5 Good Developments for Education in Window's Vista

Created by Jeff VanDrimmelen (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) on January 23, 2007

This afternoon I went to a meeting of the techie minds here on campus to discuss the implementation of Vista. There were quite a few people that acted like the implementation of Vista was a terrible, but necessary evil. A lot of the discussion focused around the new Office 2007 suite. From a support standpoint I can see how this upgrade could be a nightmare. The changes in Office navigation are quite significant, especially for long time users of the suite, with little apparent added functionality.

On the other hand, I have been using Vista and the Office Suite for several months as my primary machine and have not had any significant problems. I left the meeting trying to reconcile my experience with what I had just witnessed. I decided I was going to look for what was different/good about the upgrade.

All I.T. people tell you Vista is more secure, and it does have a multitude of security features that make it more safe, but an every day educator cares more about it working and functioning that how safe it is. I decided to look at specifically at how the upgrade to Vista helps us out as educators? What specific traits does it have that would be make it advantageous for us to upgrade to Vista? What added functionality will help me educate better? Here is my list:

Organization

There is no question that the biggest reason to upgrade has to be the added search capabilities. Since installing Vista on my machine I no longer use the cumbersome start menu to get to programs. I just click start and type in the program I want.

Microsoft (taking a lesson from Google Desktop) has now created an indexed catalog of your computer so you have instant search results that include inside of documents. Great for finding that paper you wrote 5 years ago.

Instant Information

Vista has a built in Gadget and Sidebar Engine that let's you add little modules to your desktop with real-time updating information about ANYTHING. Time, Stocks, Calendar's, anything! Yahoo and Google both have these already, but they take up a lot of resources and slow down your machine.
In an awesome move Vista has added native RSS feed capabilities to Outlook and their integrated Gadget's. As I discussed in an earlier post, this added feature is a must have for any educator who needs to keep up on current events and happenings!

Collaboration

Collaboration is a must have as a good educator. As educators we often need to share files with students or colleagues as we work on programs. If we are not comfortable using an online program like Google Docs then Vista gives us the added capability of sharing a folder in public space.
Vista has a new 'Meeting Space' feature that allows users to create a space for up to 10 users to meet and collaborate in real time. I have not been able to test it out yet, but a software like this would be great for meeting with your class or between students working on a project.

Backup

There are added protections to help you not lose data. You can read about them all here in detail, but my favorite is the windows backup and previous versions of documents that are available should you accidentally change something you didn't mean to.

Multimedia

Vista has added functionality to the photo manager, media player, movie maker and media center. As video becomes more and more prevalent in education, users will need ways to edit those easily.

This is just a short list of some of the improvements Microsoft has made to their windows platform. You can read a whole lot more on their Vista website if you have interest.

Disclaimer:
I realize that most of these additions are already available on through second hand software or on the Mac. (There has even been discussion about Microsoft just copying Mac's.) That being said, there is something to be said about integrated technology. 90% of our campus used Windows, so it is going to happen.

Homework:
What other added functionality do you see as benefiting the academic community?

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Original Article: (http://www.edutechie.com/2007/01/5-good-developments-for-education-in-windows-vista/)
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jeffvand's blog

Thanks for the note Susan.

Submitted by jeffvand on Thu, 2007/01/25 - 7:43am.

Thanks for the note Susan. I love your last point. It really does bring new functions and features to a Window's heavy campus that will increase their ability to do great work.

Vista IS good for higher ed

Submitted by smiltenb on Wed, 2007/01/24 - 7:12pm.

Great post, Jeff. I've only been running vista/office 2007 for about two weeks but have noticed most of the items you identify as good developments -- the search being one of the first things I observed. (I'm not using google desktop anymore with my vista machine).I think you make an excellent point about mac/vista (this comment is coming from someone who is new to mac and running vista on a dual boot mac): vista seems to have been heavily influenced by the mac and these new features are terrific. And one thing that vista can do better than osX for my institution is to provide our large population of pc users with new features and functions on a platform that they're familiar and comfortable with.