Autumn which requires an ID and password to gain access.

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1 Autumn 2013 From Monday 28 October our new telephone contact details are: Service Desk: Sales & Enquires: We are changing our telephone numbers from Monday 28 October 2013 to a new 0300 local rate. The new service has a range of features, including the ability to provide information via a recorded message, giving you a quick route to important information. EiS Customer Zone on KLZ: Soon EiS Kent will publish all support resources and information on our secure KLZ Customer Zone. In this article we explain how schools will be able to access their support materials in future... EiS has always provided access to support materials freely via the EiS website, however, as we now operate in a more commercial environment we are to change this practice to protect EiS intellectual property. We will therefore be moving all support materials in due course into the new EiS Customer Zone behind the secure KLZ portal which requires an ID and password to gain access. SIMS support materials and Information Notices are already available at the EiS Customer Zone on KLZ and we would be grateful if you would please check and make sure that you can access them before the information is removed permanently from the eiskent website ( in November. eiscustzone/default.aspx New features in the EiS Customer Zone include the ability to subscribe to alerts for SIMS Information Notices focusing on particular modules, such as Attendance or Timetabling. By customising alert settings, users will be able to obtain timely updates for the SIMS modules they are particularly interested in. The alert functionality makes use of staff addresses recorded Continued on page 2 2 Dates for your diary 2 KLZ Literacy Toolkit 2 Apple repairs 3 Top quality IT support 4 Kent CPD Online 4 Managed Wireless & Bug Club 4 Remote Back-up Price Drop 5 IT14 June Windows XP the end is nigh! 6 Safer Internet Day

2 Continued from page 1 EiS Customer Zone on KLZ Dates for your diary 28 October 2013 EiS Phone Numbers Change January 2014 The BETT Show 11 February 2014 Safer Internet Day 12 June 2014 IT14 Conference & Exhibition 12 June 2014 at 7pm IT14 Governors Conference KLZ Literacy Toolkit Proves A Life Saver The KLZ Literacy Toolkit was launched in June this year and has been welcomed by schools. A new literacy subject leader in a Kent school described it as a life saver The Literacy Toolkit was put together by School Improvement Team and EiS in order to give teachers and literacy subject leaders a collaborative place to find and share useful support materials, the latest updates and examples of good practice. The key elements included in the site are: l Speaking and listening, reading, phonics, spelling, writing, cross- curricular, Ofsted guidance, leadership of English, assessment and examples of good practice. l New materials will be added throughout the year, particularly once the new National Curriculum becomes statutory. Non KLZ schools can request access by contacting EiS Service Desk and ask the KLZ team for support. Please contact the Service Desk on within each member of staff s SIMS Personnel record. The address must be set as the Primary address. When subscribing to an alert, those customers without a KLZ account may receive an error message advising they will not receive notifications until a valid has been provided. To resolve this, the address needs to be added to the Personnel record in SIMS. At the moment we are finalising the roll out of EiS Customer Zone access accounts to all customers who do not currently subscribe to KLZ. KLZ schools will be able to access the new support area with their existing accounts. If you haven t received your accounts yet then please call the EiS Service Desk to get this arranged as soon as possible. We now repair out-of-warranty Apple equipment EiS can now offer out of warranty repairs on apple Mac s, Macbook Pro s & IPad s. Broken ipad touch screens repaired at a fixed cost of 90! Home button, battery & mainboard replacements. All ipad repair enquiries welcome. Please call for any Apple repair enquiries. 2

3 Article first published in Teach ICT Issue 3 Top quality, innovative IT support can make a massive difference to academies as Claire Hewett, Head of EiS Kent, explained to Teach ICT magazine this month Tell us a little bit about what EiS Kent does, and the history of the organisation EiS Kent Education IT Services is a specialist, not for profit organisation within Kent County Council. Originally established in 1982 to bring a newfangled computer reporting system into schools, EiS Kent now provides and supports a wide range of IT systems for Primary, Secondary and Special schools in the county of Kent and neighbouring London boroughs. Our services include broadband, IT network infrastructure, computer hardware, classroom AV services and software including all Capita SIMS modules. Today EiS Kent provides IT services to over 800 schools. We make a vital contribution to school offices, staffrooms, governing bodies, PTAs and most importantly, classrooms. We know that our work has a direct impact on a school s ability to support students and so we aim to provide our customers with the right skills, equipment and products to enrich learning. What kind of support and services are you able to offer schools as they convert to academy status? We are pleased to be able to offer our full portfolio of IT products and services to Academies in Kent. We are now also able to extend our cloud based and hosted services to schools and academies outside the traditional county boundaries. As a technology organisation, we are used to responding to changing requirements and adapt our services accordingly. Our innovations team are constantly reviewing, adapting and developing services for different types of school environments; and our support team regularly review common questions to make sure we are able to respond to the questions asked. For example our SIMS support team is increasingly installing FMS reporting systems with the new Academy structure to provide the management and financial information demanded by Academies. As more schools become academies we will look to develop new training courses and CPD programmes that best suit their needs. How easy do you find it, as an organisation, to keep on top of both technological and policy developments. As part of the Local Authority, EiS Kent is in a fortunate position as we already have strong links with other education service providers in Kent and other local authorities, for example, e-safety team, Early Years, further education, Kent finance, social services and teacher recruitment. We also talk to a huge number of customers daily who tell us what is happening in their schools. We regularly attend or exhibit at BETT, Naace and the Academy Show to hear from key practitioners, suppliers and peers. Our team works in partnership with Microsoft, Capita, RM and other leading companies so that we can make sure our portfolio is relevant and offers value for money. This gives us opportunities to find out about the latest developments in IT technologies available and insight about developments in other education or similar markets. We also host an annual IT conference and exhibition in Ashford, Kent which is routinely attended by over 200 delegates. It is an opportunity for us to talk directly with Headteachers, bursars, administrators, teachers, network managers and suppliers about the key issues they are facing and what they really want in their classrooms or offices. How important is the training aspect of your service? Are you able to offer bespoke courses to schools? We believe training is vitally important to get the very best from any IT system and for it to enhance learning. We have found that building staff skills and knowledge is essential to the continued success of our organisation. We love IT but we recognise that not everyone does for some people, it gets in the way! Our job is to offer training which gives school staff the confidence and ability to use IT well, so it becomes a useful tool and makes life easier. EiS Kent offers a huge range of training programmes from formal classroom based, modular courses to bespoke, on-site training for particular users. Our training is tailored to the different needs of users at schools, from teachers, network managers, administrators and bursars. A full schedule of available training can be found on our website. What does the future look like for EiS Kent at the moment? Changes in both technology and education mean that the next few years are going to fast moving and exciting for EiS Kent. Academy conversion, e-safety, Bring Your Own Device to School and Wi-Fi networks will be hot topics. We will continue to support and develop our core service offerings to schools in broadband, infrastructure, SIMS support, data projectors, whiteboards, and will be looking to expand our hosted services and VLE content. We are also hoping to roll out our managed services proposition to new Academies and Secondary schools in Next year we will be sharing information about technical innovations, curriculum updates and best IT teaching practice with schools at our IT14 conference and exhibition on 12th June Schools and academies can us for further information now. We hope that academy schools will continue to choose EiS Kent as a preferred supplier and value our expertise and support well into the future. 3

4 Kent CPD Online EiS Remote Back Up Price Drop Have you used Kent CPD Online to plan your CPD training yet? l You can view an up to date directory of courses l Book places online with ease you do not need to be an IT expert! l No more repetitive form filling l Access your CPD record at any time l Receive alerts for events and opportunities that match your needs All EiS training courses are still available to view on the EiS Kent website. Tel: Fax: training@eis.kent.gov.uk In these times when everything seems to be going up in price, we have some good news to pass on to you. We are reviewing the way that we make a second copy of the data we store as part of our popular remote backup service and as a result the costs of running the service in the future will be reduced. In light of this we are dropping our prices to schools to pass on the cost saving that we will make from April Our new pricing structure will see the capacity banding limits widen and prices reduced. For example, if your school currently has a back up limit of 30Gb, the price will drop in April from 450pa to 390pa AND your capacity limit will increase to 50Gb. Further details will be provided in your December 2013 statements. The EiS Remote Backup Service is a completely managed service meaning that our staff install, configure, resolve issues and check the validity of every backup each working day saving your staff time and worry that valuable data is not being backed up off site. We also perform requests to file / folder restores as a priority, usually well within 2 hours of receiving your request. If you have not tried it yet, we can offer a free limited trial account for up to 28 days for 10Gb of data so you can see how reliable it is. Finally, a reminder that we can also backup individual PC s or laptops, for example senior managers devices where there may be confidential documents stored locally on the device rather than on the school s server. The cost is just 4 a month for up to 3Gb of data which is ample for most staff. Please get in touch with us if you want more information on any of the above. Wireless Gives Bug Club a Boost EiS Kent carried out a successful pilot of Stratus WiFi at St Crispin's Infant school in Westgate-on-Sea. The infant school was working with two mobile wireless Access Points to support thirty laptops. This was not meeting the staff and pupils requirements and they contacted EiS to be part of the pilot following an article in the spring EiS newsletter. The school needed to implement a technology that would cope with both a variety of devices and a teaching environment where a whole class full of students would be logging on, downloading and saving content all at the same time. Joy Watson, ICT Co-ordinator said Our new wireless solution gives the pupils confidence that their work will be saved and therefore be able to be retrieved in the next lesson. It also means the pupils who attend our bug club (after school online reading club) are now able to read their own individual books all at the same time. The install was so simple, the technicians looked at plans of the school, told us where and how many Access Points to install and the caretaker was able to do the rest with help from EiS to connect the Access Points to the network. The model used means any school that uses EiS Schools Broadband in Kent could install an access point and be connected to Local, Guest and Eduroam networks in minutes. It has made a vast improvement as staff and pupils are now able to access the network virtually anywhere in school and get a reliable connection. EiS works with a number of wireless solution providers. For further details and advice, please contact us. 4

5 Save the date: 12 June 2014 Ashford International Hotel Only 89 Conference Theme: Back to the Future Keynote Miles Berry Miles Berry is subject leader for Computing Education at the University of Roehampton, where he lectures on undergraduate and postgraduate teacher training programmes. Prior to this, he spent 18 years working in schools, most recently as a primary head teacher, pioneering the use of virtual learning environments and blogs in education. He has authored the Rising Stars ICT scheme Switched on ICT and has served on the working party that produced the draft of the new Computing Programme of Study. He has recently stepped down as chair of Naace but remains on its board of management as well as the management board for Computing at School. Keynote Becki Avery e-safety, Ofsted and the New Computing Curriculum e-safety is an essential element of the safeguarding agenda within schools. In June 2012, Ofsted released the latest version of their school inspection handbook which now features e-safety as an important part of an inspection. With the inclusion of Inspecting e-safety a section five briefing, Ofsted have now included a range of good and outstanding indicators that will enable inspectors to evaluate schools approaches to e-safety. This combined with the inclusion of e-safety as part of the new Computing Curriculum means that there is an increased emphasis on schools ensuring that staff and pupils are staying safe on line. New this year: FREE Governors Conference 7pm-9pm EiS Kent invites you to join us at our IT14 event. Workshop topics will include: Ofsted and e-safety The latest school inspection framework features e-safety as an important part of schools safeguarding responsibilities. Rebecca Avery, e-safety officer, Kent County Council, will discuss schools responsibilities in regards to e-safety and highlight the recommendations which Governing Bodies will need to consider to ensure that staff and students are kept safe online. The new 2014 Computing Curriculum. Find out more about how this will this affect the teaching and learning in the school and the technical implications that your school may face inorder to achieve your vision. Our IT experts will be on hand throughout the evening to discuss any specific topics you may have. Book your place now at CPD Online. 5

6 Windows XP Professional The End is Nigh! Windows XP Professional is now twelve years old. After 8 April 2014, Microsoft will end extended support and technical assistance for Windows XP. This will include automatic updates that help protect your PC. If you continue to use Windows XP, your computer might become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses. Also newer versions of Internet Explorer will not run on Windows XP. Our passion in EiS Kent is to make a real difference in education and What does this mean for schools? ultimately Most school administration networks should now be on Windows 7 or Windows 8 Professional to meet the Capita Technical Roadmap by November 2013, but many curriculum systems are still using XP Professional. To have a system that still receives security updates and is supported, schools need to start looking at upgrading. children's lives by Schools running RM Community Connect 3 or EisNET version 1.5 or below, will need to upgrade networks to newer versions to be able to run Windows 7 Professional and above. Some older hardware may also not be able to run newer operating systems although any computer with a Core 2 Duo processor may be upgradeable. outstanding providing innovative solutions and support services. Would you like a consultancy visit? EiS are happy to offer schools a FREE consultancy visit to discuss options. If you would like to arrange this please contact us. Don t forget to add this date to your school calendar. info@eis.kent.gov.uk Tel: Fax: EiS Kent The Shepway Centre Oxford Road Maidstone, Kent ME15 8AW 6