03 Dec Interactive Classroom Technologies

The Next Generation

We are now in the early stages of a technology revolution in the education sector. Over the next four to five years, it’s estimated that many schools will replace traditional-style interactive whiteboards with the new “giant tablet style” interactive touch panel screens. Currently, there are more than 800,000 interactive whiteboards installed across the UK. They’re in schools, colleges, universities and corporate spaces and the demand for them is only increasing. It is envisaged that most of these existing interactive whiteboard technologies, predominantly from Promethean and SMART in the educational sector will be replaced with the new high definition interactive touch panels which are available from a number of different vendors.

What does this mean for interactive classroom technologies? The next generation has a variety of enhanced features that simply weren’t available with the previous generation of interactive whiteboards. As the technology improves, these interactive touch panels will be even more valuable to students and teachers, allowing them to take their classes to the next level.

High Definition

With high definition, everything is up close and personal. In a classroom, teachers can make use of the new 4K or 1080P high definition interactive screens to bring experiences up close and personal for their students. Interactive dissections can be as hands-on and visual as if the students were actually undertaking the exercise for real. Images of historical places and events will be so clear, students will feel as though they’re actually traveling along with their teachers and classmates. High definition interactive screens have the power to transform the entire educational experience–and they’re coming now.

Ultra Bright

The brighter the screen, the easier it is for students to make out everything that’s going on in the lesson. There’s no need for students at the back of the class to squint and lean forward, desperate to make out something that’s clear enough in the front row. With ultra bright technology, every image is crisper, clearer, and easier to see.

Up to 10 Point Touch

Many traditional Interactive Whiteboards only recognised two points of touch, which means that students and teachers may use only two fingers to explore their content. With 10 point touch, up to ten fingers can be in use at once, digging in and exploring the content on the interactive screen. This also makes it easier for multiple students to work together on projects, taking their learning to the next level through collaboration.

Simplicity is Key

With the latest incarnations of interactive touch panels, there’s no need to calibrate the system every time it’s turned on. Projectors are no longer required and subsequently the expense and frustrations around replacing bulbs is eliminated. This means that there’s less class time lost on technology issues and more time spent actually working–something that every teacher is sure to appreciate. Providing teachers with technology that will allow them to focus more on the lesson makes it easier for them to complete their goals for the day.

Added Incentives

The newest interactive touch panels are sleek and stylish. They wouldn’t be out of place in a futuristic classroom, and they’re absolutely perfect in the most up-to-date classrooms of today. Even better, these new screens have long warranties. They’re built to last, expected to perform, and backed by their respective manufacturer with warranties that will take care of them if there are any issues.

Are you ready to add tomorrow’s interactive panel technology to your classroom today? Contact us for more information about choosing an interactive solution that’s right for your needs, developing lesson plans that will work with the technology, or answers to any of your pressing questions and concerns.

26 Nov School Data Security

Is Your School Data Safe, Secure and Backed Up?

Did you know that 15% of all reported data breaches take place in the education industry? Is your school data safe, secure and backed up? Schools and educational institutions collect a large amount of data from their students, staff and parents. Keeping that data safe has to be a primary concern for any school. Schools most have data policies in place to ensure that data is backed up and does not fall into the wrong hands. Luckily, there are some basic measures that can be taken to keep your school’s data safe from prying eyes.

Safety Requirements for Schools

The best thing that your school can do to keep their data safe is to implement some very basic security and safety measures for protecting data. A good starting point is requiring that every machine have up to date antivirus and anti-malware software installed. Additionally, it is a good idea to require that those pieces of software are run on a daily or weekly basis. Data theft commonly comes from programs that have been unknowingly installed on a computer and taking some basic initial steps to reduce risk is an excellent first step. Additionally, staff should be trained on navigating the web, opening emails and downloading attachments to ensure that they are implementing the best practices.

Protecting Sensitive Pupil and Staff Data

Your databases contain a lot of sensitive information about your students and staff, and it is very important that those records do not fall into the wrong hands. Effective security starts with proper training for those that will have access to information. Ensure that your staff accounts have the permissions properly setup for all access to sensitive data. Only employees that require access to specific information should have access. Additionally, ensure that your employees have a way of knowing who can have access to what data, so that they do not inadvertently send sensitive data to the wrong person.

Reliable Backups

All schools must have a reliable backup facility for all data. It is best to have both on-site and off-site processes in place to mitigate the risk of data loss. Institute policies regarding backup frequency. In many cases, offsite services can provide daily backups at a scheduled time, outside of school operation hours. This helps to ensure that your network is not bogged down while the backups take place. But, dealing with large amounts of data means that you must also keep on-site backups handy should a system failure take place.

Local and Cloud Based Backup Options

At Trusol, we make full solutions available to companies in the education sector. Our local solutions begin with proper infrastructure. We help your school install or revamp existing data cabling, electrical services, IP networking, Wi-Fi and IP CCTV. We can ensure that all data from your facility is backed up locally and in the cloud. We can help your school implement daily local backup processes to keep your data safe.
Additionally, most schools will also opt for some sort of cloud solution. There are many cloud data storage solutions available today. Popular solutions that are targeted directly for schools include mySchoolBackup, Gridstore and the iDrive solution for schools.

Can Data be Recovered and Reinstated Quickly

The determining factor in whether or not data can be recovered and reinstated quickly depends entirely on the quality of the backups that are in place. Both physical local backups and cloud backups are great for quickly reinstating data with minimal downtime. But, should true data loss occur without backups in place, it can take some time to restore lost data after a critical system failure. Additionally, there is no guarantee that all data will be recoverable. In some instances, no data or partial data is the best that can be hoped for.
If you would like to ensure that your school data is safe and backed up frequently, please contact us today. We will help you implement effective local and cloud backup solutions while keeping your data safe.

19 Nov Am I getting value for money from my schools Internet provider?

Following the recent BBC news report which covered concerns around competitive internet provision offers to schools in London and which questioned service costs being charged to schools by the current provider, London Grid for Learning (LGfL), some schools clearly have concerns.

Knowing that some schools are nearing the end of their initial 5 year LGfL contract term and that they need to be completely satisfied with the service provider they engage with, while demonstrating “value for money” in their future internet service provider selection process, some schools have contacted Trusol for some impartial advice.

For the majority of London based schools, they may have only ever known about the LGfL service options and have had no exposure of any of the competing offers from third party Broadband providers.

The BBC report, if nothing else, highlighted the fact that there are other organisations who are successfully offering fast, secure and filtered broadband services to schools across the UK, including some of the services included in the current LGfL service.

What the BBC report failed to do was to make a cost comparison of the service offerings from all parties on a level playing field.

As a brief background, LGfL is a council backed education trust, combining services procured competitively from Virgin Media and Atomwide to deliver managed Broadband contracts to over 2,500 schools across the 33 London Boroughs.

Other providers indicate that they can offer the same or better service to both primary and secondary schools in London at a much lower cost than currently paid to LGfL.

LGfL offers a fully protected, scalable internet service to schools in London as well as an extensive portfolio of included professional and educational services and learning resources.

These include but are not limited to:

• A leased line fibre optic connection via the Virgin Media infrastructure to a secure, private schools-only network.
• A physical firewall device, in school, protecting your network and computers.
• Various uncontended connection speeds (service contract specific) ranging from 10Mb per second download capacity through to Gigabit speeds along with matching upload speed.
• Email content control with LGfL Mail-Protect
• Sophos Antivirus – protection for all school hardware devices
• Mydrive Cloud based secure storage and file sharing – 500Gb per school sometimes allocated as 10Mb each for staff users & 5Mb each for students.
• Unified Sign On (USO) – A single username and password for every student and member of staff, granting access to all supported LGfL resources at school or at home.
• Access to an extensive range of educational content including lesson plans and Curriculum advisory online guidance.

On top of these services, LGfL also offer additional chargeable options including:

• Gridstore – Remote/Off Site secure backup.
• VoIP telephony
• Managed Wireless Services.

These services are offered to schools on a 5 year initial term contract basis from LGfL and while the historic costs of deployment needed to be wrapped up into the initial/current 5 year contract costs for all schools, reduction in the costs of service delivery over time along with the experience gained in providing the service to over 2500 schools for the past 5 years means that the costs for renewal of contract are being offered at a highly discounted price.

Many of the competitive services through third party Broadband providers offer alternative services on either a leased line uncontended service (whereby cost savings are not so different to those from LGfL) or on a fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) connection whereby service contention may need to be considered, depending on the service provider being considered.

FTTC Broadband delivery can be offered to schools at a significantly lower cost than those being offered by LGfL for the expensive un-contended leased line services.

While many of the third party providers can offer a web filtered internet service to schools and include email hosting as standard, many of them do not include some of the other LGfL services such as Antivirus protection, cloud based storage via USO style accounts or any educational content/resources.

These FTTC Broadband services are generally offered to schools on an annual contract basis at varying download speeds up to 80Mbps and upload speeds up to 20Mbps. The costs of these FTTC services might initially appear to be as little as half the annual price of the fully supported LGfL service. However, consideration needs to be given to the costs for whole school antivirus subscription as well as any cloud based secure user storage space which may be needed.

These competing FTTC services are not generally provided to schools over a Virgin Media fibre optic connection and therefore require a new cable connection to be installed (usually from BT) into the school network environment.

These installations are organised by the selected service partner and the relatively small costs of installation included into the first annual service charge. Quarterly line rental costs are generally billed to the school directly by BT.

While this document is not specific to the exact inclusions, pro’s and con’s of competitive school internet offerings,Trusol will be happy to offer your school as much independent advice about the various services available in order that you are better placed to make a more informed decision regarding your selected internet provider for the future.

Please feel free to call us on 08456 121222 or email info@trusol.com.

12 Nov Empowering Teaching & Student Learning through Technology

Being a teacher can be stressful, frustrating but rewarding alike. It takes dedication, responsibility, passion, self confidence and a strong desire to help others succeed.

In modern school environments, teachers with these qualities have access to a huge array of learning resources, many of which are technology or internet focused.

Due to the aggressive evolution around technology, coupled with the use of hardware and software to assist in delivering the Curriculum in the majority of UK classrooms, teachers need to be confident in their own abilities in the use of any new technology resources.

Such technologies open opportunities for both teachers and students to engage and collaborate in a classroom environment in a way which otherwise would have remained almost impossible to implement.

These technologies can be provided as a fixed interactive classroom asset for a dedicated teaching aid, as a mobile device for collaborative group engagement or as a medium for allowing students to bring their own devices into the teaching and learning community. However, the ultimate return on investment is only realised when the way in which that technology is to be used has been considered, planned and those teachers who are to use the technologies have been well trained in the capabilities of the whole system.

A platform for collaboration

Gone are the days of blackboards, whiteboards and overhead projectors. Today’s interactive high definition classroom panels are the latest product in technological evolution in the teaching and learning environment, replacing the interactive whiteboard and projector solutions while allowing collaboration and engagement in a way which has never been achieved before.

With multi-touch features, well known operational gestures and powerful software applications closely associated with those adopted by mobile phone vendors, these new interactive classroom panels provide a simple to use classroom tool, offering familiarisation while inspiring confidence in every user.

Students become engaged in the teaching & learning process through these interactive panels and mobile classroom devices such as tablets or laptops which collectively offer a collaborative hands-on learning experience. Whether working individually or within a group, collaboration through technology is allowing students to become confident in all levels of communication, front of class engagement and confidence around public speaking which is a quality essential in any future career appointment. Being confident and secure in a group setting is a major attribute and skill to any student. It not only allows them to express themselves without fearing judgment by a peer or teacher but it can benefit their personal lives as well.

Mobile Classroom Environments

Mobile devices are everywhere nowadays and are prominent across most demographics and age ranges. Almost everyone carries a smartphone by day and at home we retreat into our tablet and laptop environments. In the classroom, mobile devices are an excellent learning tool. Students can work on projects, play interactive learning games and much more. Schools recognise the importance of the mobile learning environment and are driving towards a one to one ratio between pupil count and mobile device allocation such that there are enough mobile devices in a school environment to provide each child with their own device.

However, mobile devices in the classroom must include security and charging considerations. Keeping the devices secure and fully charged is key to the success and regular use of such devices in the classroom environment.  Some new tablet devices are being offered with wireless charging and sync options, resulting in them becoming extremely attractive mobile classroom solutions.

Supporting Infrastructure

It is really important to acknowledge that this new hardware and technology in the classroom can only go as far as its supporting infrastructure. Providing access to a reliable, scalable, Wi-Fi network with fast connection speeds, high bandwidth availability and high capacity connection capability is essential. Schools and educational institutions must have a robust infrastructure in place to maximise the potential of these mobile classroom devices.

Summary – Using Technology to Deliver the Curriculum

Interactive classroom screens and mobile devices are examples of technology that is being used in todays teaching and learning environment to deliver the Curriculum.

They do not provide a learning platform on their own, rather, they can be integrated into pre-existing teaching methods to enhance the whole education process. Having a clear understanding of how the hardware will be used and which software or App may be relevant to the way the subject matter will be delivered is vital.

For more impartial advice on the importance of empowering teaching & learning through technology, please contact us with your questions.