Thanks to all the attendees from each of the eight Local Authorities across the East Midlands, the embc Launch Event 24 June 2008 was a resounding success. Held at Holywell Park, Loughborough University with over 120 attendees including the competition winners of the Netiquette online safety competition, the event officially launched the new embc Learning Network Services.
An insightful and lively introduction by Andy Hvass, Sales and Marketing director of Synetrix and official host for the day, set the tone for the event. Mike Kendall, Managing Director of embc, pressed ‘play’ on the first official showing of the embc movie which defined the vision and aims of the new service whilst giving a great view of the teaching and learning communities that embc will continue to help develop. Isabel Merrifield, embc’s chair of the board of directors, outlined the expectations for the future and awarded prizes to the schoolchildren winners of the netiquette competition. Keynote education speaker - John Davitt gave a dynamic presentation giving an exciting insight and perspective to the evolving role of IT in education which was followed by Jay Neale, Commercial director of Software Services at Synetrix, who highlighted benefits that the new service will bring and the overall vision for the future. The final presentation by Leighton Searle, Schools Business manager for Microsoft, presented the global view on education before Andy Hvass invited attendees to explore the range of service demonstrations whilst enjoying champagne and canapés in celebration of this momentous occasion.
The launch showcased and demonstrated a selection of standard services available to schools:
- High Definition VideoConferencing
- An introduction to the Web Administration Tool
- Mysite & Portal workshops
- Service support; ‘Talk to Synetrix’
- JISC
Plus films from the netiquette competition on how to stay safe online, feedback areas and an opportunity for schools to have their e-mail statistics printed.
Please take the time to review the presentations given on the day, in the ‘Presentations’ section below and to view the embc movie.