Let them have their phones - The Future of the Classroom

Hi All,

I recall a time not so far back when the concept of allowing students to use their mobile phones in the classroom was considered the stuff of nightmares. Today, there are thinkers in the space opening the debate up for wider discussion and in some sample cases, they are actually applying this thinking in the real world and with some outstanding results.
At SWOT, we are always keen to see schools and teaching staff, embracing technology in the classroom. This is why I have been filled with great joy and anticipation at the fantastic work taking place across the UK, backed by Learning Without Frontiers, Apps for Good and others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16186705

Above you will find a great link which brings forward the discussions surrounding the ideas of allowing students to bring their own devices in to the classroom, but further, to embrace the use of these devices in the learning process. For more on this subject you can link to the LWF site here too. http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/

SWOT have a number of "Un-Plugged" Solutions and services to assist your institutions meet the demands of today's learners. Contact our helpful teams to learn more about our solutions for BYOD and mobility.

http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

The SWOT team

SWOTNET increases partnership level with Cisco

Hi All,

Last week, our SWOT team went through the exam mill as we look to increase our engagement with Cisco Systems. I can happily report the guys flew through the requisite SMB AM and SMB Eng Exams after a successful break from the usual office fun, to take part in training at Cisco Bedfont Lakes HQ.
The step up in our accreditation has real benefits for you our clients.

The SWOTNET team would like to extend our thanks to Cisco and Ingram Micro for the ongoing support as we continue to grow our practice. Onwards and Upwards

SWOT

Happy Birthday SWOTNET

Hi Gang,

Well, where has the time gone? It really does feel like only yesterday that we were talking about going out alone as SWOTNET. Taking the decision to leave our comfortable, salaried lives was a big step, especially in light of the floor falling out of the economy.

Whilst we would never encourage a recession, we at SWOTNET saw the downturn as a chance for us to re-think some of the models for deploying technology in the academic space.

Real term cuts have almost certainly led to a slowdown in IT spends with the educational vertical as academics struggle to maintain world class teaching and learning facilities on ever shrinking budgets. This is a painful time for all involved in education.

So what have we at SWOTNET done over the last year to help alleviate some of the pressures now weighing heavily on decision makers within the academic space looking to provision ever demanding, technology led services?

Over the last 12 months, SWOTNET have been forging links within an academic computing consortium, HRC3. So what I hear you ask? Well, recently a group of like minded business professionals and academics, including ourselves, got together as HRC3. The consortium was established with teachers, IT staff and SMT members, all directly engaged with a team of highly skilled technology and service companies, including SWOTNET, to discuss the impacts of budget cuts and how collectively we might develop a set of tools, systems and services using our vast collective experience, which could answer many of the problems facing today's learning establishments.

SWOTNET have 34 years in house experience deploying IT/ Technology solutions for the academic vertical and in partnering with the Hertfordshire Regional College Team via the HRC3 project, we can be sure that we are perfectly in tune with the real world of teaching and learning. This engagement has served to deepen our understanding of the many issues surrounding the deployment of technology in a learning environment. We don't just know education – we are education.

Having access to real teachers, admin staff, senior management teams etc in a space where we can openly discuss challenges has been a revelation.

Yeah, yeah, all of this is great I hear you say, but what does it mean for me? Well, I am glad you asked. It means SWOTNET can deliver a set of bespoke services, perfect for education and we can deliver this with economic and technological security.

So what does SWOTNET/HRC3 deliver and what's the value proposition I can hear you thinking?

Our consortium has access to the world’s greenest Data Centre, THOR in Iceland. The data centre is really something else. It’s linked to the UK via a series of high speed, redundant 10GBE links, (soon to be further upgraded) which are ISO27001 complaint.

Because the data centre is powered by geo-thermal electricity and cooled via ambient air systems, our services operate on some of the most energy efficient, and costs effective servers on the planet, with a PUE= 1.06. OK so in English this means our systems are super efficient and they will help you meet any Carbon Deficit requirements.

One of the very real benefits of working with SWOTNET lies in our ability to accurately predict energy plans with regards to your IT infrastructure, allowing schools, colleges and universities to iron out the ever upwards trend in the UK utility pricing. Essentially, our power comes from the earth and the cost of production remains largely static and so we are not party to the market fluctuations as in our UK power markets. Whilst allowing this long range stability in your future energy costs, we are not restricting your potential for growth and we offer a fully scalable service, including on-demand system access to better manage business burst or short term pressure.

 From our unique data centre, we can offer world class cloud based services such as: managed email, managed desktop, managed back up, and managed VLE etc. And the best part, it really is delivered by academics to academics.

I really could go on and on about the benefits of our Cloud services and the HRC3 partnership and will happily  talk more to any of you interested in how to secure world class facilities within today’s academic budgets. You can reach me here http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

In the near future, SWOTNET, HRC3 and its partners will be holding a series of events both web based and physical where we will talk more about our services and how today’s learning establishments can benefit by choosing to partner SWOTNET. We will be sure to keep you posted here.

If you want to know more about our E2E (education to education) service do reach out via the contact us link.

Andy

SWOTNET launches Super Green Cloud Services

‎"The PUE= 1.06 you say, and its ISO27001 compliant. You can offer me managed back up, managed email, managed desktop and managed services all from a data centre that helps me meet my Carbon Deficit commitments while saving us money on our energy bills via a simple, predictable low cost model?"

 Yes, thats right, SWOTNET are proud to announce a new range of super efficient cloud services for today's business. To find out more, contact our team here or via the link below

http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

News and Updates and how we can Help your BYOD plans

Hi All,


It's been a while since we have updated the Blog having had a busy but fun summer in the schools space.
 As ever, the world of technology never sits still for long and as such, we have decided to pen a small piece about an important change in our Meru Networks vendor portfolio which can help you meet the changes in models such as BYOD while ensuring compliance with legislation and maintaining the integrity of your business critical applications and services.
As you know, we are strong advocates of wireless LAN technology here at SWOTNET. Our team has many years experience gained via the deployment of thousands of access points across the UK, including some of the most advanced systems in the academic space. Overtime we have seen wireless evolve in to a "must have solution" for today's learning centres.


As is normally the case, technology tends to advance before the impacts are entirely understood. This means we often have a lag between our deploying technology and then having to make it fit a later framework, PCI or DEA2010 as examples which can have dramatic implications for our existing systems.
At SWOTNET, we have the infrastructure and experience to be able to assist your projects, helping you navigate safely to deliver secure services such as BYOD confidently.


SWOTNET supports Meru Networks Wireless LAN Technology and the great news which addresses the concerns above is that Meru have acquired Identity Networks guest management system and Smart Connect.


The new solution takes the IT overhead out of visitor access with:

1	Seamless integration with existing wired or wireless networks, combined with automated configuration and self-provisioning capabilities for visitors based on pre-determined policies for secure and seamless access to network resources.
2	Easy to deploy visitor network access that dramatically reduces IT costs and overhead.
3	Enterprise-class scalability that can provide thousands of concurrent users network access, based on user roles, device types and time of day.

 You can find us at the usual web address http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/ where our team will be more than happy to help you discover more about Meru Networks and Best practice Wireless LAN for Academics.

The Massive Workforce Shift::

Bridging the Gap Between Millennials and Boomers

By Renee Patton, Director of Education, Cisco Systems, Inc.

As 80 million Baby Boomers shift into retirement, 80 million Millennials (born 1980-95) take center stage as our next-generation workforce. This massive shift is changing the way work gets done as this new cohort brings a different mindset with expectations for a different work environment than the one know and loved by Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, and Gen Xers.

While the recession is shaping the Millennial attitude, a recent study commissioned by the Career Advisory Board¹ indicated that “both Millennials and their managers agree on the strengths (e.g. digital comfort) and weaknesses (e.g. impatience with established processes) of the younger generation…Millennials will manage their careers by pursuing advanced education, changing professions and work situations, and overcoming unique challenges associated with the 21st century workplace.”

Technology has the power to bridge these two generations, helping the olders to become more comfortable with new technology approaches, and helping the youngers to learn how to be strong contributors to a successful, effective workforce.

One of the most striking aspects of this generation really is the significant role that technology necessarily plays in their everyday lives. They live and die by their mobile devices, and much of their online activity is driven by and through a social networking platform. These individuals communicate via text, think in short phrases, and connect and collaborate extensively with one another.

This technology mindset also has major implications for how schools, colleges, and universities prepare them for the workforce. In fact, this generation is driving the shift across all educational institutions as they struggle to develop teaching approaches that are relevant, engaging, and more effective than the majority of today’s traditional classrooms.

This is a wonderful, terrible thing for school and university leaders: wonderful because we have a new generation of students and workers who see the world in a different, often more creative, way, and technology is at the heart of how they think. Terrible because they have to make investments in time and money to make sure they’re ready to take on jobs that demand they have advanced technology and social interaction skills.

Ironically, it is technology that can help to bridge the gap between this new generation and those Baby Boomers getting ready to retire. In fact, technology can help to connect these two generations in ways unthought-of before, and before this valuable brain-trust leaves the workforce altogether.

More and more schools, colleges, and universities are considering ways to use technology to bridge this gap by:

• Creating online professional development communities, linking newer teachers with more experienced teachers in coaching-mentoring relationships.

• Using lecture-capture technologies to record the very best teachers and professors in action, and archiving these for use by newer teachers.

• Using distance-learning technologies to reach younger students and teachers with more seasoned professionals in other cities, states, or countries.

• Using video technologies to take virtual field trips, led by teachers and professors who have extensive experience in a given subject or course.

• Using webconferencing technologies to hold instant meetings between newer teachers and assistants and more experienced master teachers and professors.

1 1Levit, Alexandra, and Licina, Dr. Sanja. “How the Recession Shaped Millennial and Hiring Manager Attitudes about Millennials’ Future Careers,” study commissioned by the Career Advisory Board, 2011.

Federal Goverment Newsletter

None of us wants to waste a good generational shift. For the first time in our history, we have the tools at hand to help us to effect a smooth transition between these generations. Let’s use them to our advantage so that we Baby Boomers can rest easy at night, knowing we’ve prepared our Millennial brethren to shape a healthy and prosperous workforce and economy.

4th Generation wireless seminars

The team at SWOT are proud to announce a series of seminars to discuss the implications of mobile devices on teaching and learning.

We have seen learning delivered to the Desktop PC, Laptop, Netbook and now to the Tablet, a fourth generation learning device. Educational applications have evolved to exploit the advantages of this new hardware but Fourth Generation learning devices have no wired network connection – they need a fourth generation infrastructure to support them.

So Wi-Fi has evolved too. Gartner Group coined the phrase Fourth Generation Wireless LAN to describe Meru’s wireless solution – a new generation of wireless designed to support the new mobile generation of learners. Over 500 education customers in the UK now use Meru for their high density mobile learning requirements

We are pleased to invite you to a seminar where we will discuss how the evolution of devices, applications and usage patterns has driven a requirement beyond the ability of third generation wireless to deliver.

We will examine how Meru’s fourth generation wireless infrastructure copes with the advent of the “two device pupil”, with high density learning, and mass pupil mobility. 

We will show how wireless virtualisation enables the network to scale as user densities and application complexity demands. 

We will explore the security implications and outline security solutions.  Finally we will show some real world implementation examples and run a live demonstration using our multimedia demonstration suite over a Meru Wireless infrastructure

With speakers from Siracom our distribution partner , Meru Networks, a school that has installed Meru , and security specialists Bradford Networks this is a seminar not to be missed.  If you or your team would like to book a seat at any of the UK locations below, please get in touch with us here at SWOT http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

Dates and Locations
Thursday March 31 st   2011 - Basingstoke Tuesday April 5 th 2011 - Nottingham Tuesday May 10 th 2011 – Bristol Tuesday May 17 th 2011 – London	Tuesday May 24 th 2011 – Manchester Tuesday June 14 th 2011 – Glasgow Tuesday June 21 st 2011 - Newcastle

Are power sockets in the classroom a thing of the past?

At Simple Ways Of Teaching, we are always looking to the future and as ever, the technology train has moved onwards again. Many of today’s 21^st century classrooms are kitted out with Interactive Whiteboards, Projectors, Webcams, Teacher Laptops and Wireless Access Points. Connecting all of these devices can be a headache, often requiring multiples of electrical power outlets to maintain function.  

Sometime ago, along came Power over Ethernet (PoE) and many schools/ colleges have been taking advantage of the benefits this functionality. For more info on PoE click here

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

One of the limitations of PoE is that the power could only be delivered over a limited distance from a switch. Schools and colleges often cover quite large areas and as such, switches are often placed in wiring cabinets inside classrooms. Although this means we can provide connectivity, placing noisy power hungry switches inside the classroom is far from ideal.

Today, SWOT and Cisco are proud to announce the arrival of a brand new range of compact switches, perfect for providing connectivity for today’s greener, leaner classrooms, the Cisco 3560 and 2960 Compact switches. Our team can work with you to show how we can use the compact series to extend services whenever and wherever you want, with unified network connectivity and power for devices far from the wiring closet. With the industry's first Power over Ethernet (PoE) pass-through capability, the new Catalyst 2960-C Series Compact Switches simplify IT deployments cost-effectively. Powerful security capabilities provide comprehensive protection. And you get a Cisco enhanced limited lifetime warranty.

So what’s the big deal about PoE pass through? We asked SWOT-NET’s CEO Andrew Dominic for an explanation.

“PoE Pass through is set to revolutionise the way we distribute power to support our network infrastructure/ devices in the classrooms and learning space. Essentially, PoE pass through allows us to take power from one device, and use it for another. The new compact switches are among the very first to have the capability to deliver PoE pass through. The compacts operate on an extremely low power level, we can run power from an upstream PoE enabled switch to the compact, power left over from the switches operation, can then be pushed to the downstream ports, and these are the ones we plug our devices in to. So, this means we can use the switch to power a teacher’s laptop, an Interactive Whiteboard, a webcam, a phone, a wireless access point, projector and so on....all this is possible without plugging the compact in to its own power socket. So by plugging one switch in to the electrical supply, we can now run many from this single source.
The ports on the compact switch are intelligent; they can tell the type of device plugged in, automatically applying the right policies and security settings to ensure the best performance without user intervention or teachers having to remember where to plug what.

The compact design of the switches means we no longer have to consider the bulky cabinets we used to have jutting out into the classroom space. Tie this with the fan less design which means the compacts are virtually silent in operation, the "zero touch" deployment, ease of troubleshooting, stringent security, plus the range supports Cisco EnergyWise which is used to monitor, manage and reduce energy consumption of the devices connected to the switch, we at SWOT love them."

For more information on how the new compact switches can help reduce the complexity and cost of your Network contact SWOT here http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

The SWOT Team J

SWOT and Meru: ENABLING THE MOBILE LEARNING VISION - EDUCATION SEMINAR SERIES INVITE

Meru Networks are pleased to announce a series of education road shows around the UK. (there's even a free lunch!)

With ever increasing numbers of mobile devices being used for teaching and learning in schools, colleges, academies and universities all over the UK, wireless networking is becoming ever more critical. Moreover, the types of devices such as the Apple IPad, that don't have the facility to be cabled, places ever more demands on the performance of the wireless network such that the principle means of connectivity is becoming wireless very quickly. With the advent of "team teaching" where whole year groups can be taught in a single area, this places ever more demands on the wireless network.

These issues will be discussed in our seminar series, the dates, locations and agenda are shown below.  To sign up please contact me Andy@swotnet.co.uk

Meru Networks Consultants, Education Influencers, Partner & Customer Seminar Series

Agenda:
9.00am Registration & Coffee
9.30am Meru Networks – Company, Vision and Business update
9.45am Why Meru for Education
• Wireless LAN Virtualisation
• Device developments in education driving wireless requirements
• What all client “11n” devices aren’t the same
• The network impact of student owned devices
• How to create a secure network for student owned devices
10.45am Guest speaker from a Meru school
11.15am Break
11.30am Network Access Control for Student-owned devices – Bradford Networks
12.00pm Meru technical demonstration including EZRF Network Manager, Service Assurance Manager
12.30pm Q & A , Lunch & Networking opportunity

DATES & LOCATIONS

Tuesday March 31st 2011 - Basingstoke
Tuesday April 5th 2011 - Nottingham
Tuesday May 10th 2011 - Bristol
Tuesday May 17th 2011 – London
Tuesday May 24th 2011 – Manchester
Tuesday June 14th 2011 – Glasgow
Tuesday June 21st 2011 - Newcastle

For more details on SWOT, please contact us here http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

Hope to see you there

The SWOT Team

SWOT at JANET Networkshop 39

The SWOT team are pleased to announce they will be exhibiting at the upcoming JANET Networkshop 39 event taking place at Hertfordshire Regional College’s Broxbourne Campus. If you are attending the event, do look out for us at the HRC3 stand.

Some background on the event

JANET(UK) ensures that the JANET community is kept up to date with networking developments by organising workshops and conferences to cover either general networking issues or more specific topics, for example, Wireless or IPv6. The annual events cover a number of different networking issues from strategy to technical support. JANET(UK) also organises events in conjunction with other organisations.

Networkshop is the must attend technical conference of the year for staff in education and research:

·         In-depth programme addressing key concerns for the sector with experts presenting and running workshops on security, network access, cloud and data services.

·         Opportunity to network with over 250 peers in institutions facing the same challenges.

·         Over 45 specialist IT suppliers exhibiting throughout the conference

Follow Networkshop 39 on twitter #nws2011

To find out more about the event please click the following link http://www.ja.net/ and follow the Networkshop logo.

For more details on SWOT, please contact us here http://www.swotnet.co.uk/contact/

See you there

The SWOT Team