As the size and complexity of our schools’ resource provisions continues to increase we need to create appropriate tools to manage them.

RTS developed Kahu (www.getkahu.com), an integrated online resource booking and helpdesk system that allows users to quickly and simply create, remove and edit resource bookings as well as track issues against them. Kahu helps free up valuable resources and allows staff more time to spend on things that really count.

It’s the first application available that presents users with information about potential issues with equipment or rooms before booking them; an important tool when trying to find the correct resources with which to teach expectant students.

Kahu is online, which means teachers are no longer held back by having to use one particular computer; it is accessible at any time, from anywhere with an internet connection. The tool is always up-to-date as there is no software to install, removing the need for IT staff to install and configure lots of computers, saving time and money.

Last month’s BETT show provided a great opportunity to gather some great pre-release feedback from teachers and administration staff. Their suggestions were taken back to the office, polished up and incorporated into the latest version (you can see all of the recent updates on the blog – blog.getkahu.com). A huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who participated in the trial.

Check out www.getkahu.com to see how Kahu can make your school more efficient. Use the simple online ‘Kahuculator’ to discover how cheaply you can cover the whole school.

Wondering what Kahu actually means? Head over to getkahu.com to find out!

“What do your clients look like?”
What a question! Let’s start with who we’re working with at the moment…

Everyone we work with, like us, is trying to change the world. From the firm of solicitors who stand up for the man in the street against the government and public bodies to a waste management company who are the first people in the UK to efficiently process waste using Autoclave technology through to two creative agencies, both award-winning and both jaw-droppingly awesome.

In terms of where they’re at as businesses, they tend to have gone through the baby steps of formation and normally have some idea or need advice on how technology can help them move their business forward; either through facilitating growth or by tweaking their processes / workflow to maximise productivity.

In terms of schools (when we can get through the evil tender process – more on that another time) they’re normally looking for people with deep experience in education who can offer guidance on how technology can increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning. That could be in the shape of physical spaces such as theatres, IT suites, conference rooms or indirectly behind the scenes by using virtualisation technologies to increase server availability and reduce student and staff logon times.

“What do you leave your clients with?”
We don’t leave them, we start supporting them. We work hard to nurture strong relationships with our clients and earn their trust. We’re incredibly passionate about technology, love challenges and want our clients to be delighted with what we’ve installed or set up for them and for it to make a real difference to their business or school.

What we will leave our clients with is a clear understanding of our values and who we are. We’ll have taken time to understand their requirements and design a solution that’s right for them, without being biased by the latest offer from our favoured vendor (we pride ourselves on being vendor agnostic). We’ll have also demonstrated how committed we are to delivering what we say we will, when we say we’ll do it.

By way of an example, we were recently thanked by a client for working right through the night on an IT system migration after the backup jobs took longer than expected to run. Poor planning on our part? Possibly, but we wanted to make absolutely sure we could recover from every eventuality. We also understood that communications had been sent out to all of their staff notifying them of the change and that there were subsequent pieces of work that had been planned for after we’d finished. So we powered through, got it sorted and they loved it. In fact, they loved it so much they awarded us two further projects as we walked out of the building bleary-eyed at midday the following day!

If that sounds like you and you like the sound of us, let’s have a chat…
0121 285 7222 or 020 7183 7222

Click here to view the embedded video.

BETT was especially rewarding on two levels. Firstly, it allowed us to engage face-to-face with a great many end users. We were able to discuss our business, receive feedback and gather lots of new ideas. We really enjoyed talking to you all. Secondly, it was a great opportunity for us to meet suppliers who share our passion for developing innovative solutions to the issues faced daily by schools. We spoke with many creative people expressing ideas and exhibiting tools we wish we had thought of ourselves!

We particularly enjoyed meeting the Firefly team, who were also exhibiting for the first time. Firefly helps schools develop and maintain their websites, wikis and intranets through a very smart in-line content management system. We are really keen to see whether their Firefly.NET Content Management System can help some of the schools that we work with and save them time in developing and maintaining their websites.

We were also impressed with the new Creston classroom kit. We’ve been looking for a good value kit that is reasonable quality for times when budgets are really tight. The Creston kit is the first we’ve seen to come close to our own installation in terms of staff ease of use and equipment management as well as reducing our time to install (and therefore our cost to clients).

See you next year for BETT 2011…

In November of last year EduGeek reached the 20,000 user milestone, which according to the site’s creator Chris Byers means they should have “pretty much have every single UK secondary on board, and a large chunk of the primarys”. The site is fast “becoming one of the most popular tech sites in the world” with many US schools and districts joining up.

In recognition of EduGeek’s important role in the education sector RTS have begun sponsoring the service. We hope that sponsorship such as ours will help many others benefit from the advice and support of the EduGeek community.

We are launching our partnership at this week’s BETT show, where both companies will be engaging with the community face-to-face. Although this is our first year exhibiting at the show it will be the fourth time Chris has operated EduGeek’s Technical Help Point. “In addition to helping visitors match their technical needs with exhibitors at BETT and answering their technical questions, we will also have a wide range of information and best practices for technical support staff, such as Green IT and Virtualisation”.

Find out how the partnership between EduGeek and RTS can help solve technical issues within your school. Visit the Technical Help Point (stand G89) and RTS Technology Solutions (stand W45).

New Year is always a time for reflection and the last 12 months have been incredibly busy at RTS (and saw my first anniversary with the company in November). There have been times where I’ve felt we’ve been a little too ‘heads-down’ rather than participating in the wider education-technology community. We’re addressing this directly with our appearance at BETT and an additional announcement just ahead of the show – watch this space…

In 2009 we moved our entire company ‘in to the cloud’ (or for those who don’t like jargon – ‘on to the internet’). Making the move has afforded us a far more flexible approach to working with access to all of the same data and applications on client sites as if we were sat next to a server in the office. Our telephones are also cloud-based and we can connect in to the system to make and receive calls wherever we have an internet connection, a bit like Skype. All of this means we now spend more time on-site with our clients and less time cooped up in the office.

We did some great proof of concept work too; showing why virtualisation and shared storage were so important for schools, built our take on what exemplary education digital signage looks like, refined our classroom AV offering and looked at how digital telephony could be used by educational institutions to improve both internal and external communication. We also took part in our first joint venture to develop resource management software specifically for schools, which we’ll be launching at BETT.

2010 is going to be an exciting year in education technology with many schools stabilising their virtual learning platforms, seeing the increasing demand for and effects of off-site / mobile computing and looking for ways to spend wisely with maximum return for their students in light of budget constraints.

The move to the virtual world will continue to increase and a real requirement for identity federation will emerge to enable seamless user transition and reduce administrative overhead between systems. Microsoft’s Live@edu is looking promising and their move to make SharePoint 2010 available will be revolutionary. Consolidation of internal servers using virtualisation technologies will become the norm now early adopters have experienced the initial pain.

There also needs to be an end put to suppliers who continue to trail wires across learning spaces, site amplifiers on teaching desks and install projectors badly. Expect to see even more from us on the model classroom and larger, completely immersive learning environments.

Look forward to seeing you at BETT, stand W45…
Mike

Budget constraints and the push for operational efficiently means 21st Century schools need to communicate more effectively than ever. Gradwell and RTS allow schools to get the most from available resources by providing flexible and cost beneficial VoIP technology, making school administration and pastoral care much easier than was previously possible. Gradwell will be demonstrating their award-winning VoIP service at BETT and explaining how features such as number portability and call management make it so attractive to schools.

The partnership between RTS Technology Solutions and Gradwell began in 2008, allowing RTS to introduce the benefits enjoyed by millions of Gradwell business customers to the education sector. Their close relationship ensures that customers always enjoy the most up-to-date technology coupled with industry-leading onsite implementation and support.

We are excited that Gradwell is bringing its expertise to BETT. Their industry-leading products and proven customer service provision have huge potential for the education sector. We have already seen how well Gradwell VoIP works in education environments – together we are well positioned to scale-up solutions to local education authorities (LEAs) and school collegiates.

Discover how Gradwell VoIP technology benefits schools. Visit the RTS Technology Solutions stand, W45.

As you may know we are exhibiting at the BETT show in January next year (http://www.responsetech.co.uk/2009/09/01/were-off-to-bett/). We are lucky enough to be supported by our friends from Acousti Products. www.acoustiproducts.com

Acousti provide industry-leading noise reduction solutions, helping to remove server and other IT equipment noise from schools.

We have been using Acousti’s products for years and are keen to demonstrate their effectiveness to a wider audience at BETT. The cabinets we’ll be showcasing are incredibly effective in education environments where students can have their concentration adversely affected or be distracted by the noise of IT equipment.

The clever design of the racks allows equipment to be placed directly in classrooms without disturbing staff and students or negatively impacting the longevity of the hardware.

Acousti will be joining us for Thursday and Friday of the exhibition, on-hand to demonstrate how Quiet Racks can improve learning environments in your school. Don’t worry if you’re attending on Wednesday or Saturday though, the racks will still be there and as certified Acousti resellers RTS have attended the necessary training sessions to talk knowledgeably about the whole Acousti range.

Come see RTS Technology Solutions and Acousti Products at BETT and discover why we’re proud that our stand will be the quietest at the show!

Mrs J Mitchell, the matron, kindly wrote to us with feedback from the home.

“I wanted to say how very impressed I and my staff were with the way you and your staff conducted yourselves whilst working in the Home. Often it’s difficult to get people coming into the Home to appreciate that this is a Home and not an institution, and this seems to affect the quality of the work done and the care taken doing it.”

We always try to be considerate of our clients so the team was very happy to hear this. We are also considerate of our clients’ environments – much of the success of our solutions is owed to the care taken to fit the equipment with the surroundings.

“I am delighted with the way the installation of the TV and wireless connection has been done and the careful attention that you all gave to hiding all the wires etc away from view.”

Thank you Mrs Mitchell for your kind words, it’s always great to hear that our clients are enjoying their solutions.

The letter is duplicated below with the kind permission of Mrs Mitchell.

Growing numbers of children have internet access in their own bedrooms. One-third of those between 12 and 15 years of age, one in six in the 8-11 age group and 3 per cent of 5-7 years olds have such access.

Many children play video games. Three quarters of 12-15 year olds have a games console in their rooms. When asked who they normally play with, one in seven 12-15 year olds reported that they play with people over the internet.

Such findings highlight the importance of educating our children about the dangers of internet use.

The study consisted of 1044 in-home interviews with children aged between 5 and 15 and was conducted in April of this year. Comparisons are drawn with 2007 and 2008 studies. In addition, the children’s parents were interviewed about their attitudes and concerns regarding internet access for their children.

The majority say they trust their child to use the internet safely (over 60 per cent of those with children in the 5-7 age group, climbing to over 80 per cent for the two older age groups). However compared with other platforms (such as games consoles and television), computers cause the greatest concern. Almost half of the parents interviewed said they had some form of internet protection or control installed on their computers.

The increased internet use among the nation’s children has encouraged the authorities to re-think their approach to education. A spokeswoman for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) outlined this new approach: “A few years ago we would have said it was important to keep the computer in the family room. But now in light of new technology, and as more children can access the internet on mobile phone and consoles, the advice is to educate yourselves and your children about what the internet can bring and keep safe.”

If you would like to know more about how to protect your child online the CEOP has a great campaign called: Thinkuknow

The full Ofcom report can be found here: http://is.gd/4xPc5