An update on the problems with Smartfilter:
Easynet Operations Director informed us of containing work overnight last night involving McAfee engineers from the US. This entails them having captured data on the servers and recreating the situation in their labs to aid resolution.
In the meantime, overall traffic flow looks a lot healthier today. Easynet has added another server into the cluster to further reduce the impact on users. They also updated their scripts to do more data gathering for McAfee if a server crashes.
As mentioned below no School should be seeing any total outages anymore and if the issue is significantly disrupting any site please report it to the Helpdesk on 0845 333...
Becta have released a tool to gauge how commited your school is to ICT. See below for more information and the link:
This tool gauges your school’s strength in ICT, prior to a full analysis on the self-review framework. It also indicates your likely position on the Next Generation Learning Charter, demonstrating commitment and progress in using ICT.
How should the survey be used?
The results propose a plan to discuss the impact of ICT in your school. Your approach should involve senior decision makers if you wish to develop this further with the...
A word from Think U Know:
Thank you to everyone who has told us their plans for Safer Internet Day 2010 so far - please keep sending us your events! If you haven’t seen it already, we have an interactive map highlighting local initiatives and activities planned for SID10. You can publicise your activities and inform members of the public in your local area where they can find out more information and find out about fellow initiatives in your locality. Members of the press may be interested in covering events within your area so make sure to...
Pupils are more likely to use computers for their schoolwork at home on a daily basis than they are to use them every day at school, according to a survey.
What are your experiences with using computers at school and home? Do you agree with the article? Comment below!
View Full Story at BBC News Website
WMNet and SWGfL, two of our partners in the National Education Network, have compiled some free activities to use for Safer Internet Day 2010.
Activities from...
It's Safer Internet Day on February 9th and Childnet International have created a list of 10 Quick Classroom Ideas for you to put to use. Download them below.
Found them useful? Post a comment below!
It's time to get those entries in for the Northern Grid Awards 2010!
Closing Date for Entries is 26th February 2010 now 12th March 2010
Many schools in this region are supporting teaching and learning with exciting and innovative uses of ICT. Are you one of them?
If you are, enter the Northern Grid ICT in Education Awards, celebrate your success and you could win a prize for your school.
If you aren’t, take a look at what other schools are...
Update: Google is now phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 - Read More at BBC News
Northern Grid and Microsoft recommend that browsers running Microsoft IE6 or 7 are updated to IE8 as a matter of urgency. Security experts have seen malicious attacks exploiting the weakness with these versions of the browser. Google and Adobe have both experienced recent attacks and consider IE6 to be a security weak link.
Microsoft recommend that the IE8 browser has the highest security settings however this unfortunately will block user access to a...
This section from Education Today looks at the increasing importance of broadband technologies and RBCs on the UK education industry.
Also labeled: 
For those of you who live on the web, you'll know there was a flurry of excitement/sadness when news broke that Johnny Depp had died in a car crash yesterday. For a few hours hundreds of thousands of people were following links to learn more. In reality, there was no Johnny Depp car crash and people were led on a wild goose chase with them possibly ending up downloading malware-infected files.
The Centre for Cybercrime and Computer Security (CCCS) is having a Launch Event at St. James' Park on Wednesday 10th February 2010. Download the 
On Friday, February 19th from 15:00 to 18:00 (10:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time USA), 
