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A SENIOR officer from the Department of Education’s Information Communication Technology (ICT) section will be among keynote speakers at a major education conference in Scotland next week.

Graham Kinrade, who is ICT Project Manager for the Department, will address eLive!, speaking to an audience of 1,500 educationalists from across Scotland, on Tuesday, May 22.

The two-day event, billed as a Festival of Learning for the 21st Century and featuring seminars and exhibition stands, takes place at the Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.

Mr Kinrade will speak about the highly successful Isle of Man one-to-one scheme, through which more than 130 pupils at two primary schools – Dhoon and Anagh Coar – have been issued with laptop computers for educational use at home as well as at school.

The trial scheme has been running since September 2005. He will also address other aspects of the ICT Department’s pioneering work within schools, which has attracted international interest and recognition. ‘I will talk about progress since 1999, when networks went into schools, where we are at now and how we see this feeding into education in the future,’ Mr Kinrade said.

Recently, Mr Kinrade was invited to computer giant Apple’s Executive Briefing Centre in Paris to address a top-ranking group of Australian educationalists travelling around the world to learn about best practice in the field of ICT.

That visit followed an invitation to Apple’s London Executive Briefing Centre a year ago to speak to Parliament’s powerful All Party Internet Group about the Isle of Man’s ICT achievements.

His talk there led to a high-powered delegation of Moscow educationalists visiting the Island last November to see at first hand how ICT is being used in schools and within the Department.

The five-strong delegation included Elena Bulin-Sokolova, the director of the Centre of IT and educational environment of Moscow’s Department of Education.

The delegation said afterwards that the visit had left them ‘buzzing' with great ideas, adding:

‘The way in which teachers have adopted and integrated ICT was wonderful.'
It brought home how ICT can be used as a tool for empowering teaching and learning and not dominating the classroom.’ Mr Kinrade also returned to the EBC in London to speak with Federal Russian politicians on the topic.

His audience there included representatives of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science and the Federal Agency for Education. In November he has been invited to be among the keynote speakers at a conference of educationalists in Denmark.

The two-day event, entitled Education Forum, is organised by the Danish IT Centre for Education and Research. It is the most important ICT conference in the Danish calendar. Organisers say they are keen to feature the ‘Isle of Man story’.

John Thornley, ICT Adviser for the Department, commented:

‘Internationally, Isle of Man schools are seen as working at the leading edge in ICT, which is prompting educationalists from other countries to take such a keen interest in what we are doing.’

SAN FRANCISCO — Jan. 9, 2007 — Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today revealed at Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 the news Mac fans have been waiting to hear: A new version of Office for Mac is on its way. The Mac BU announced its intent to deliver the first Universal version of Office for Mac for PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs — Microsoft® Office 2008 for Mac. Scheduled to be available in the second half of 2007, Office 2008 for Mac will allow Mac users to work smarter and more efficiently with new and enhanced tools that are simple, intuitive and easily discovered.
“For more than two decades, Microsoft has been committed to delivering quality and innovation on the Macintosh platform while retaining unparalleled compatibility with PCs,” said Roz Ho, general manager of the Mac BU at Microsoft. “Office 2008 is, by far, the most comprehensive, Mac-complementary productivity suite we’ve developed to date. I’ve witnessed firsthand the progression of this product, and am excited to think about the possibilities that soon will be available to our customers when Office 2008 launches later this year.” More information about the Mac BU and Microsoft Macintosh products is available at http://www.microsoft.com/mac.

RENTON, Wash. – October 29th, 2007 -- Parallels, Inc., has released a new beta version of its award-winning Parallels Desktop for Mac, the world’s leading desktop virtualization product, that is certified to work with Mac OS X “Leopard”, delivering better performance and enhanced usability when running both Windows Vista and XP on a Mac. The new build enables current Parallels Desktop users to upgrade to Leopard more easily, and makes it simple for new users to start using OS X and Windows simultaneously.

Parallels also announced a special Leopard-related offer . From now through November 6th, 2007, new customers who purchase Parallels Desktop 3.0 will receive a $20 Apple Gift Card from Parallels good toward future purchases. Existing customers who upgrade from Parallels Desktop 2.5 to Parallels Desktop 3.0 will receive a $10 Apple gift card.

Faster and More Feature-Rich
The new beta version substantially improves Windows Vista and Windows XP performance and offers several features and enhancements that further blur the lines between Windows and Mac applications -- making the choice to switch to a Mac easy.

Highlights include:

- Parallels Transporter, which enables users to migrate their entire PC system to a Parallels virtual machine, now supports the migration of Windows from a Boot Camp partition to a Parallels virtual Disk Image. Using this tool, a user can safely migrate from a static Boot Camp partition to an expanding Parallels virtual machine, saving gigs of hard drive space.
- Complete integration with Spaces, Leopard's new multi-desktop tool. Users can use Coherence across multiple spaces, or work with OSes in full-screen mode in an individual space.
- Improved 3D performance provides users with a better 3D graphic experience for both DirectX and OpenGL games and applications.
A complete list of new features is available at http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta.