Cambridgeshire Young People's Film Festival

Purpose: Exciting Opportunity - register now

Audience: Headteacher & ICT Coordinators - Cambridgeshire Nursery, Primary, Special & Secondary Schools

This is a great opportunity for young people from Cambridgeshire schools and organisations to submit animation or film entries that last no more than 2 minutes on exciting topics such as Travel Stories, Global Matters, Science Fiction & Fantasy, with a maximum of 5 entries per school or organisation.

The Festival will culminate in a 'best of' awards ceremony on 4th July 2008.

Support will be offered in the form of equipment (on loan) and mentors who can offer advice and support to STARZ subscribers in the Spring Term.

For further details and advice go to our website www.filmstarz.org.uk and register your interest without delay.

Unplanned Antivirus Updates

Purpose: Notice of Planned Maintenance on the E2BN network

Audience: Headteachers, ICT Teams

The central (EDICT Central) Sophos Enterprise Manager Library has updated published client packages to Sophos version 7.

This essentially means that as of Wednesday 28th November, all schools will also be updating to version 7. In testing this week, our experience has shown us that this should have no detrimental effect on schools' networks or devices. We have however received one report of problems on school devices.

Please contact the ICT Service Helpline if you have experienced any problems.

Contact details are at the end of this newsletter item.

Why has this happened?

According to Sophos, if we want to maintain an internal change control process, we should ensure our Central library only publishes IDEs only and not Latest + IDEs. This is after Sophos originally telling us that the http://es-central-2.sophos.com/update library is in fact version 6 only. This information is apparently incorrect.

What are we doing now?

1. Our first priority is to provide support to schools who have experienced problems with this inadvertent upgrade. Please do contact the ICT Service Helpline to log any issues you experience this week.

2. Once we are satisfied the current issues (if any) have been overcome, we intend to provide instructions to update to the latest management console version by

w/c 17^th December. Please note that maintaining the current console version with the Client version 7 will have no detrimental effect on virus prevention capabilities.

3. Following upgrades to the Enterprise Console v3, we will be calling on Sophos for a day onsite to provide advice and guidance on good practice for controlling updates in the future.

Helpline Contact Details:

Auto Log Email helpdesk@ict.cambsed.net

Helpline: ict.helpline@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

Telephone: 08450 450 973

"Improve"ing your use of MIS

Purpose: New self-evaluation resources for schools

Audience: Headteachers and School Leadership Teams

As featured in the recent Impulse conferences, schools are recommended to take a look at the "Improve" MIS self-review toolkit. This is a free, non-technical toolkit aimed at school managers and is deigned to help them get the best out of their school's Management Information System. Search on the Portal (www.ccceducation.net) for "MIS self-review" or resource ID 3926.

RAISEonline - Reporting and Analysis for Improvement through School Self-Evaluation

Purpose: Important RAISEonline information

Audience: Headteachers, School Leadership Teams, Subject Leaders Primary & Secondary Schools

The timetable for unvalidated 2007 Key Stage data is now available. We are now entering our second year of data release in RAISEonline, and in an improved position with regards to delivery of unvalidated data.

The 2007 Key Stage data timetable is as follows:

* Key Stage 1 data - now available.
* Key Stage 2 data - now available.
* Key Stage 4 data - now available.
* Key Stage 3 data - available in January

Data management facility is still work in progress and we are aiming to run specific courses supporting this next year - further details will be available in the new year.

The general Raiseonline course is available as advertised in our course brochure from January onwards or to book a consultancy please contact an Administrator at either Tel 01480 376670 or email: ict.courses@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

Training Opportunities for December 07 / January 08

Purpose:    Spaces available on Training Courses

Audience:  Headteacher and Administrative Staff in Primary Schools

Course

Date & Time

Venue

Cost

SIMS .net New Users -  Day 1

                                    Day 2

6th Dec - 9.30 - 3.30

10th Dec - 9.30 - 3.30

ICT Service,

Godmanchester

£150

SIMS .net New Users - Day 1

                                    Day 2

9th Jan - 9.30 - 3.30

29th Jan - 9.30 - 3.30

ICT Service,

Godmanchester

£150

School Census

11th Jan - 9.30 - 12.30

or

11th Jan - 1.15 - 4.15

CPDC

Cambridge

£50

Please contact Course Admin either by telephone on 01480 376670 or email: ict.courses@cambridgeshire.gov.uk to book a place.

New ICT Service blog and Helpline blog

Purpose: Announcing a new communication system

Audience: Heads, subject leaders, and other staff using ICT in Cambridgeshire schools

The information sent to schools in this briefing is now also available through our blog. This means that you do not have to wait for the fortnightly distribution; news items will go online immediately. Other relevant information about ICT will be posted there too.

It is also possible to use the blog to comment on any items and to give us feedback.

There is a link to the blog from our website or you can visit it directly at:

http://educationictservice.blogspot.com/

If you use a newsreader such as Google Reader, you can subscribe to the blog using the link in the left-hand column; your news reader will automatically highlight new blog items for you. If you would like to learn how to do this, contact the Helpline.

For up to the minute Helpline information, please log onto the new ICT Service Helplines Blog, which can be accessed by searching for resource ID: 3750 from the Education Portal (www.ccceducation.net) or by using the link below.

ICT Service Helplines Blog

You can subscribe to this blog in exactly the same way.

ICT Service Training Programme - New brochure 2007-08

All Schools will have received a copy of the Cambridgeshire Education ICT Service Training Course Programme 07/08, which will give you full details of courses available at Godmanchester and other venues.

It also has a useful pull out calendar, which indicates a quick guide to all courses scheduled with dates available. Please contact Course Admin either by telephone on 01480 376670 or email: ict.courses@cambridgeshire.gov.uk should you require any further copies of the programme.

Cambridgeshire Online Training Search

Cambridgeshire Online Training Search (COTS) is a database of training opportunities provided by the Local Authority. It can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet without the need for a password: go to: COTS to access this service. Its powerful search engine will help you to find suitable courses. Eventually, all providers will be using this database, please check the Providers list for the services currently represented. You will already find the complete listing of courses offered by CAS, CREDS, SLS, Education ICT Service, ISSIS, Cambridgeshire Youth Work and Connexions.