Education
The Growing Cyber Security Challenges to the Education Sector
What was considered a tough approach a few years ago may now no longer be considered robust enough to fully protect your school or trust in the event of an attack.
Why Cloud-based Video Surveillance is the Best Choice for the Education Sector
Installing a CCTV system increases student and teacher safety on the premises. Moving video surveillance to the cloud is becoming an established trend in all industries. The main reasons are the rapid technological evolution, cybersecurity, storage flexibility, as well as how easy and secure sharing information is now.
The Benefits of Equipping Young Children with Digital Literacy Skills
With the UK heading towards a catastrophic digital skills shortage, extra responsibility falls on schools to narrow this gap. Digital literacy must become a key pillar of education.
To Outsource or In-House, That is the Question (in School IT Support)
School IT support is hugely important at every level. Having expert support available to keep learning flowing smoothly is essential.
How to Secure Your School Against the Rise in Cyber Attacks
Cyber attacks against schools and colleges keep hitting the headlines. Bring cyber security to the forefront and secure your school.
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G Suite Tips for Education
The transition to online teaching was daunting to many, but schools got by and lessons continued. While there’s ongoing uncertainty over the format of education in the UK, we thought it would be useful to compile a list of some handy tips for those teachers who use G Suite.
Focus On: Digital Education Platforms
Having a digital education platform such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google’s G Suite is quickly becoming an ‘essential item’ for schools. To help you take steps towards exploring the benefits of these platforms, we’ve put together a list of the most common misconceptions and how these can be easily debunked.
Ten Safeguarding Considerations when Live Streaming Lessons
Are you live streaming when you teach? Here are ten things to take into account before you incorporate live streaming into your remote lesson planning.
Focus On: Interactive Screens
The interactive screen has been fundamental in changing the way we learn and work. In this article we’re going to focus on interactive touch screens in both education and business.
Improving Technology Adoption Amongst Teachers
If you’re facing low adoption rates of technology in the classroom, have you got to the root of the problem? Could it be a lack of technology training?
Connectivity in Teaching and Learning
Your connectivity and the successful delivery of teaching and learning go hand in hand. Here are five areas to consider when weighing up an upgrade.
Case Study: From Microsoft Exchange to G Suite
Brentwood School eliminates six servers from their VM environment by migrating from on-premise Exchange to hosted G Suite.
6 Ways to Maximise Your School’s ICT Budget
With school ICT budgets still feeling the squeeze in education funding, it’s become increasingly important to do more with less.
London Secondary School Migrates to Modern Communications System
Case Study: London secondary school migrates seamlessly to a modern communications system enabling fixed costs and independent internal management.
5 Essential Pieces of IT Equipment for Schools
The future prospects of today’s schoolchildren are largely dependent on their familiarity and confidence with a wide range of technologies and IT equipment. Take a look at some of the options available and our advice on purchasing.
London High School Migrates to Microsoft
Case Study: London High School seeks full control over their IT system by migrating from a managed network solution to the Microsoft technology stack.
Generate Additional Income in Schools – A Positive Alternative to Cost Cutting
Cost-cutting in education continually hits the headlines, but there’s only so far it can go. Children still need to be educated, supported and given the best start in life. Being able to generate your own income is a positive step…
Summer 2018 Projects – Windows Server 2016, Windows 10 and more…
Summer 2018 has kept M-Tech exceptionally busy with projects across the country. Here’s a round up of the work carried out at Villiers High School.
Remove Distractions at School with Content-Aware Filtering
If you’re tasked with managing the filtering at your school, you’ll undoubtedly have come up against students who feel their mission in life is to break through your chosen solution.
Do Your Connectivity Plans Fit Your School’s Needs?
Upgrading or creating a new IT network takes a lot of time and research. Your budget is very valuable and consideration has to be put into which technologies to invest in, the network topology, which connectivity provider to use, how to protect the network and more. Whereas getting all these aspects right is vitally important, in order to build your users an optimal solution to suit their needs and wants they should be a part of the initial process too.
Microsoft Education Partner Summit December
M-Tech Marketing and Communications Manager, Tamar Keenan attended the Microsoft Education Summit, December 2017, to hear the latest news and updates. Craig Parker, UK Education Partner Lead, got things underway by giving us some education market insights from the Microsoft research department.
Bourne Education Trust Latest Updates: A New Connection, A New Operating System, A New School
It’s been a busy year for Surrey-based MAT, The Bourne Education Trust (BET). 2017 has seen them solidify their position in the region, adding three more schools into the fold to stand at 10 strong to date.
The Wireless Usage of a University is more Intensive than Most Businesses
Universities are racing to keep up with demand, seeing usage increase year on year. Students are driving the dramatic upsurge, but faculty are also responsible for their fair share of network demands.
Jamf Enables Centralised Management of Apple Estate at GDST School
Summer 2017 saw M-Tech and trusted Apple partner, DataJAR, onboard 565 iPads at South Hampstead High School to their hosted Jamf solution. Jamf Pro is an Enterprise Management Tool that delivers on the promise of unified endpoint management for Apple devices.
Desktop Transformation with RES ONE at Essex Academy
M-Tech were called upon to help modernise an outdated management system at an Academy in Essex. The school weren’t keen on going for a vanilla Windows network, they wanted more control, simplicity for the staff, and a more dynamic network.
Looking for a new mobile device management solution?
Purchasing a mobile device management solution is a big decision for schools and organisations. You might be looking to move away from an existing provider, or starting up a whole new MDM program. You’ll likely begin your journey by comparing the features and capabilities of a number of vendors. If you’ve already got a dissatisfactory MDM solution, you might understand where yours falls short and add this into your consideration. On your search, you’ll probably find that most solutions appear to do similar things, all of them being one of the best on the market.
How Schools can Generate Income from their Technology
With continually squeezed budgets, schools are looking for ways to generate income from the resources they have. More often than not this falls to the letting out of site facilities, or the sharing of staff across multiple sites. Both are very low investment, the former requiring some additional management by the site team, the latter flexibility in staffing arrangements.
Is your Web Filtering Ofsted Compliant?
In line with the Department for Education’s Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, The UK Safer Internet Centre have produced a guide to help education settings understand what is deemed ‘appropriate filtering’. There is strong emphasis on the understanding that no filtering system is 100% effective and children should be supported through the curriculum to learn how to stay safe online. Filtering systems should also clearly demonstrate they don’t ‘over-filter’, allowing measured access that’s not seen as unreasonably restricted.
Microsoft Education Partner Summit
M-Tech were out in force at the UK Microsoft Education Partner Summit in London on 19th April 2017. Hosted at the beautiful Wellcome Collection, four of the team attended to hear more about the latest in Education from the global technology giant. The afternoon kicked off with some great networking over lunch before heading into the conference suite for the sessions to begin.
Growing a Sustainable Multi-Academy Trust
Multi-Academy Trusts are steadily moving towards becoming the dominant model in our education system. As of March 2017, approximately 23%, a figure of over 6000, of all schools in England and Wales had Academy status. Between them, these made up 1249 Multi-Academy Trusts, an increase of over 300% in the past 6 years.
The Benefits of Becoming a Multi-Academy Trust
More schools are joining Multi-Academy Trusts, enabling them to have increased budgetary control, more choice and more freedom over their decisions. There has been a large increase in schools becoming academies. Reports suggest this is due to concerns over Local Authorities (LA) ability to provide suitable services, to enable schools to have more budgetary control and have more choice and freedom over their decisions.
M-Tech Exhibit at Big Futures Show 2017
On March 22nd 2017, M-Tech Systems exhibited at Big Futures Show 2017. We were very proud to support this event at the Winter Gardens in our local town of Eastbourne, on the South Coast. With around 100 exhibitors in attendance for the day, the show was organised by Eastbourne Education Business Partnership in association with Eastbourne Borough Council.
M-Tech Recognised as Trusted Smoothwall Partner
We’re pleased to share that M-Tech Systems have been recognised as a trusted and selected Smoothwall Partner! Our logo has now been added to their Find a Partner page. Noting the importance of the change to Oftsed guidelines in September 2016, we have put a lot of focus into raising awareness of safeguarding in education.
Virtualisation Project at King Harold Academy
Following the virtualisation project carried out by M-Tech in Summer 2016 at Debden Park High School, sister school King Harold Business & Enterprise Academy embarked upon their virtualisation journey a few months later. Both of the Essex-based secondary schools are part of the TKAT Multi-Academy Trust and managed by the same IT team.
The Growing Need for Online Safety Measures in Education
Online safety has become a very high priority in schools this Academic year, with clarity from Ofsted over where responsibility lies. Everyone who works with children has a responsibility for keeping them safe, in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action to support them and their families.
The New 3Rs Eastbourne College
M-Tech were invited to be lead sponsors of the Eastbourne College run New 3Rs Workshop. As the day was about innovation in education and preparing young people for a rapidly changing world, M-Tech felt this a perfect fit and gladly accepted.
Casper Suite Mobile Device Management Roll Out
We’ve just completed our latest Mobile Device Management project, for Bethany School in Kent. Following a successful rollout of Casper Suite to 33 iOS devices, the school requested to more than double the number of enabled devices to 79 this summer.
Introducing the New Education Features from Apple iOS
With the release of iOS 9.3 earlier this year, Apple announced a number of education focussed tools to improve the management and productivity of iPads in school environments. This doesn’t negate the need for a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution, or a Management Information System (MIS), but works in conjunction to put the devices in the hands of students and teachers.
Virtualisation Project at Essex High School
Over the summer, M-Tech have been working with a High School in Essex. They were in need of some modernisation from their existing sprawled physical server infrastructure of 11 servers and a traditional agent-based backup. We proposed a virtualised platform using a technology stack of Datacore, VMWare and Veeam.
M-Tech Sponsor Eastbourne College Golf Day 2016
Friday 8th July saw the annual Eastbourne College Golf Challenge take place at the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club. As lead sponsor for the 7th consecutive year, M-Tech were very pleased to once again be a part of this day.
M-Tech Client Featured by Apple
Sophie Post of Falkner House School has been teaching Tudor history for the past 10 years. Using Apple technologies available to her through class iPads, she’s been helping bring history to life for her Year 5 students.
BETT Show 2016
Every year we pay a visit to the Bett Show, browsing for the latest in educational technology innovations and inspiration as well as using it as a meet and greet for clients and prospective new clients. This year didn’t disappoint, with some world class content soaked up, new ideas on every corner and some interesting discussions had.
M-Tech Sponsor Eastbourne College Golf Day for 6th Year
M-Tech were proud to be the lead sponsors of the Eastbourne College 2015 Foundation Golf Challenge for the 6th year running. This year’s Eastbourne College 2015 Foundation Golf Challenge, held at the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, attracted a record number of 24 teams on 2 July.
10 Reasons Why OneNote is the Best Classroom Tool Ever
Hearing more about the use of OneNote in the classroom? Need to extend your current use? Here is the perfect list for your next OneNote discovery. OneNote is one of the quiet hero applications in Education. On the face of it, OneNote is a great note taking and organisation tool, but when you get deeper you just can’t go past its feedback and collaboration capabilities.