Wiley Office Grader

OfficeGrader
Introducing OfficeGrader - It automatically grades your office task-based assignments.

Tired of grading student work? Looking to free up instructor time? Wiley's OfficeGrader corrects your students' task based assignments.  Your students' work on real-world problems, like the ones they will encounter in the workforce, ensuring they are ready for real professional challenges.

OfficeGrader works with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

Office Grader is free when you adopt MOAC books for Office

See these links for more information
http://www.wiley.com/college/sc/office2010/swfs/officegrader.swf

http://media.wiley.com/assets/7002/78/OfficeGraderFAQ.pdf

ITPCS Presentations from meeting 16th Nov

Thank you for attending the ITPCS consortium meeting on Friday 16th and helping to make it a successful and useful event. It was great to see everyone.

If you couldnt make it, we will be holding another event in May and hope you can make it.

I look forward to catching up with you soon.

The presentations from the speakers are included in the link below.

Presentations from Friday

ITPCS Consortium Event Friday 16th

We are looking forward to welcoming you all to the consortium event on Friday. I hope it will be an interesting, informative and enjoyable session.

I'm particularly looking forward to the event, there will a lot going on. Its always great to get together with the members.
 

Its back!

The Microsoft Second Shot Promotion has returned.  Students that sit any Microsoft Certified Professional exam (full price or academic rate) will get a free second shot at that exam should they not pass first time.

Its available from now up to June 2013. Full details can be found by visiting Prometric here

BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT

I had a meeting earlier this week with Lindsay Hamilton of the BCS, he has been recently appointed as the Regional Customer Manager for Qualifications in Scotland. 

Discussions centred generally around what the BCS could do for us as a consortium and what we as centres would want from them.  With this in mind I would be interested to hear of any ideas you may have.  Are there any particular reasons that are preventing you from undertaking or offering BCS qualifications in your centre? If there is anything you can think of related to this or BCS, please let me know and I can pass your ideas on. Their website for reference is www.bcs.org

I have agreed with Lindsay that I would support Centres implementation of the BCS qualifications similar to the way we support other vendor qualifications, which will be included in your ITPCS membership.  The finer points of this have to be decided but it will include onsite and offsite support, admin support and possibly discounts (as we are part of the consortium)

Lindsay has agreed to come and speak at the next ITPCS Event we have (which I have pencilled in for August) however if you would like to know more about this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thanks

Iain

Iain Shand | ITPCS Manager | Cardonald College | ishand@cardonald.ac.uk | t. 0141 272 3297 | m. 07970 013968

MCT Renewal Reminder

The MCT 2012 program year is well underway, remember that each IT Academy has one free MCT voucher code and you are highly recommended to take advantage of this fantastic benefit.

You are kindly invited to either renew or enrol for your MCT status. Please note that the Microsoft MCT Program Renewal Tool is now open.

o Renew today using our new MCT Program Renewal Tool

The MCT Program offers a wide range of benefits and special offers including a free TechNet Professional NFR subscription, discounts on certification exams and e-reference, hundreds of hours of recorded readiness presentations, and much more.


If you are already and MCT, then renew your MCT status today to ensure uninterrupted access to these helpful tools and benefits.

We believe 2012 will be an exciting year. We will focus on offering you enhanced tools to help you stay informed, better ways to utilise your MCT benefits, and an improved platform to allow members to more effectively interact as a community. Being part of a large community – currently 19,000 MCTs in more than 150 countries! -- has always been a fantastic value in the MCT program; the MCT community is a vibrant community, made up of members always eager to share ideas and support each other. In the new program year, we will give you new and improved tools to help you meet, communicate, and collaborate.

To renew your MCT status, please:

	o Review the program requirements and benefits
	o Renew today for 2012!

If you havent enrolled before, remember to use the code from the IT Academy website which gives one free MCT membership each year.
Check with the ITA Program Administrator regarding your MCT voucher code

o Visit the IT Academy Web site

New style Microsoft Certification for Cloud Qualifications

Microsoft Learning have recently re-imagined and re-engineered their certification program to take into account Cloud qualifications. 

For the Cloud qualifications only, there will be a re-certification period of 3 years, this is due to the fact that Cloud qualifications do not align with a particular piece of software or operating system and as such there has to be a way of keeping the certification relevant.

Here is a video that explains the new certification track



Recording of the live event at Microsoft in Redmond on April 11, 2012, during which we unveiled and celebrated the reinvented Microsoft certification program with our Learning Partners, Certified Trainers and employees. For an overview of the new program, please visit: http://aka.ms/MSCerts

Collaboration for New HN Materials

The imminent introduction of the new HN Computing Frameworks will have an impact on our workload at a time where budgets are being cut across the sector. As we are all delivering some vendor qualifications you will already know that vendor options within the frameworks can make up a large portion of the delivery and help increase quality, increase retention, reduce time and effort to run with these subjects. Beyond this though, there are still a number of units that individual centres will require to develop teaching and possibly also assessment material for. In order to help reduce this workload, why don't we (as a consortium) work together towards sharing the development of these materials to reduce the workload. It gives you a chance to develop a unit that is in your specialist area and receive, from other member colleges, developed material.  These materials can be pooled and shared between member colleges. The benefit of doing this as a consortium is that we already are a team, there would be no separate group, we all know each other, have collaborated on projects and are forward thinking. If you like the sound of the idea, I can co-ordinate this on behalf over the consortium, just drop me an email or phone call to indicate your initial interest in the idea. Thanks  Iain t. 0141 272 3297 e. ishand@cardonald.ac.uk

Price Grid 2012

Here is the latest Price Grid. Click on the link below.

Price Grid 2012

Windows 8

Although the release of Windows 8 is a long way off (indications suggest late this year) there is an opportunity for you to try out Windows 8 and see what all the fuss is about.

From the screenshot you can see that the start button has gone and has been replaced by the metro style interface.

If you want to install it - it can be run on a standalone machine, as a dualboot, or via virtual methods (VMware, VirtualBox and Hyper-V)  Note: It does not work with VirtualPC due to the changed kernel in Windows 8.

I installed it quickly and easily using VirtualBox
http://www.virtualbox.org

The developer release Windows 8 files were available here
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516


Support for running Windows 8 in a virtual environment is available here
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/16/running-windows-8-developer-preview-in-a-virtual-environment.aspx

Have fun...

Windows XP to Windows 7

Its now just 800 days until Microsoft officially stop support for Windows XP.

With a typical organisation taking 18-24 months to plan and deploy Windows 7 now is the time to think about it. 

With this in mind - there may be an opportunity for you to deliver tailored short courses covering this topic to local businesses.

There are a number of (free) resources and tools that can assist with the migration to Windows 7

First of all, start by downloading the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). It removes the need for disc imaging, migrates your data in place during deployment, and (best of all) it’s free.

Some other tools to help make your move from Windows XP to Windows 7 easier include:

• Automating the Migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 End-to-End
• Migrating User Files and Settings from Windows XP to Windows 7
• Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Guide
• Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals (check the Windows compatibility status of more than 27,000 applications)
• Video: Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010
• Video: Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 Using the User State Migration Tool (USMT)
• Need some help? Find support in the Windows 7 Installation, Setup, and Deployment forum.

Questions about Windows XP EOS and what it means to you and your company? Make sure to check out the End of Support website for Windows XP and Office 2003.