Category: Personal

  • Jensen Harris Tells The Story of Windows 8 at UX Week 2012

    It might not surprise you to know that in my line of work I meet a lot of customers who are ready to give me their opinion about Microsoft, its products like Windows 8 and Office 365, and vision. It isn’t always positive, but negative feedback is just as important. I’m really privileged in being […]

  • Old Favourite: Changing Education Paradigms

    I know this has been around for a while, but the RSA Animate version of Sir Ken Robinson‘s “Changing Education Paradigms” talk is such a good video I thought I’d blog it. Whenever I need reminding why I stay involved in education, albeit much further away from the front line than I used to be, […]

  • Microsoft Fun, Free Friday!

    0530hrs and my alarm goes off with an unwelcome screech – it’s time to get up ready for Microsoft’s Fun, Free Friday event held on it’s campus at Thames Valley Park, Reading. The event was designed to demonstrate some of the technologies Microsoft brings to the education sector including everything from Live@edu through to XNA […]

  • School IT folk – the Swiss Army knives of the industry…

    In a post earlier this month I talked about how I thought that IT staff in schools were no longer just men (and women) in cupboards, and that the role had become much more important in recent years. I had some really fantastic feedback, one particular comment from Terry McDonald, a network manager, really caught […]

  • What’s in a [user]name?

    Sifting through various educational forum posts and blogs recently I came across an entry that discussed the conventions by which pupil usernames are created on a network – and what information they contain. When I joined my comprehensive school in 1998 I was given the username 98MARSHALLJ. The school had always used the [year of […]

  • School IT Staff: No Longer Just A Man In A Cupboard

    IT today, in many industries, is essential.  If ‘the system’ fails it can have catastrophic consequences resulting in lost earnings, lost work and, for the poor people whose fault it is deemed to be, lost jobs.  Businesses have come to realise the importance of IT and spend significant amounts of money ensuring that they have […]