Swine Flu

Due to this instance of Swine Flu in a Bradford School please see this swine flu article which discusses prevention in ICT.

Carbon Neutral ICT in Primary Schools

Is making your school environmentally friendly important to you? It should be - The government is planning to make all new schools carbon neutral by 2016.
So what can you do right now to start moving on the right path and what is Primary Technology doing FOR you free of charge to make your school a greener place to be?

All schools who receive technical support receive:

• Shutdown scripts which turn off unused computers at 4pm
• Electronic Timers for Laptop trolleys which only charge when charging is needed
• Replaced CRT monitors with LCD monitors.
• Carbon reports with ICT purchases upon request.
• Recycling of old ICT equipment, printer toners, computers etc.

Some other ways to reduce Carbon usage:

• Replace your ICT suite with a mobile ICT solution, freeing up the old ICT suite to be used as more efficient area.
• Use recycled paper to print onto
• Change printing settings to use less ink
• Turn off Bluetooth and lower LCD brightness on laptops

The best school method:

Get the whole school involved!

Allocate a certain area of energy usage to each year group/class and then brain storm per class. Monitor usage before and after and provide an educational reward for the class who manages to save the most amount of energy.

Technical support packages now come with free annual eFits report and consultancy session – March 2006

Primary Technology now does “extended framework for information technology system” (eFits) reports for all of the Primary Schools supported by any Technical support package. The purpose of this report is to fulfil the schools requirements to budget for up to 3 years for ICT expenditure. The eFits report is an extended fits report. Fits reports are naace reports, accredited by Becta which enable a school to look at ICT leadership and provision where support is concerned. The extensions Primary Technology provide ensure the school has the correct strategic vision based upon the correct technical information.

To read more on the technical support packages offered by Primary Technology please visit www.primaryt.co.uk/support

To view an example eFits report please see..

Naace mark for technical support awarded to Primary Technology December 2005

Primary Technology has been awarded the most prestigious quality assurance mark available for technical support providers in education. We are extremely proud of this achievement. The Naace mark is provided by Naace and signifies Primary Technology’s commitment to the education sector. Through the Naace mark certain service changes have been made. We now constantly audit and monitor our progress and processes inside of schools, also a complaints procedure now exists and is available at www.primaryt.co.uk/complaintsprocedure

More information on the naace mark is available at www.naace.org

Primary Technology launches as a technical support provider for Bradford Primary Schools – August 2004

Due to large demand in the Bradford primary schools sector we have decided to launch Primary Technology as an ICT technical support service available to all Bradford schools. Our current 5 customers who are each individually subscribing to the service have had quality of service guaranteed.

We believe the reason for this demand is due to a poor level of service being offered previously by other providers. Market research shows that 60% of the Bradford schools are looking to change their provider.

Primary Technology will have several unique points of sale:
Firstly, a very high quality of service, this will be ensured through building strong relationships with the schools and with hardware/software providers inside and outside of the Bradford district. Staff will be key to this so our employment and training process is key.

Secondly, Primary Technology will focus its technical support service purely on Bradford Primary Schools. This will allow Primary Technology to build a dedicated and specialized team to deal with today’s and tomorrow’s problems in an extremely focused manner. Future expansion into other LEA’s is an option and something that will be considered annually in the AGM.

Thirdly, automation will be used to ensure high availability. By providing automation we will try to encourage and harness new technology that works inside of either the LEA parameters or those chosen by Primary Technology. Decisions will be made with Becta and other educational advice taken and will be subsequently implemented across all Bradford schools. An example of this is to encourage all Bradford schools to use the same anti virus software. By doing this we can monitor the software remotely and train all engineers to become experts in this one package. This will save time allow for quicker expansion as we progress into our growth years.

For more information on Primary Technology please see http://www.primaryt.co.uk