OPENHIVEmle Winter Newsletter

December 16, 2011

OPENHIVEmle Newsletter – Issue 6 – Read Now
In this newsletter we have our usual selection of sector & OPENHIVE news. We’ve had a very busy year with now over 300,000 pupils & staff able to use OPENHIVE. We have been developing OPENHIVE over the last few months to accommodate an ever growing variety of learning scenarios.

We are also very excited about the upcoming BETT 2012 event in January where we will be exhibiting with our SIMS colleagues, read this issue to find out more:

In this issue:

* Our First Annual User Group Events
* OPENHIVE is now an approved supplier on the E2BN Learning Platform, VLE & MIS Framework
* What our schools say
* ICT for Education event
* Raising standards and increasing efficiencies with Naace
* BETT 2012 – 11th-14th January, Olympia London
* OPENHIVE Webinars

Filed under: News — Tags: , , — Alex.Cook @ 4:19 am

OPENHIVE is now an approved supplier on the E2BN Learning Platform, VLE & MIS Framework

May 20, 2011

Through a contract procured on behalf of the E2BN region’s LAs and Schools, establishments within the region are now able to purchase the OPENHIVE Learning Platform under an EU framework agreement without schools having to go through the full procurement process themselves.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , — Alex.Cook @ 7:26 am

OPENHIVE News #5 is now online

April 7, 2011

OPENHIVE News: Issue 5 – Read Now
In this newsletter we have our usual selection of sector & OPENHIVE news. We’ve had a great start to year with now over 200,000 pupils & staff able to use OPENHIVE. Don’t miss the Microsoft Learning Suite – lots of exciting and free apps for education. It’s a 3mb pdf but well worth a download.

In this issue:

* Microsoft Learning Suite – all free add on products in one brochure
* Innovative ICT essential for schools
* Naace Annual Strategic Conference 2011
* Lincolnshire County Council partners with Capita to transform teaching and learning across 367 schools
* Synetrix opens up connectivity and ISP services for schools
* Integrating the MLS library management system with OPENHIVE
* Highlights from the Microsoft Global Education Partner Summit
* Meet the team
* E2BN Annual Conference, 28th & 29th June 2011.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , — Alex.Cook @ 8:05 am

OPENHIVE News: Issue 4 now available

December 16, 2010

As we prepare for the end of 2010 and look forward to 2011, we’ve released our December newsletter.  Before you wrap things up at school we wanted to wish you all a very special Christmas. 

Almost one year on since we officially launched our OPENHIVE learning platform, we’re proud to say that we’re now supporting 100,000 teachers and learners every day: helping schools achieve things that were previously not possible.

In this newsletter, we share highlights amongst our OPENHIVE community, draw together new sector developments and look forward to 2011. 

In this issue:
* Silver linings: Schools and Cloud computing
* Meet the parents: Schools scrap parent evenings for student review days
* E-ACT consults parents on plans for Free Schools
* OPENHIVE Cloud gains momentum in times of austerity
* Take a small step into the Cloud with OPENHIVElive
* Capita gains Approved Supplier status from Becta
* OPENHIVE Autumn release: What’s new?
* Meet the team: Kim Welsh OPENHIVE Administrator
* Visit us at BETT2011 on Stand K43.  

Have a wonderful Christmas break!  We look forward to seeing you at BETT2011.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 6:28 pm

Capita Gains Approved Supplier Status from Becta

November 18, 2010

Capita has been appointed by Becta to its education ICT framework for use by schools, colleges and learning providers.  

Capita today announces it has been selected to Lots one and two of Becta’s ICT Services Framework One for a period of three years, with the option to extend for a further year. Lot 1 is for Infrastructure and Mobile Connectivity and Lot 2, ICT Integration Services.

 The framework, for the education sector, has been designed to facilitate faster, more cost effective and efficient procurement of ICT systems and maintenance by providing pre-approved suppliers. This will remove the lengthy and costly OJEU procurement process. Capita, along with the other approved suppliers, completed a rigorous evaluation process and has demonstrated the required technical capability, scoring extremely highly in both lots.

Geoff Chandler, head of education, Capita IT Services, commented: “Capita’s appointment to this framework demonstrates our expertise and knowledge of the education sector. We have a well established presence in the education market and through acquisitions and experience we have developed a strong understanding of the ICT requirements of schools, colleges and learning providers.”

Dr Stephen Lucey, Executive Director, Strategic Technologies, at Becta said: “The framework has been developed with educational customers for educational customers. It is designed to maximise flexibility allowing schools, colleges and training providers to purchase services designed to meet their own unique local circumstances. ICT Services seeks to deliver improved  reliability in educational  ICT, reduce costs, improve operational efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of ICT services.”

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 1:48 pm

OPENHIVE September 2010 Release: What is new

October 11, 2010

As a team we love to build new features and capabilities; things that make your lives easier, smarter and more fun each and every day.   With OPENHIVE, all our customers receive future product releases as part of their subscription, at no additional cost.  So customers have the excitement of something new every year, benefiting from the latest technologies that help them do ‘things’ faster and easier.

So let’s delve into our new September 2010 OPENHIVE release: what’s new?

OPENHIVElearning_Logo_RGB


Create Ad Hoc Classes on the fly
We’ve developed a new instant class creator feature that allows you to flexibly create new groups/classes beyond the formal class and timetable structures that are imported from your MIS system. On top of this capability, OPENHIVE automatically creates a new collaborative web space in OPENHIVEportal and new email distribution lists within OPENHIVEmail.  So if you run poetry classes or drama clubs outside of your normal timetable this is a brilliant new way to manage your extracurricular activities.

ad hoc class

Improved resource selection
We’ve redesigned our resource selection view in OPENHIVElearning. Now in just a few clicks you can view all documents and resources across all of your document libraries in your school, by class, by year or subject and reuse materials in your courses.  In addition, we’ve added new capability behind the scenes so that if a student doesn’t have access to the resource/document library, OPENHIVE recognises this and gives them access permissions on the fly.  It’s time to say goodbye to access problems.

resource


View all your chat discussions in one place
We have improved the chat functionality within OPENHIVElearning. Now teachers can view all of their chat discussions with pupils across their classes in one place.  What was John struggling with on this topic? How did I guide him and has he followed my advice?

New Tooltips to help you on your way
We’ve added some new tooltips to make our VLE even more intuitive. Hover over some of the buttons and tooltips will appear guiding you on what to do next.

OPENHIVEinsight_Logo_RGB

New Dashboards for Parents & Teachers
We now have a smarter, quicker dashboard for parents to instantly see their child’s attendance, punctuality, attainment and assessment information. Parents can now toggle through the visual charts to show information, this week, this term or this year – quickly seeing the ‘here and now’ data that’s most useful to them, along with quick indicators against the class average scores.  Parents can also customise their dashboards and print reports to share amongst the family.

Teachers also now have a similar view to allow them to view information on every child across classes.

OPENHIVEinsight Dashboard

OPENHIVElive_Logo_RGB

Get access to Windows Live SkyDrive, Office Live and Live Messenger
With OPENHIVElive you get so much more than email.  We take the hassle out of provisioning Microsoft Live@edu services by linking accounts directly to your MIS via OPENHIVEiD. In this latest release, we deliver 10GB email storage, 25GB of online storage through Windows Live SkyDrive, collaboration and document sharing through Office Live Workspace, Live Spaces and Live Messenger.  You can also enjoy Live Writer the flexible blogging tool for learners.  See the screenshot below: editing Word documents with integrated Live chat.

Integrated MSN and Word Editing

OPENHIVE_Logo_RGB



OPENHIVE Primary is here!
Totally customised for primary schools, we’ve taken the best features of OPENHIVE and weaved them into new and exciting interfaces to engage younger learners like never before.  Your portal, virtual learning environment, email service and parental reporting solution have been tailored for primaries, making OPENHIVE more intuitive and engaging for key stages 1 & 2.

Primary Portal 2

Keep up to date on new releases!
If you want to keep abreast of new developments for OPENHIVE subscribe to our free community newsletter by emailing subscribe@openhive.net or follow us on Twitter @OPENHIVE_Net.  Enjoy playing :-)

Filed under: Blog, News — Tags: , , , , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 8:28 pm

OPENHIVE News: Issue 3 now available

July 9, 2010

This month we’ve all been busy trying to interpret the full impact of Gove’s recent announcements.  Funding cuts, BSF ending, Becta & QCDA closure, Academies and the Free Schools Programme, what does it all mean for your school?

In this issue:
* NCSL Leadership Models
* Latest resources: On BSF
* Useful resources: On Academies & Free Schools
* An update on Harnessing Technology Grant
* Welcoming Richard Rose Federation to OPENHIVE
* OPENHIVE integrates with MoodleDo
* Corngreaves Primary accelerates learning with OPENHIVE
* Meet the Team – Dan Humpherson our User Interface Developer
* Leadership Forum presentations now online.

Click here to view Issue 3 or email subscribe@openhive.net to receive your free copy.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 12:46 pm

OPENHIVE Leadership Forum Presentations

June 22, 2010

Last week we held our first OPENHIVE Leadership Forums at Microsoft’s Headquarters in Reading.  Deliberately small in size to allow for greater interaction, we were delighted to welcome over 80 strategic leaders from Local Authorities, Schools and Consultants, from the highs of Scotland to as south as Dorset and Guernsey.

The themes for our events were ‘Investments Built to Last, Built for Success’ and ‘Intelligent Services that Grow with your Users’: both of which accurately reflect our vision for the future and OPENHIVE today. 

We want to thank our superb keynote presenters, Benedict Arora (NESTA), Steve Beswick (Microsoft), Dr Paul Kelley (Monkseaton High School), Ray Fleming (Microsoft) and James Frampton (Capita SIMS) for their fascinating mix of presentations.       


Topics for the day

What might the future look like for education?  How can our education system make us more competitive as a nation worldwide?  What awaits students in 2020? What technologies might emerge next?  How will learning platforms and MIS systems converge and what might this mean for effective management of schools?  It was this future landscape that came together across the two days.   

Many thanks to all that joined us on the 11th & 15th June, it was great meeting you. If you missed out but wanted to learn more we’ve published the presentations for you to enjoy at your leisure.


Presentations

Rethinking Educational Futures: Challenges & Opportunities  [Download]
Benedict Arora, Director of Educational Programmes, NESTA

What Awaits Students in 2020?   [View Clip 4]
Ray Fleming, Marketing Manager, Microsoft

Education is an uncontrolled experiment  [Download]
Dr Paul Kelley, Head Teacher, Monkseaton High School

Synetrix: Our Role in Shaping the Future of Education   [Download]
Jason Rousell, Director of Research & Development, Synetrix

Microsoft in Education & Cloud Services  [Download]
Steve Beswick, Director Microsoft UK, Microsoft

Transforming Learning Now: Bringing you OPENHIVE   [Download]
Jay Neale, Director of Learning Applications, Synetrix

Converging Learning Platforms with Capita SIMS   [Download]
James Frampton, Capita SIMS

A Step into the Future: Education in the Cloud  [Download]
Patrick Kirk, Educational Business Consultant, Synetrix

 

By proactively addressing the challenges of the uncertain economic climate and working in partnership to invest in your future, together we can make investments that are built to last and built to succeed.  We were delighted by the positive feedback that OPENHIVE generated on the day. When asked what three words spring to mind when they think about OPENHIVE, here’s what our delegates said:

OPENHIVE Cloud

Over coming months we will be hosting regional road shows, if you’re interested in hosting an event for your local schools contact us on openhive@synetrix.co.uk we’d love to hear from you.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 6:13 pm

Join us at our OPENHIVE Leadership Forum

May 26, 2010

Taking time out to think differently and explore new possibilities is something that many of us enjoy. Since we launched OPENHIVE at BETT2010, we’ve been engaging with Local Authorities and Schools across the UK working with them to support their future teaching and learning strategies. We’ve had some fascinating conversations and been posed some challenging questions and we hope to build on these interactions by hosting two events.

Next month we will be hosting two Leadership Forums at Microsoft’s Headquarters in Reading on the 11th and 15th June. The first set of OPENHIVE events, these forums will bring together an interesting mix of speakers with expertise of Education and the application of Technology. Focused on transforming the user experience and delivering 21st Century services, we hope our forums will inspire, initiate debate and spark new ideas amongst leaders in the community.

Interested and want to learn more? We want you to be part of this.

Friday June 11th – Investments Built to Last, Built for Success

Overview: By proactively addressing the challenges of the economic crisis while maintaining our investments in the future, together we can make investments that are built to last and built to succeed. Download Conference Programme.

Benedict AroraEnjoy keynote presentations from Benedict Arora (Programme Director for Education, NESTA), Synetrix and Capita SIMS as we present our shared vision for the future. With over 30 ICT Consultants, Education Consultants and BSF Advisers registered to date, attendees will gain a unique insight into educational technologies of the future.

Audience: This Forum brings together the strategic community that informs and leads investment decisions for BSF, RBC’s, Local Education Partners and Local Authorities.

Tuesday 15th June – Intelligent Services that Grow with your UsersA leader in educational technologies, Synetrix delivers extraordinary services that transform teaching and learning online. Focusing on intelligent services for the next generation, join us to take a step into the future and engage with your peers to shape your ICT strategy. Download Conference Programme.

Dr_Paul_KelleyOverview: Enjoy keynote presentations from Microsoft’s Steve Beswick (UK Education Director), Ray Fleming (Marketing Manager), Dr Paul Kelley (Headteacher, Monkseaton High School), Synetrix and Capita as we present our shared vision for the future. We now have senior representatives from over 25 Local Authorities registered to attend. We’d be delighted if you could join us too.

Audience: Directors of ICT, Curriculum Advisers, Head Teachers and Deputy Heads.

If you are interesting in exploring the future of learning platforms and MLE’s, we welcome you to join us at what promises to be a great event for all. Email openhive@synetrix.co.uk and secure your free place.

See you there!

Filed under: News, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 3:54 pm

OPENHIVE is fast becoming the first choice for learning platforms

May 14, 2010

Unveiled with much anticipation at BETT2010, the world’s largest education technology show, OPENHIVE is fast becoming the first choice for learning platforms in the UK. 

Building on more than a decade of experience in managing some of the world’s largest integrated ICT learning environments, Synetrix launched OPENHIVE a unique next generation learning platform.   Built from the classroom up, OPENHIVE delivers an unparalleled user experience that is set to redefine what we expect from a learning platform.   

Launched just three months ago, OPENHIVE has been met with great enthusiasm amongst schools and Local Authorities wanting to deliver 21st Century services for their users. Already, over 15,000 users across the UK are enjoying the benefits of OPENHIVE.  By seamlessly integrating the school’s management information system, portal, VLE, email and parental reporting service, OPENHIVE is transforming the school’s learning experience into one that is personalised, dynamic and engaging. 

Modular in design, schools and Local Authorities enjoy the flexibility of adopting individual or multiple OPENHIVE services, such as our VLE, portal, email or online parental reporting service.  Today, Synetrix welcomes new customers to the growing OPENHIVE community.  Notre Dame Catholic College for the Arts has selected our powerful parental reporting service (OPENHIVEinsight) and St John Bosco Primary School, a National ICT Award winner, will use OPENHIVEportal and OPENHIVElearning to deliver a truly personalised learning experience.

Jay Neale, Commercial Director, Synetrix commented “We’re delighted by the interest that we’re receiving in OPENHIVE.  We believe it’s time for schools to experience something different and we look forward to helping our customers transform their learning experience online.” 

Ideal for primary and secondary schools, Academies, Building Schools for the Future, clusters, Federations, Trusts and Local Authorities, OPENHIVE provides an elegant experience that meets and exceeds the aspirations of teachers, support staff, learners and parents.

To learn more about the benefits of the OPENHIVE learning platform visit www.openhive.net or register to attend the OPENHIVE Leadership Forum on June 15th.   Contact Synetrix on openhive@synetrix.co.uk or + 44 (0)1782 338 254 to discuss your requirements.

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , — Ceri.McCall @ 8:23 am

Older Posts »