School ICT News Bulletin No. 217 - 08/03/2013
Published by ICT Shared Services
Norfolk ICT Conference – 14th March 2013
Norfolk ICT Conference – 14th March 2013
Tom Baker, the new Head of ICT, will be presenting at the ICT conference on ICT Services for Schools in Norfolk. Tom joined Norfolk County Council in December from Sunderland City Council, where he delivered a number of major ICT initiatives to benefit the community and schools.
Surgeries by ICT Shared Services
The following surgeries will be available throughout the day at the Norfolk ICT conference. Booking will be available next to reception on the day for the following areas:
Norfolk Cloud, Google and Chromebooks
You may hear many of the exhibitors referring to being part of the Norfolk Cloud, a portal of applications used and endorsed by Norfolk Schools!
Come and find out more about how this can help within your school and have your say on what applications you would like to have included.
Interested in using Chromebooks within your school – come and talk to us about moving to Chromebooks in the classroom, and how we can support these.
SIMS
Are you aware of the Discover analytical tool available to you as part of your SIMS package? SIMS Discover brings key information to you with a few simple drag and drop actions. The benefit of this system is that all users can instigate their own investigations into areas of data that interest them, quickly and easily.
Do you want to know more about the future roadmap for SIMS within Norfolk? Have any general issues that you want assistance with?
If so come and chat with us
ICT Refresh Programme
Our ICT Refresh Programme is designed for you to save staff resource time and money by working closely with your personal Project Manager to build a firm foundation for learning of sustainable infrastructure and equipment.
If you would like to talk to us about your forthcoming Refresh or would like to find out more about how the ICT Refresh Programme could work to turn the ICT Vision for your school into reality within your budget , then please come to see us.
ICT Procurement Service and ICT catalogue
Our ICT purchasing service provides you with access to the school’s ICT catalogue of products and services, including those from major IT providers including our new Apple offering, please come and see us to hear more about this and how we tailor individual solutions and quotations for your school.
ICT Protech contracts – our new proactive, professional support contacts for 2013
Our Area Team leaders will be available to talk to you about how the new ICT Protech contracts work, what is included in the contracts and show you how our new remote support tools will really make a difference in offering a more proactive support package to keep your ICT working when you need it.
Come and talk to us if you would like to find out more.
ICT Shared Services at the conference.
Alternatively you can speak to us on the ICT Shared Services stand with any queries or to find out more about the range of products and services we offer. We will be demonstrating our new simple Managed Web Service, Norfolk Cloud Portal and the new remote tools we have invested in to provide the proactive support as part of the ICT ProTech contracts.
The School Library Service will be demonstrating their new e-reader offering which ICT Shared Service has integrated to use with your Norfolk User ID’s.
You can find the ICT Shared Services stand at the top of the stairs on the first floor of the conference centre.
Norfolk Broadband Service
A number of schools have asked us recently about the changes to Broadband charging and for information about the Broadband service following marketing offers from a number of providers.
MI sheet 51/13 was published on 22nd February available here, it explains
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the background to the funding and charging changes as well as
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providing access to more information about the service to inform your buying decision.
Author: Lynn Parvin
NEW for 2013 e-book and e-reader pilot – Norfolk leads the way!
ICT Shared Services School Applications Team have been working with the School Library Service and their platform provider in New Zealand to provide a new opportunity that will allow Norfolk students to borrow e-books on a range of compatible devices. The new service will be integrated to the Norfolk Cloud Portal, with users able to access the platform using the same single sign-on used for Google Apps and other services. This also means schools won’t have to spend any time setting up users or passwords once they subscribe to the service.
This is the first integration of its kind in the UK for an e-book scheme.
More information about the e-book offering is available in the Schools Library Service Services to Schools brochure for 2013-14 or from the School Library Service at the Norfolk ICT Conference
Author: Lynn Parvin
Smoothwall Internet Filtering project
The pilot schools have completed the user acceptance testing phase of the project.
The pilot has raised some areas which are being addressed and managed by BT and Smoothwall. The first schools of the main rollout will migrate to Smoothwall on Monday. On Wednesday we will review the level of resource to support schools as they migrate and ensure that this does not impact on internet performance to determine the next phase of the rollout. We will continue to update schools accordingly as the project continues.
Author: Lynn Parvin
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