Physical or Virtual ?

A Big question at the moment.
I realise that to say we are in a time of change is a shocking understatement – but current changes to the team, as well as an inevitably different budget situation next year, mean we must look at systems and solutions that help us mitigate our circumstances.
With this in mind [...]

Weekly Update – w/c 11th May

Fordrough Update
The IT workshop is finally finished, and looks really good. Desk positions are decided, and Zaf has moved in – and is liking it. We now need to decide on the layout in the office, which I am currently working on with Phil Forrest.
Some new arrivals this week including a couple of curriculum managers [...]

Weekly Update

Not too many years ago there were definite fluctuations in the workload throughout the year- all year we were busy, but at some periods we were really busy.
Those fluctuations seem to have levelled out now – now we are just really busy all of the time. This past 12-18 months seem to have been non-stop [...]

The Bike is back out

It’s still only February – but the bike is out early this year.
Last year I only managed to cycle to work a handful of times… but this year I have a new plan !
Like many, the impending move to Fordrough has me thinking about how to get there.
Biking all the way from home is [...]

Smart solutions

 
A busy day yesterday.
Rob and I were off to visit the HQ of SMART – the manufacturers of the interactive whiteboards we use within the college.
The idea of the trip was to see the other technologies they have to offer, with a view to kitting out Fordrough.
We saw their standard boards – including the [...]

Do you know your GPO from your AD

Bit of a kop out from me today… but in honor of my commitmnet to blog every day – it has to be a short one today.
Check out the UK FE blog from Microsoft (which is a really good technology blog for FE)…. good post from the other day – especially as we are looking [...]

Good day yesterday

John and I had a meeting with the Education sector manager from Polycom. He was incredibly helpful, and offered some really good suggestions for improving our Video Conferencing infrastructure.
His suggestions will enable us to implement video conferencing into several meeting rooms – as well as onto managers desks.
Travel across the city is [...]

ILT Installs

Next week (half term) will see the completion of the current stage of ILT installs. This set of installs brings the total number of classrooms to 110 rooms. Still to be done in this phase are a 3 rooms at Handsworth campus, and 2 rooms at Muath.
The next stage sees the kitting out of the [...]

Samsung NC10 – Fordrough ?

When Rob and I were at the BETT show in January, one of the interesting bits of kit we saw were the (plethora of) Netbooks. These have exploded onto the market in the past 12 months, and every major manufacturer (and some minor ones) are in on the act.
One of the more impressive ones [...]

Blog commitment

I am making a commitment here…
I am going to attempt to write a blog post every day for this blog. It has such potential to allow out team to share some of the things it is involved in.
Hopefully, some others in the team will be inspired to write and contribute – hint, hint…
I have just [...]