Most young people only associate computers with either Games, the Internet or Word and Excel!

There is a shortage of developer skills and we need to try to change it.

We have arranged for Microsoft UK to present on the 30^th May at The Ron Cooke Hub, to all students on how they can get started with development of new “apps” and software on the soon to be released Windows 8 operating system.

The good news is that <PROGRAMMING IS BECOMING EASIER>

Come along and bring a friend or colleague.  Promote the following event to your students and to 6^th Form Colleges across the region.

http://windows8york.eventbrite.co.uk/

Learn from the beginning how to develop games fro the Xbox, Kinect and forthcoming Microsoft technologies.

The Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) is a great starting level – it provides the core building blocks for developing your skills from a standing start.

Contact me, Andrew Bettany, IT Academy & Creative Technology Manager, via Twitter @yorkitacademy or drop me an email via www.it-academy.co.uk to know more!

Why have they done this?  Because the world has changed over the last 20 years since Microsoft Certification first started. (with Windows 3.1).  There has been 7 million people obtain certification in the last 20 years.  1 million exams were taken on Microsoft technologies last year alone!

Take a look at the Certification journey over the last 20 years and see how it is changing here:

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

The IT Academy at the University of York is an authorised Prometric Test Centre and we test both external and internal candidates – please contact us for more information.

The MDT 2012 has been in Beta for a while and it really great. It is now available for you to use. 

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012 is the newest version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a Solution Accelerator for operating system and application deployment. MDT 2012 supports deployment of Windows 7, Office 2010 and 365, and Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deployment of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.

Key Benefits:

· Support for Configuration Manager 2012

· Customizable deployment questions

· Ease Lite Touch installation

· Secure deployments

· Reliability and flexibility

· Support for Windows 8

If you would like some training, or even want to rent out our lab space to practice on our PCs’/Servers – please get in touch!

Ready to change the world?

New training offered at the University of York:
Overview:

The training course is intended to give a firm foundation in the tools and techniques that are necessary to get started in app development on iOS devices. It assumes only a very basic knowledge of programming, though a passing familiarity with C or another modern block structure programming language will help. The first day deals with the tools themselves and how app developers design user interfaces, before moving on to implementing the code of an application. By the end of the day, the delegates will have their first iOS app running!

Apple IOS Programming Course

The second day delves deeper into app prototyping and dealing with more complex situations like having multiple views and managing tab bar and navigation stacks. Day three will look at getting your app onto the AppStore and exactly what Apple expects, as well as covering the basics of data storage and object persistence. The final day is optional and will concentrate on more advanced topics such as databases, memory management, more advanced story-boarding techniques and providing an overview of where to go next as an iOS app developer.

Dates:

Wednesday 18th April 2-5pm: pre IOS Programming Course – Introduction to programming for non-programmers
Wednesday 25th April 2-5pm: IOS Programming Course – Session 1
Wednesday  2nd   May 2-5pm: IOS Programming Course – Session 2
Wednesday  9th   May 2-5pm: IOS Programming Course – Session 3
Wednesday 16th   May 2-5pm: IOS Programming Course – Session 4

Cost:

This is a brand new course which is part-supported by the University.  This is a pilot course and will be offered at £300.00 per person for the full 5 sessions.

What Next?

We are already pulling together the resources to offer similar courses based on Android and Windows Phone – let us know if you are interested.

What people are saying:
“Back to the future: By simplifying their certification program, yet making it more rewarding, Microsoft has ensured the relevancy of their certification program for the second decade of the 21st century. And, by reviving one of the best-known acronyms in the industry, they continue on a brand that has defined IT certification leadership.” – Marc Michault, MCT Advisory Council member

“Overall the changes to Microsoft’s certification program are an appropriate evolution toward greater industry relevance and business value.” – Cushing Anderson, program vice president of the Consulting, HR and Learning practices at IDC

To find out more visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcse.aspx
http://borntolearn.mslearn.net

Last year the Microsoft Office Specialist Competition attracted over 228,000 students from 57 countries around the world.

Rebecca Rickwood (from Sawtry Community College UK) returned as the World Champion and Ryan Fletcher (Poole Grammar) also performed excellently and placed 10th in in the Word stream. Rebecca’s exploits have received nationwide coverage with articles on the BBC, Telegraph and Metro.

This year the winning entrants will travel to the World Finals at the BELLAGIO in LAS VEGAS. Can one of your students become the World Champion in 2012?

Will your child’s school be entering this competition?  If so please let the University of York IT Academy know as we would love to follow their progress!

It is a nearly half a year since I last ran a diagnostic on this blog to see what we most like to talk/blog about.  Not surprisingly WINDOWS comes out top again.

To show off, I pushed our blog through the great Wordle engine to provide the following:

What do you talk about to your audience?  Drop me an email with your Wordle graphic and if it is interesting, we will share it!

It takes 18-24 months to plan for and deploy a new operating system. If you haven’t started planning to migrate your Windows XP PCs to a modern OS, or if your migration plan have stalled here are some great tools to help you.

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 theEnd of Support website for Windows XP and Office 2003 and as always, visit the Deploy Zone on the Springboard Series on TechNet for all your Pilot, Deploy and Manage needs!

I came across the following blog recently, which highlighted the rapid disappearance of quality domain names left unregistered:

Companies now really struggle to secure a “real” word in their domain name following the rules below:

1. keep it short (short is best)
2. ideally buy the  “.com” as this has the most international scope

Even with the release of new top level domains, new start-ups are reluctant to deviate from the above “rules”.

The answer, and it seems a growing trend, is to simply make up the name and register that as a dot.com.  I noticed this some years ago when Virgin Records sold out to a management buy out – they became Zavvi.com!

Now nearly all new entrants to the “internet arms race” are using made up names, or phonetic spellings, such as

• Flickr
• Shoply
• Tumblr
• spotify

And if a “made up name” is not up your street, you better get your cheque book out.  Only yesterday “challenge.com” sold for $500k and and “vi.com” $325k!

Every start-up nowadays not only needs to come up with a neat idea, but also a savvy name, and ensure that name is available across all media outlets: web, twitter, facebook, google+ etc

Microsoft have just announced a new certification geared to help you prove your skills on Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012 – together the essential ingredients for building, monitoring and operating your private cloud.

Most of our IT Academy students will already have achieved Step 1 and will be just 2 exams short of this exciting new certification.

Contact the academy for more information, or to schedule your exam at our test centre.

For me that was a few years at least.  Yes I do have a MCSE.  Which one(s) do I hold? (Does it matter really?)  However they were hugely prized “back in the day” so I know some of you will want to know: was it obtained on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003?

Actually mine was the latest one issued – Windows Server 2003 (which I earned in early 2005).  For the newbies reading this, you could indeed be thinking, hold on… why am I reading a blog post about a certification released 9 years ago on technology that is equally old, no longer available to purchase and now nearing the end of its’ useful life? That is the point, people still do care, and passionately.  Don’t get me wrong – I am very happy with what those 4 letters signified, proud and pleased to have achieved the certification, however I just doubt the validity of the usefulness now when applied to technology of today. 

Well I brought up the topic to show how *some* people still rely on using this aged qualification as if it is like a support, or a throw-back to days when MCSE’s ruled the IT world back in the year 2003 when Concorde made its last commercial supersonic flight.  A truly great icon of flight now no longer with us.  Talking about flights – last week, I was doing some preparation for a course I am delivering later this month and I reached for a Server 2008 R2 book on my e-reader, and on the front cover the authors’ name was written as “Jingly Keyring, MCSE” (name have been changed to protect the author).

I thought it was funny, to see MCSE again, used as a badge of honor, especially on a book relating to a technology which effectively terminated that legacy acronym.  In my world there are no Windows Server 2003 machines left whatsoever, and I doubt/hope I will ever see one again.  Admittedly Server 2003 was a great, stable server operating system.

The next certification I will be proud to shout about will be one that qualifies me as proficient on the next version of Windows Server, whatever it may be called, and whenever it arrives…

Student run society York Entrepreneurs’ annual competition, The Market, concluded recently with the winning team taking home £1000.

13 teams took part in the four day competition completing three tasks aimed at rebranding York, to test teams’ “advertising, marketing, design and teamwork skills”.

Team Cognate, made up of Psychology students Jack Blake, Ros Baker, Joy Bothamley and Daniel Bennett, was crowned winners with Team Zeal and Team Prima coming joint second.

Amanda Selvaratnam, Head of Continuing Professional Development at University of York, attending the event said "from an employability perspective, the skills that these students are developing are vital to the workplace."

If your company would like help from students, and would like to set them a challenge, please get in touch!

We have all heard that Social Media is growing very fast, but how do Small Businesses view SM?  Many just “do not get it” and simply have too few resources (people, time and cash) to do anything about it.

Take a look at the infographic below, but if you do nothing else do this:

Register your company name now, so that as your business grows, you will still be able to “join in” when the time is right.

We continue will share some deployment tips and tricks, resources and guides for businesses looking to move away from Windows XP, Vista and older operating systems to the most advanced Microsoft operating system Windows 7.

Sit back, buckle in, and get deploying!

WIM Part 2: Understanding Single-Instance Storage

One of the great features of the WIM format is that it allows you to consolidate your images i.e. the ability to store multiple images within a single WIM file. The WIM format does this through compression, and single-instance storage (SIS).

What exactly is SIS? SIS is a technique that used to be referred to as single-instance store. This technique has been used across multiple Microsoft products to include Microsoft Storage Server and Microsoft Exchange, and has been around since Windows 2000 Server. SIS provides the ability to remove file duplication to optimize storage capacity. Using the secure hash algorithm 1 (SHA-1) a hash value is determined for each file within the image. SIS will then identify duplicate files based on this hash value and transparently replace the duplicate files with file system links to a single copy of the file retained in a common store.

When combining like OS images, it is not uncommon to see a more than 60 percent reduction in size in comparison to multiple separate image files see the image below where W2k8.wim represents three WIMs combined into one.

Other Resources:
Windows Imaging Format – Wikipedia
Windows Imaging File Format (WIM – Windows Client TechCenter
Windows 7 Desktop Deployment Overview (TechNet Library)

Finally:
Put Your Deployment Skills To The Test – at the Springboard Series Blog

Hope you get the picture – Windows Deployment is not difficult and the benefits can be huge; more security, more productivity and a much lower ROI for your business.  Let us know how you get on!

We continue will share some deployment tips and tricks, resources and guides for businesses looking to move away from Windows XP, Vista and older operating systems to the most advanced Microsoft operating system Windows 7.

Sit back, buckle in, and get deploying!

Understanding the Windows WIM format

The Microsoft Windows Imaging File (WIM) format was first introduced in Microsoft Windows Vista – so it is not *that* new. This is a classic case of if you tried out Vista then you are well on your way to understanding how to deploy Windows 7!
The WIM format is a file-based disk format that was designed to replace the more commonly used sector-based disk format. The two file formats differ in that the sector-based format is captured based on the actual sectors of a physical disk, while the file-based format is captured based on just the files on the disk.

Microsoft created the WIM format for more flexibility and control.  The WIM format is completely hardware-agnostic. You can capture and deploy from any system. A WIM can also be serviced offline, meaning you can selectively add, copy and delete files, drivers or even apply patches without having to re-create your image. WIM images can also be marked bootable, allowing the ability to start a machine from an image within the WIM. You can apply WIM images to partitions of any size regardless of the size of the disk from which the image was captured. WIMs also allow for the option of non-destructive deployment, meaning application of the WIM won’t erase the pre-existing data of the disk.

The WIM format also provides the ability to store multiple images within one file, and it takes advantage of the single-instance storage of file resources and file compression techniques to decrease the actual image size. A WIM can also be spanned across multiple discs, allowing you to use a different medium for storage, CD vs. DVD.

Other Resources:
Windows Imaging Format – Wikipedia
Windows Imaging File Format (WIM – Windows Client TechCenter
Windows 7 Desktop Deployment Overview (TechNet Library)

Finally:
Put Your Deployment Skills To The Test – at the Springboard Series Blog

Hope you get the picture – Windows Deployment is not difficult and the benefits can be huge; more security, more productivity and a much lower ROI for your business.  Let us know how you get on!

We continue will share some deployment tips and tricks, resources and guides for businesses looking to move away from Windows XP, Vista and older operating systems to the most advanced Microsoft operating system Windows 7.

Sit back, buckle in, and get deploying!

Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 to create standard images

OEM Pre-Installation provides flexibility over standard "thick" OEM pre-built images and simplifies initial setup by creating a local partition-based deployment share pre-configured by the OEM in the production process. When the user receives a new PC, the process to select role-specific applications, determine language, keyboard and locale preferences, join the domain and create the user account can be automated and completed when powering up the PC for the first time.

Video Tutorials:
Standard image for OEM
Other Resources:
Standard image strategy
Windows 7 Desktop Deployment Overview (TechNet Library)

Finally:
Put Your Deployment Skills To The Test – at the Springboard Series Blog

Hope you get the picture – Windows Deployment is not difficult and the benefits can be huge; more security, more productivity and a much lower ROI for your business.  Let us know how you get on!

We continue will share some deployment tips and tricks, resources and guides for businesses looking to move away from Windows XP, Vista and older operating systems to the most advanced Microsoft operating system Windows 7.

Sit back, buckle in, and let’s get deploying!

Lite Touch Operating System Installation

MDT 2010 as we have seen is a powerful tool for deployment of Windows 7 (and of course other operating systems). Harnessing the "Lite Touch" strategy allows medium/large companies to deliver High-Volume Deployment in a streamlined approach. Of course Lite Touch can be used by any company which wants to benefit from reduced support costs through providing a more consistent configuration with fewer support calls.

The Lite Touch interaction occurs at the beginning of the installation, but the remainder of the process can be fully automated. The initial investment of learning to perform a Lite Touch installation is repaid through the ability to utilise the same process over and over again. This strategy is recommended if your organisation has a dedicated IT staff, and it has a managed network with 200–500 client computers. In our region Lite Touch is ideally placed for schools, colleges and FE institutions.

Video Tutorials:
Lite Touch Migration
Other Resources:
Lite Touch Deployment
Windows 7 Desktop Deployment Overview (TechNet Library)

Finally:
Put Your Deployment Skills To The Test – at the Springboard Series Blog

Hope you get the picture – Windows Deployment is not difficult and the benefits can be huge; more security, more productivity and a much lower ROI for your business.  Let us know how you get on!

tags: Windows, Windows 7, Deployment, Springboard Series, IT Academy, Andrew Bettany, Migration, IT Pro, York

A new medium for sharing information across the web is starting to take hold.  Small, one page graphically appealing “info graphics” produced to showcase and highlight and convey a message.

Here is one on the Microsoft Kinect I found on the Microsoft Education UK Blog

Kinect Effect Infographic