Microsoft was doing its best to make sure that Bill Gates' forecast of Internet growth will prove correct at UK educational, training and technology show BETT'97 this week.
As part of its assault into the UK education market, Microsoft launched a Web page designed to support students, teachers, parents and education IT specialists.
The page will take the style of a magazine with editorial written by members of the education community, said Dave Gregory Microsoft's education business development manager. Microsoft also linked the site to the Natural History Museum's Web site during the show, so that visitors could explore the past.
According to Gregory, as well as being able to download information about Microsoft's products, surfers will be able to access templates for Microsoft's Word, Works and Publisher. These will contain material which is relevant to the national curriculum.
Microsoft worked with a number of education specialists to create material that would support all sectors of the education community. There will also be links to partner sites, such as RM's Internet for Learning and BT's Campus World.
'The site is designed to be fun and interesting, while at the same time informative and useful,' said Gregory. 'We are keen for it to become a really useful resource, passing the benefits of the Internet on to its users.'
Microsoft also demonstrated how technology from Citrix, which runs on a NT server, will allow schools to run applications such as Word 7 on 286 PCs and Macintosh platforms without the need replace older hardware.
The company dismissed the suggestion that this set-up was similar to the distributed computing model advocated by supporters of the network computer.
Microsoft also hopes that the Internet will be used extensively by schools to 'vote' and discuss topics around the general election, when it is announced later this year.
Although the number of schools that will be participating in 'voting' is unclear at present, Gregory said it was a golden opportunity to show how the Internet could be used as a truly global education tool.
