many schools we have a staff briefing system where all the teachers get together 3 times a week at 8.35 for 5 minutes to give out any notices. All three schools I have worked at have done this on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week. Alongside this method of communication and unlike my other two schools Twynham uses email voraciously and my inbox will typically get between 40 and 100 emails per day depending on day of [read].
Posted: Sun, Jan 31st '10 |
Camtasia Studio version 6 with High Definition
Mike Herrity
Over the last week I have done a lot of video demonstrations covering the 8 basic features of SharePoint 2007 for end users. I really enjoyed making the series and know the demos have already proved very useful for many people but one thing has frustrated me- video quality. I use Camtasia for screen recording and love it but have often been frustrated by the output when recording a full screen. On Friday I managed to get round to something I should have done a while ago- upgrading our Camtasia v [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 30th '10 |
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 8
Mike Herrity
In the final part of our video series on the 8 basic SharePoint features for end users we look at Dave Coleman’s favourite feature- search.
Searching for a document on a SharePoint site
Related posts:8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 3 In part 3 of our series on basic features for...
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 2 As we head into the weekend here is part two...
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 7 To finalise the document management section [read].
Posted: Sat, Jan 30th '10 |
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 7
Mike Herrity
To finalise the document management section of the 8 Basic Features of SharePoint part 7 covers deleting a document on a site.
Deleting a document from a SharePoint site
Related posts:8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 3 In part 3 of our series on basic features for...
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 2 As we head into the weekend here is part two...
8 Basic SharePoint Features for end users. Part 5 So far in the series we have covered 4 basic... [read].
Posted: Fri, Jan 29th '10 |
SharePoint as a feature rich and beautiful website
Mike Herrity
One of the projects our development team have been working on at Twynham School is the build of a new website. As you will know we love using SharePoint for everything and it is no surprise that we have been building Internet facing websites in SharePoint. We have already built our main site in SharePoint last year but as our development team of Chris Mckinley, Darren White and Rob Brown develop significant skills in SharePoint we wanted to push what we could do.
The real challenge was to create [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 22nd '09 |
SharePoint 2010 five first thoughts for education
Mike Herrity
This week I am in Las Vegas with over 8000 people who are attending the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009. This is the flagship launch for the public beta of 2010 which will be available by the middle of November for people to play with. For myself, Dave Coleman and the team at Twynham we have had a long and detailed exposure to SharePoint 2010 as we have been very fortunate to be on the TAP programme. This is the Technical Access Preview which has been running for a year now. Along with jus [read].
Posted: Tue, Oct 20th '09 |
Slideshare and the web 2.0 world
Mike Herrity
In the last post I included a couple of videos to the blog using an embed code from YouTube, the site synonymous with a web 2.0 world. One other site I regularly use for embedding resources is Slideshare, the document presentation sharing site. How many people are using this service? I only use it as an easy way to pull the presentations through on my blog but never really thought about how many people go directly to the site to see presentations. The 10 Power Points I have uploaded on Slid [read].
Posted: Sat, Oct 10th '09 |
Student safety with Online Learning: Twynham School Case Study
Mike Herrity
Around 6 months ago Twynham School was involved in a sequence of videos for BECTA on the value of Online Learning. I have never seen these until one of the developers at our school showed them to me this morning. They were posted by BECTA on YouTube in June with little fanfare (or anyone telling us). I will not bore you with all 4- you can get those from YouTube here if interested. This is the ‘are they safe online’ video.
If you havent see the original Twynham School video that wa [read].
Posted: Thu, Oct 8th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools. Director’s Cut special- Dean Close School
Mike Herrity
Perhaps the only real disappointment from the Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum today was missing one presentation. With 5 people lined up to present we unfortunately got to lunch with 3 sessions completed when Nyall Monkton from Dean Close School had to leave. Nyall has very kindly sent his presentation to me this evening and I would like to add it to the collection on this blog. If you will consider this the director’s cut which no one, even those at the meeting, have seen. I am sure [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 7th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters Forum for Schools. Top Reasons and top tips for deploying Windows 7.
Mike Herrity
The Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum has proved to be a great event today with some fantastic collaboration between schools and Local Authorities across 7 Counties. The mix of 20 people sharing their experiences of deploying Windows 7 in a variety or environments proved to be invaluable for all those who attended. As a wrap up to the event I asked the group to reflect on what we had discussed and come up with two lists to share with people. The first was 5 top reasons to move to Windows 7 a [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 7th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools. Lodge Park Technology College.
Mike Herrity
Our final session wrapping up the Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools was led by Stephen Peverett from Lodge Park Technology College. His presentation focused on the position of his school having rolled out 2 ICT suites so far.
If you would like a downloadable copy of this presentation email me at mike.herrity@twynhamschool.com
Windows 7 at Lodge Park Technology College
View more presentations from mikeherrity.
Related posts:Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for scho [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 7th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools. Warwickshire County Council and Schools.
Mike Herrity
Our third presentation of the Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools was led by Anthony Lander, the Senior Systems Engineer at Warwickshire County Council. Anthony brought a wealth of knowledge which will be really useful for all schools but particularly County Councils who will be looking to deploy from a central location out to schools.
If you would like a downloadable copy of this presentation email me at mike.herrity@twynhamschool.com
Warwickshire County Council and Schools with W [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 7th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools. West Hatch School presentation.
Mike Herrity
Our second presentation at the Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum was from Alan Richards. Alan has a significant pedigree having worked at Long Eaton and is now building one of the best networks in the country at West Hatch School. His presentation had a strong focus on the use of deployment technology so if WDS, SCCM and MDT 2010 mean anything to you take a look at the presentation below.
If you would like a downloadable copy of this presentation email me at mike.herrity@twynhamschool.com
Wi [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 7th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters’ Forum for schools. Twynham School presentation
Mike Herrity
Today is our Windows 7 Early Adopters Forum for Schools running from Microsoft Reading Campus. We have schools from Dorset, Northamptonshire, Essex, Cheltenham and Leicester along with Warwickshire and Lewisham Authorities sharing their experiences of deploying Windows 7. The majority have deployed to whole schools with others are running Windows 7 in a number of classrooms. Dave Coleman kicked off with Twynham School’s experience of deployment in the summer and his presentation is shown b [read].
Posted: Wed, Oct 7th '09 |
Friday Funny- could we do this in SharePoint!
Mike Herrity
Although I never normally post silly stuff I couldnt help myself when this went around the office and some wag said ‘do you think we could programme it through SharePoint!’
Have a great weekend.
No related posts. [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 25th '09 |
Using SharePoint as a tracking system to support Online Reporting to Parents.
Mike Herrity
One of the things many schools have moved over to in the last few years is full registration of tutor time electronically. Increasing numbers are moving over to also electronically registering individual lessons as part of the Online Reporting to Parents agenda. We are now a year into compulsory registration of lessons online having decided to make this data available to parents through our Parent Gateway. The big issue of course is teachers forget to register lessons. I certainly did yesterd [read].
Posted: Fri, Sep 25th '09 |
Windows 7 Early Adopters Forum- October 7th
Mike Herrity
Like a number of schools in the UK we have started a relatively early roll out of Windows 7 and now have over 500 machines running on the new OS. This has not been an entirely smooth road and at times Dave Coleman and his lieutenant Neil Hodgkinson have undertaken much quizzical arm folding and even occasional chin stroking. I am pleased to say that by the end of the first school week log in speeds had dropped to below 1 minute across the site. Before we got to this speed (due to changing the w [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 23rd '09 |
SharePoint Survival Kit for Teachers
Mike Herrity
A few weeks ago we completed the roll out of SharePoint at Frogmore Community College in Hampshire. Since June we have been moving their school website over to SharePoint and creating a Learning Gateway for launch at the start of this school year. Our visit in early September was during a school inset day which was set aside for training on and resourcing of their Learning Gateway. To start the day we had to train the entire staff of 85 teachers and support staff on the basics of SharePoint [read].
Posted: Mon, Sep 21st '09 |
Microsoft Songsmith free for Education
Mike Herrity
Last week I wrote an post about an innovate piece of software called AutoCollage. This photo montage tool came out of Microsoft Research Cambridge and is an excellent piece of software which is free to all schools. Well it seems that the educational giveaways just keep on coming from Microsoft with another of their research products, Songsmith which has been made available to education for free from this morning.
Microsoft Songsmith lets you create a complete song without any knowledge of mu [read].
Posted: Thu, Sep 10th '09 |
The Social Media Revolution and teenagers
Mike Herrity
Earlier today I posted a blog on The Social Media Revolution and wrote some thoughts on why we need to adapt to the changes that currently are and increasingly will affect the way we communicate and interact. The Social Media Revolution is a crucial change in society which has a major impact on our role as teachers supporting students in a learning environment. Most of the people reading this blog are likely to be focused predominantly on the Online Learning aspect of schools and the impact [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 6th '09 |
The Social Media Revolution and impact on schools
Mike Herrity
The summer is now officially over as schools have had their influx of students and next week is the first full week back throughout England. One of the biggest changes we are experiencing at Twynham school is managing a large increase in our Sixth Form over the last 3 years and we are close to approaching 400 17 and 18 year olds enrolled last week. One of the big challenges I think schools face with all students aged 11-18 but especially those of Sixth Form age is making online learning relev [read].
Posted: Sun, Sep 6th '09 |
AutoCollage for school events-parental engagement
Mike Herrity
One of the Microsoft tools which I have been wanting to test drive for a few months is AutoCollage. This product came directly out of one of the Microsoft Research Labs in Cambridge and uses a range of sophisticated technology to recognise faces and pick out the most interesting bits out of a collection of photos before blending them into a photo collage. Clearly this has huge potential in education with schools taking hundreds if not thousands of photos a year from trips, extra curricular a [read].
Posted: Wed, Sep 2nd '09 |
Your GCSE Results in 10 hours or in 10 minutes? The power of Reporting Services and SharePoint.
Mike Herrity
As those of you who know me personally will be aware two of my passions are technology and data! For a History teacher this is fairly unusual but these are also two of my key roles in school as an Assistant Headteacher- e-learning and data. During the last week I have been very busy making sure all our systems will be ready with Windows 7 installed throughout the site and three refurbished computer rooms (two of which the contractor still hasn’t finished). Even more demanding should have [read].
Posted: Thu, Aug 27th '09 |
Edit your SharePoint content Offline with ease
Mike Herrity
Earlier in the day I wrote about the free product Colligio SharePoint Reader which allows you to access your SharePoint sites when away from Internet access. This is a fantastic resource and you can download it from here at no cost. At the same time you may be looking for a product which not only allows you to access your SharePoint sites but also enables you to edit them offline and then sync back to the server. Colligo has covered this with their product Colligio Contributor.Â
Colligio Con [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 26th '09 |
Connecting effectively with SharePoint Offline
Mike Herrity
Yesterday I started a new series of product reviews by looking at the excellent RSSbus SharePoint Web Part which helps you to connect to hundreds of sources of data and place them in your SharePoint environment. Continuing with the theme of SharePoint Product Reviews I wanted to look at the issue of access to SharePoint 24/7 and anytime/anywhere. One of the biggest issues here is how do you stay connected with your SharePoint environment without Internet access. The increasing availability of [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 26th '09 |
RSSBus SharePoint Web Part and free license.
Mike Herrity
I have had plenty of positive feedback on the RRSBus Web Part for SharePoint from the post this morning. Thank you for those who also pointed out the dodgy background music which I missed as I had my machine on mute so hadn’t noticed! Apologies. If you are like Chris, one of our developers, having watched it today you might have wanted some useful audio. I am pleased to say that RSSBus themselves have posted a video today which is fairly useful. Chris has also kindly agreed to put together [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 25th '09 |
View data from hundreds of sources in SharePoint.
Mike Herrity
Well over the last few weeks I have been taking a well earned break from front line education whilst playing with bits of SharePoint here and there. One of the things I have been focusing on is looking in more detail at SharePoint Products on the market which will significantly enhance our Twynham SharePoint development. One of the most impressive is a product called RSSBus WebPart for SharePoint. This tool is simply fabulous and allows you to integrate a rich and wide range of data into SharePo [read].
Posted: Tue, Aug 25th '09 |
Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 in schools
Mike Herrity
Â
One of the biggest changes many Network Managers will make in schools during the next 12 months is likely to be updating their school’s Microsoft OS from Vista (or even in many cases XP) to Windows 7. Last Friday saw the release of Windows 7 to many schools who have the Schools Agreement and some will be moving over during this summer break in the next 3 weeks. To support with this I am pleased to say Microsoft Education UK have put on an event next Friday. This will be a mix of techni [read].
Posted: Wed, Aug 12th '09 |
Media Streaming in SharePoint. Part 3 of 3
Mike Herrity
Now that we had all of our media files in one location it just came down to the delivery method and media library look and feel which you can see below in the screenshot of our media library. The gateway page show below is made up of 3 elements: the media document library; a search box and a recently added list.
Â
The only thing left to add was the delivery method, this could have been a list with hyperlinks to the videos but the best solution we found was ASX files and example of which can be [read].
Posted: Mon, Aug 3rd '09 |
Media Streaming in SharePoint. Part 2 of 3
Mike Herrity
Following on from yesterday, at Twynham School we have been delivering our media resources online since 2005. The development which has taken place in the last 3 years has been delivering digital media  through SharePoint.  When looking at how to deliver media through SharePoint the first thing we discovered was the lack of resources available and in fact the only book we could find on the subject was Windows media services resource kit. This book proved invaluable in providing a set by step [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 31st '09 |
Media Streaming through SharePoint. Part 1 of 3
Mike Herrity
Guest blog post by Dave Coleman Network Manager at Twynham School
Over the next few days I will cover media streaming and how we deliver all of our digital assets through SharePoint. In the presentations that we give on our learning gateways this subject always gets a good reception as this is a great way to engage staff in the whole gateway experience. Before I get into details I thought I would take you through the media streaming journey.
The way we deliver media streaming through SharePoin [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 30th '09 |
Preview 200 types of file in SharePoint 2007
Mike Herrity
Have you ever wanted to look at a file in SharePoint to see if it is the document you want before opening it or saving it for editing? Have you ever tried looking at a file but it wouldn’t open because it was unsupported? Well I may just have the answer for you. Over the last few weeks I have been working with a company which makes a SharePoint Viewer which I think is excellent. It works as follows:
List of Documents in SharePoint
The list of documents above may be typical of any SharePo [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 24th '09 |
Windows 7 RTM announced and available to schools on 7th August
Mike Herrity
It is officially the end of term in the UK (the last schools finished today) and for Network Managers 90% of the development work they wanted to do is now possible in the Oasis that is the summer holidays. The next three and a half weeks should be relatively quite for most systems team in terms of teacher interference until the week of 17th August when schools turn their attention to A-level results and then GCSE results the following week. The great news from Microsoft is Windows 7 has gone to [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 22nd '09 |
Branding your SharePoint sites to engage primary school students
Mike Herrity
In the post I wrote (very quickly) yesterday I put two examples of branding for SharePoint sites to engage younger students. One of the challenges for primary and junior schools when creating a Learning Gateway with SharePoint is how do you make it appeal to students aged 4-11? The key is to make SharePoint look less like SharePoint by applying branding. This is a relatively simple process and although branding your SharePoint will cost a little money it is far more likely to gain high user ad [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 22nd '09 |
SharePoint Branding for younger students
Mike Herrity
Before I sign off….. One of the installs we are currently completing is for a local primary school. One of the challenges here is to make SharePoint more visually appealing for younger age students. Today we received a few ‘mock ups’ from a local designer who wanted to provide us with some samples. They are both very different but I thought I would show them to you all and take some views. The samples are just the graphics which our developers will put into SharePoint. Any thou [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 21st '09 |
SharePoint in Education goes technical this summer
Mike Herrity
The summer holidays for schools are either started or due to start tomorrow across the UK. With this in mind and my impending trip to Jordan and Syria I will take a break from blogging until 17th August. This leaves 3 weeks when I know many of you will still be around especially those network managers who have a very busy 6 weeks prepping for next year. With this in mind my partner in crime and good friend Dave Coleman (Network Manager of Twynham and IT Consultant) has agreed to take up the blo [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 21st '09 |
Learning Gateway Conference and User Adoption
Mike Herrity
The Learning Gateway Conference is running today and has been a fantastic success. There has been a great range of great presentations on both tracks and good engagement with excellent questions from the audience. Myself and Dave were very pleased to be asked to speak separately on two different topics with Dave covering how you extend SharePoint. The topic I was asked to speak on is my favourite- user adoption. Over the next 4 sessions I will cover the 1 hour presentation I gave today on the bl [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 15th '09 |
SharePoint in Education Roundup for July
Mike Herrity
I am conscious there has been a lot of blogging going on in the month of July with 20 posts in 13 days. I thought it would be useful to summarise the topics I have been covering in this time while I take a breath so people who have not had a chance to pick a thread up can navigate easily to it. I am off to present at the Learning Gateway Conference tomorrow and will start a theme on User Adoption in SharePoint then. In the meantime feel free to look at the following posts which I have put into t [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 14th '09 |
SharePoint 2010 Unleashed- find out more
Mike Herrity
For all who are using SharePoint in their schools and organisations today was a big one. SharePoint 2010 has officially reached the Technical Preview stage and is on the road map to arrive with us in full release in the first half of 2010. We have been fortunate to have an insight and input into the new version of SharePoint during the first half of this year and look forward to supporting the development of what will be an exceptional product. As someone who loves the current version of SharePo [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 13th '09 |
Windows 7 Latest WPC09. 7 Key Features for 7
Mike Herrity
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is now under way with a Windows 7 Demo. This has all been seen before but a reminder from Microsoft of the Windows 7 Key Features.
Consistency through the preview window.
Task bar is your space to use e.g excel can be locked to the task bar.
Jumplisits enable you to get key documents loaded quicker.
Drag and drop documents directly into Outlook which instantly become attachments.
Snapping gives side by side comparison with ease.
Internal links in Outlook [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 13th '09 |
Office 2010, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2
Mike Herrity
The 3 products above (including SharePoint in Office) are perhaps the most important for a Network Manager who predominantly uses Microsoft products. Want to know about the big changes taking place with these products in the next 12 months? Well there is a fair chance that the best way to do this is check out the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009.
World Partner Conference
Today the blogosphere came alive with news that Microsoft released extensive details of Office 2010Â before remov [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 13th '09 |
Teenagers can blog. So how do we harness it?
Mike Herrity
As many of you know I am a big fan of twitter (you can find me @mikeherrity) and wrote a post on the value of it for teachers a while back which you can find here- To Twitter or not to twitter? Now the ultimate dilemma for me on twitter is the arrival of students I teach. I managed 3 blissful months before the first one followed me and now there are at least 20 in my followers, mainly from the 6th Form. In the end I have decided on a policy of not blocking but not following back to avoid being [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 13th '09 |
Windows 7 RTM in time for school summer install
Mike Herrity
How many machines in your schools already have Windows 7 RC on it? At Twynham we have at least 20 laptops with Windows 7 as their primary OS given how stable it is. As you can imagine Dave our Network Manager is desperate to get all our machines onto the full Windows 7 version this summer. He was as you can imagine very disappointed when news came out that this would not be available until October, missing the crucial summer season when 90% of work is done on the network. The good news is Micros [read].
Posted: Sun, Jul 12th '09 |
Tim Berners-Lee and the coming of digital natives
Mike Herrity
A while ago I wrote about my experiences of watching the change in children as they moved from being digital immigrants when I started teaching 10 years ago to those who are now in primary schools and are definitely digital natives. If you didn’t read the article about my 5 year old nephew and his use of technology it is still the third most read blog post and can be found here Digital Natives coming to a school near you.
This week we have been celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Worl [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 11th '09 |
Online Reporting to Parents Student Details
Mike Herrity
One of the Web Parts we have completed for Online Reporting to Parents is the Student Details. This has been available all year but I have not blogged about it as I would only be able to show you a blur given these are personal details. One of the developers at Twynham School has very kindly created a mock up to show the look and feel of the Web Part which can be seen below.
Student Details Web Part
The Web Part is intended to be a simple reference for teachers when searching students so that th [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 11th '09 |
SharePoint and Office 2010 are you getting ready?
Mike Herrity
So I shouldn’t be diverting from my blogs covering Online Reporting to Parents but a quick trawl of twitter before I call it a night has me thinking of SharePoint and Office 2010. This is in production and a public beta looks likely at the end of the year but the blogosphere is claiming Beta 1 will be announced on Monday at the Partner Conference.
Whilst I don’t want to get in to the speculation it made me think- how many schools who currently run SharePoint 2007 have SharePoint 2010 [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 9th '09 |
Online Reporting to Parents licensing in SharePoint
Mike Herrity
Yesterday I started a new theme looking at Online Reporting to Parents using SharePoint. If you haven’t read my previous article it makes sense to pick it up here first before reading this one. In my role as a SharePoint Consultant I have been to over 100 schools this year and many of them are looking to setup SharePoint or extend it by offering access to parents and Online Reporting. By far the biggest question and confusion surrounding this is the issue of CALs or Client Access Licen [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 9th '09 |
Online Reporting to Parents Web Parts.
Mike Herrity
As we approach the end of the school year I thought I would return to a really important topic which will be top of the agenda in the next school year. I am of course talking about Online Reporting to Parents which must be completed by all secondary schools by the end of the next school year. At Twynham School we produced Online Reporting to Parents Web Parts for SharePoint two years ago before the government agenda. We have now made these available for sale in a partnership with Salamander Soft [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 8th '09 |
Streaming Media Web Part for SharePoint
Mike Herrity
To finish of this section on Streaming Media in SharePoint I thought I would show you a more visual way to set your media on the page. In part 1 I covered the basic concept of Media Streaming and part 2 showed a demo of our use of asx wrapper files. Of course this works really well but can further add to the document library feel of SharePoint. To overcome this we have created a Media Web Part for SharePoint so that our users can play video directly in the page. Take a look at the video below wh [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 8th '09 |
Media Streaming in SharePoint part 2
Mike Herrity
Following on from my earlier blog on Media Streaming in SharePoint I thought I would put out a Camtasia Video showing the ways in which we present video. The key to placing media throughout our SharePoint site is the use of asx wrapper files which link to our media server. At Twynham we have one central repository for these files, The Media Library, which is administered by the Network Technician who digitises clips. The Media Library is only available to staff who can then place individual clip [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 7th '09 |
Media Streaming in SharePoint for user adoption
Mike Herrity
Dave Coleman is a wise and venerable man of SharePoint at our school and in the UK scene. An advocate of SharePoint since the early incarnations in 2000 and a loyal supporter through 2003 and MOSS 2007. Although we have overseen most of the development of Online Learning at Twynham School together with our team there is one area he can take credit for alone. The most interesting thing about this development is it has had one of the most significant impacts on staff user adoption and everywhere w [read].
Posted: Tue, Jul 7th '09 |
Samsung NC20 and Windows 7 v XP load times
Mike Herrity
Over the last few weeks I have decided to set up another blog site to focus purely on Netbooks and their impact in Education. For the time being I will keep you updated on what is going on over on the new site while it gets established. My full reasoning for setting up a sister site to SharePoint in Education called Netbooks in Education is explained here.
Click here for Samsung NC20 Windows 7 v XP
My second post on the new site looks at some work the Systems Team have been doing at Twynham to p [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 6th '09 |
Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 6 of 6
Mike Herrity
To wrap up this session on integrating Reporting Services in SharePoint I thought I would run a demo showing all 5 stages of the data analysis package we have produced using a Camtasia video. Below you can see the transition from GCSE Headline to All Department Analysis, Department Level Analysis, Class Level Analysis and Student Level Analysis.
For best viewing of the video please enlarge!
Â
Reporting Services is an extraordinarily powerful tool to support teachers and middle/senior leaders i [read].
Posted: Mon, Jul 6th '09 |
Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 5 of 6
Mike Herrity
Having reached the class level of our data analysis tool created in Reporting Services, teachers are able to complete their analysis in September with a rich vein of data shown below.
Individual Class Analysis
When teachers look at those students who underperformed in their subject one of the most important questions is why. This could of course be obvious to the teacher as the student lacked motivation, had poor attendance or did not complete the exam properly. One other factor could be that th [read].
Posted: Sun, Jul 5th '09 |
Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 4 of 6
Mike Herrity
Moving into Middle Leader and Class teacher analysis, yesterday we were looking at the department table which is pulled through Reporting Services into SharePoint. This is shown below and enables the Head of Department and Line Manager to examine differences in outcomes between individual classes.
At this stage the Head of Department may want to drill into an individual class to look at the reasons for particularly strong or weak outcomes. They can do this simply by clicking on the class code o [read].
Posted: Sat, Jul 4th '09 |
Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 3 of 6
Mike Herrity
So far in this series we have being looking at the use of Reporting Services integrated into SharePoint for use by Senior Leaders to examine the performance at whole school and department level. Yesterday we looked at the All Subject analysis we do at Twynham School which is shown in the table below.
All Subject analysis in reporting services
From here the tool we have produced is particularly useful for looking at differences in performance between classes. This is where the Subject Leader sho [read].
Posted: Fri, Jul 3rd '09 |
Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2 of 6
Mike Herrity
Yesterday we looked at accessing data directly from within SharePoint using the very powerful tool Reporting Services. At the top of the pyramid of data we had senior leaders (and indeed all members of staff) being able to quickly pull up Headline data shown in the table below.
The next stage for senior or middle leaders when results are in is to look at department level data to see how each department has performed. In the table above the top right corner contains the word GCSE. By clicking o [read].
Posted: Thu, Jul 2nd '09 |
Reporting Services integration in SharePoint 1 of 6
Mike Herrity
One of the tools I have most wanted to talk about over the last few months but haven’t got to is Reporting Services. This is an astonishingly powerful tool for sharing and communicating key data in a school. At Twynham we have been using Reporting Services 2005 for 3 years to provide a rich stream of data which enables both teaching staff and middle and senior leaders to ensure our students are on track to fulfill their potential and make maximum progress. Since last summer we have taken [read].
Posted: Wed, Jul 1st '09 |
The Effective use of technology to support learning
Mike Herrity
One of my favourite moments in education is going to visit a classroom of an Outstanding teacher to see exceptional learning. At Twynham we are fortunate to have many excellent teachers and one of the very best is Helene Tulodzieck who is an AST working in the French department. There are so many things I like about visiting her lessons but perhaps the two things that strike me most are the atmosphere and the use of technology. I think each classroom of an experienced teacher has an atmospher [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 24th '09 |
SharePoint Conference 2009
Mike Herrity
My final CPD tip for the week is perhaps the most exciting, powerful and challenging to pitch to your Headteacher, line manager or CPD co-ordinator. The SharePoint Conference 2009 is taking place this year in Las Vegas from October 19-22. It promises to be the most useful piece of CPD you will attend in the next school year for one key reason- it is the launch point for SharePoint 2010. If your school has come a long way with SharePoint 2007 and wants to unlock the potential of SharePoint 2010 [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 21st '09 |
SharePoint CPD tailored for Education
Mike Herrity
Continuing on the training and CPD theme, have you ever wanted to go to a SharePoint conference but felt it might be a waste of time because it had no or limited focus on education? This is a constant issue with many large SharePoint conferences being largely business focused and giving some value but at a real cost. Well fear not because there is an excellent one day conference in the UK in the near future and its all about education and the use of Microsoft’s Learning Gateway!
Our [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 18th '09 |
Customising the SharePoint look and feel
Mike Herrity
Something very interesting is starting to happen to SharePoint at Twynham School. People are starting to play with it in a deep and meaningful way! The best bit about all this is I am not referring to our developers. We have been using SharePoint for years under the stewardship of Dave Coleman our Network Manager but really strong development started in March 2007. Since this time we have gone for a very locked down approach with Dave and his team controlling the navigation and layout. This has [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 17th '09 |
Achievement Show 2009 Presentation
Mike Herrity
The Achievement Show is up and running in the last 10 minutes and dozens of leading schools are now presenting throughout the Emirates Stadium. If you havent been able to make it this time I thought I would upload my presentation which will be running in the Technology Theatre from 11.45am. Consider this pre-release material!
Achievement Show 2009
View more OpenOffice presentations from mikeherrity.
Related posts:The Achievement Show 2009- still time to book I have been a little remis [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 16th '09 |
The Achievement Show 2009- still time to book
Mike Herrity
I have been a little remiss in not keeping up to date in sharing some of the excellent CPD which is taking place at the moment. By far one of the best value for money opportunities is taking place next week at the Emirates Stadium- the notice is short admittedly but maybe you can make a Monday morning pitch to your Head!
This Tuesday 16th June 2009Â sees the second annual Achievement Show held by The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT). This is an exceptional event which showcases th [read].
Posted: Sun, Jun 14th '09 |
One Note in Education the catalyst for netbooks
Mike Herrity
If you are new to One Note as an application then it might be useful to start by explaining exactly what it is. One Note is a note taking package which allows information gathering of text, notes, audio and video as well as web capture in a continuous format without the boundaries of page breaks. At the same time it allows people to work together as multiple editors to enable multi-user collaboration. In its original form One Note was devised for ideal use with tablet technology and in many ways [read].
Posted: Fri, Jun 5th '09 |
Asus T91 and the coming of the tablet revolution.
Mike Herrity
This week we have been covering the revolution starting in schools with the use of netbooks and the potential they offer to fundamentally change learning. In early January ASUS announced another step in that change with the production of a tablet netbook, the ASUS T91. It has been a long time coming but news filtered out in mid May that an early June release was likely and yesterday proved to be that day. I am a big fan of ASUS although the build quality of Samsung has led us down the NC20 route [read].
Posted: Thu, Jun 4th '09 |
The best netbook for an education context?
Mike Herrity
Just before half term I was having a look around to see where we are with netbooks and came across something a little different from normal. Dell have done the hard work and thought about how to adapt a netbook to suit the educational environment. There may be more companies that have already done this but this is the first one which stood out to me. Although I am not recommending the product yet as I haven’t see it in the flesh or put it through the ultimate testing and feedback- students [read].
Posted: Wed, Jun 3rd '09 |
Netbook price crash continues.
Mike Herrity
As many of you know I am a huge fan of netbooks and think that over the next 3 years they will have a decisive impact on the Education sphere. Some 5 weeks ago I promised a three parter on netbooks which never appeared as the fog of war which is exam season descended. I cant help but return to this topic but the blog posts will not be the same. This is largely because the netbook market changes so rapidly, perhaps more than any other technology. I would however like to focus on four areas thi [read].
Posted: Tue, Jun 2nd '09 |
Back on the SharePoint trail in Seattle
Mike Herrity
It has indeed been a while since I last wrote and just looking at the blog I havent posted in the whole of May. For our team at Twynham the 5 weeks after Easter and before May half-term has been unbelievably busy with so much interest in SharePoint/netbooks/Online Reporting to Parents and so much more. It is great to see so many schools in the UK now making real strides with their online learning platforms.
This week myself and Dave are very fortunate to be visiting Seattle to spend some time [read].
Posted: Mon, Jun 1st '09 |
SharePoint Service Pack 2 Install Guide
Mike Herrity
It has been over a week since my last post and the very busy time of the year for teachers has begun with coursework submissions and the start of the heavy exam season. This has been one reason for my lack of posting since the summer half term began. The other reason is that you have clearly had a lot to read from our SharePoint Best Practices Posts so I thought I would allow an ‘operational pause’ in proceedings while everyone took stock. In fact we have enjoyed huge numbers of peo [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 28th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts wrap up so far.
Mike Herrity
Well we started the Easter break at the excellent European SharePoint Best Practices Conference in London. This was a fantastic session and so far we have produced 8 posts which you can get to directly from here as follows:
Joel Oleson on avoiding failed deployments and newbie mistakes
Joel Oleson’s Keynote- 3 key messages
The file server is dead! Long live the SharePoint!
The Power of Search with Federated Searches
Building Capacity into your SharePoint setup
Planning for failure in your [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 19th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts- Day 8 of 10 Reasons to create ‘Custom Site Definitions’
Mike Herrity
Guest Post by Darren White SQL/SharePoint Developer
Note from administrator Mike Herrity: Apologies for the unusual font today. This post was published with this font and despite my best efforts will not be corrected! I love Word Press 99.9% of the time! I did not want to remove it and break a link in RSS.
One session that I attended at the SharePoint Best Practices Conference was titled ‘Designing & Deploying Enterprise Branding Solutions using Custom Site Definitions’ The aim of [read].
Posted: Fri, Apr 17th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts-Day 7 of 10. Improving your SharePoint Performance
Mike Herrity
Guest post from Darren White- SQL/SharePoint Developer
One of the sessions that I attended at the Best Practices Conference was titled ‘Go Live! Launching your MOSS Publishing Site’. It went a long way to addressing one of the biggest problems with a large SharePoint setup, performance. One of the biggest challenges surrounds keeping the load time of your pages to a minimum so the end users are not kept waiting. To find out how big your improvements will be you can use a tool cal [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 16th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts- Day 6 of 10. Planning for failure in your SharePoint setup.
Mike Herrity
Guest post by Chris Mckinley- Senior SQL/SharePoint Developer
An occasional day in the Systems Office at Twynham School
The System’s phone rings…
“Hello IT.”
“The system has lost all my files!”
“Where we’re your files stored?”
“On the Gateway”
“OK, do you know where on the Gateway?”
“Oh! Don’t get technical I don’t understand all this VLE stuff”
“Where did you last see the files?”
 [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 15th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts, Day 5 of 10. Building Capacity into your SharePoint Setup.
Mike Herrity
Guest post by Chris Mckinley- Senior SQL/SharePoint Developer
Imagine a scenario for an educational SharePoint setup as a development team….
SharePoint is installed, setup and configured seamlessly with the public drives made read only. Staff and students are uploading and collaborating and together with the systems administrators and SharePoint they ride into the sunset and live happily ever after…
Of course this is not how it happens, as Joel Oleson said in his keynote SharePoin [read].
Posted: Tue, Apr 14th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts, Day 4 of 10. The Power of Search with Federated Searches.
Mike Herrity
Guest post by Dave Coleman- Network Manager Twynham School
One of the sessions from The Best Practices Conference was titled “Implementing a search infrastructure - Do’s, Don’ts and considerations” presented by Daniel Wessels. The aim of the session was to show the power of the search UI in SharePoint. It is often overlooked as a major tool in SharePoint and this is because of a lack of awareness of federated search and how to configure the search options within it.
At T [read].
Posted: Mon, Apr 13th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts, Day 3 of 10. The file server is dead! Long live the SharePoint!
Mike Herrity
Guest post by Dave Coleman- Twynham School Network Manager
Is the file server dead? The man in this video clearly thought so!
One of the sessions I attended last Monday was Joel Olsen’s input titled, ‘Help me kill my File Servers….’ This is really well timed with the work we are doing at Twynham School as we are currently moving away from network Home Drives to the use of My Sites with students and staff. When I became a Network Manager at Twynham School in 1999 I adopted a [read].
Posted: Sun, Apr 12th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts, Day 2 of 10. 3 key messages from Joel Oleson’s Keynote.
Mike Herrity
Today I want to focus on 3 key messages from the Keynote Joel Oleson gave which represent a challenge to us moving forward with our SharePoint deployment. These may not be relevant to all but for us the focus on developing our SharePoint strategically and ensuring appropriate structures are in place are key to moving forward effectively. I have pulled 3 slides from Joel’s excellent key note here- the whole PowerPoint is viewable from my previous post, directly from slideshare or Joel’ [read].
Posted: Sat, Apr 11th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Posts, Day 1 of 10. Avoiding failed deployments and newbie mistakes.
Mike Herrity
Well it seems a long time ago but it is actually only 72 hours since the first European SharePoint Best Practices Conference kicked off in London. The three days were very intensive with 63 possible sessions to visit and our decision to send 4 colleagues was fully justified with so many inputs available. Looking back at day 1 we arrived for the Keynote with Mr SharePoint, Joel Oleson, running the opening session. Joel presented an overview of the 10 factors you should consider when deploying Sha [read].
Posted: Thu, Apr 9th '09 |
SharePoint Best Practices Conference 10 days of posts. Blogging on the biggest European event.
Mike Herrity
It is the Easter Holidays at schools in England for 2 weeks and I have taken a mini break from blogging for a few days. Most of the blogging I have done this year has been pitched towards education with a SharePoint context but not heavily technical. For the start of the Easter break 3 of our SharePoint technical team and myself have come to London to the European SharePoint Best Practices Conference. I thought I would use this opportunity to do something a little different and so have asked t [read].
Posted: Wed, Apr 8th '09 |
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