Blue Skies and other ideal solutions

[GrumbleDook]

As discussed over a month ago here is a new section of the forums ... part of general chat and hopefully it will be somewhere that we feel we can bring new ideas, look at old ideas or even just think about some really strange things that might, with enough planning/money/staff/support, actually have an impact in schools.

Try to keep things positive in here, please, and try not to knock ideas ... no matter how strange or improbable they seem.

I will dredge through the other forums over the next few weeks and post links to previous conversations that either need sparking up again or had some good ideas that could be expanded.

Every 3 months I will try and summarise what has been discussed and we can send it out as 'thoughts from the EduGeek Think Tank!'

This section is only open to registered users for the moment and if you have any links to existing research or existing examples please post them for others to read.

[spannerman2]

Spannerman2 is now a freelance; no longer bound to act as a paid open source software apologist, I am free to ramble on about all things School and ICT. I am typing this using IE8 browser (only kidding).

I want to contribute to Grumbledook's Blue Sky thread because the impending cuts after the election will mean that ICT in schools will have to justify its cost-benefit as never before .

I think frankly that it will have to re-invent itself. This forum is where there is the most experience and expertise in the country so where better to post.

I have a new blog of my own at Computerworld Blogs where you can disagree with me as usual

[u8dmtm]

I know this will be controversial but one way to save a load of money could be to take the 'ICT-only' part of BSF (i.e. where there are no new buildings just new ICT with a managed service) and apply it to those schools not yet affected by BSF, even if BSF itself slows or stops after the election.

This would create economies of scale for LAs and allow the schoos to reduce their workforce costs whilst also creating a big-picture based solution which allows for seemless interoperability across school sites, something which will benefit the 14-19 agenda and the idea of a single system which follows a student from Foundation Stage all the way through to Sixth Form.

I think the leading providers such as Capita-Ramesys and RM could really do such a thing justice.

[Sylv3r]

I know this will be controversial but one way to save a load of money could be to take the 'ICT-only' part of BSF (i.e. where there are no new buildings just new ICT with a managed service) and apply it to those schools not yet affected by BSF, even if BSF itself slows or stops after the election.

This would create economies of scale for LAs and allow the schoos to reduce their workforce costs whilst also creating a big-picture based solution which allows for seemless interoperability across school sites, something which will benefit the 14-19 agenda and the idea of a single system which follows a student from Foundation Stage all the way through to Sixth Form.

I think the leading providers such as Capita-Ramesys and RM could really do such a thing justice.

I imagine this will probably happen - our LA for one I am sure need all schools to be onboard using the managed IT service to be cost effective but to also ensure that all students have the same opportunities - single sign on to library's and part of the 14-19 agenda will become much harder if not impossible if the majority of schools do not use the managed service.

[teejay]

Scaling up to a managed service, either within the LA, outsourced or BSF does not actually create economies of scale, it is actually more expensive! Sounds counter intuitive I know, but we've done the costings and for our school it would actually cost around £100k more per year. That is not based on back of fag packet figures either but something we spent a lot of time researching and is a very conservative figure, we are really looking at about £150k+.

[spannerman2]

I think the leading providers such as Capita-Ramesys and RM could really do such a thing justice.

I think much along the same lines, an ICT only largely Free Open Source (RM have consiberable long standing expertise inthi sarea) offering would free up a lot of the BSF issues

[spannerman2]

genuinely everyone I have talked to who have done the sums have said it will cost more..it's a scandal..first ever national ICT technicians strike is required

[spannerman2]

Folk,

Capita and RM 'own' BSF: BSF will go G-Cloud whatever the election result. Outsourcing + G-Cloud = no edu-geeks...= a billion quid saved... I know I keep saying this but you have to do something we are looking at a whole generation of redundant ICT in schools engineers/technicians.

[GrumbleDook]

G-Cloud deals with a number of services but not everything. It also doesn't cover the idea of innovation, something mentioned for education by *all* parties.

The cloud is only part of the answer ...

[spannerman2]

I know G-Cloud is deoas not cover everything but surely you agree that 'everything' will be cost cutting and that 'innovation' will be a synonym for doing things differently..ie cheaply..vote for change

[spannerman2]

NAHT, noticed that the Headteachers are rebelling against outsourcing scam contracts (TES, Education Exec and many other places) source of their info was Edugeek forum..well done. But as this is a Blue Sky blog, what would happen if ICT spending in schools was cut by 90%..no really what would actually happen?

[SYNACK]

NAHT, noticed that the Headteachers are rebelling against outsourcing scam contracts (TES, Education Exec and many other places) source of their info was Edugeek forum..well done. But as this is a Blue Sky blog, what would happen if ICT spending in schools was cut by 90%..no really what would actually happen?

Assuming that the funding for the IT staff is not included in this then probably the following:
Computers would slowly fail and not get replaced meaning that the number of computers that were usable would steadily decline and they would all become slower.
Some schools may have to switch to linux or remove their computers from a domain environment and install older bundled software as their volume licenses ran out. Antivirus may not be affordable and so large scale virus infection may break out. Printers would run out of tonner and not be refilled and major network infrastructure would slowly age and fail probably taking data with it.

All of this would stress the IT staff out as teachers and managment got frustrated and took it out on the IT staff but refuesed to provide the funding required to fix it. IT staff would quit or end up on stress leave.

After a period of adjustment (length depending on the initial state of the school) there would be a reduced number of computers to fit the funding, probably the office and the library. Many less IT staff and much lower powered network gear as it would thenonlneed to serve 2-5% of the original userbase. Stocks for pen and refill manufacturing companies would go up and older teachers would probably rejoice.


Another option would be that schools were forced to put everything in the cloud and spend everything on an internet pipe and if they were lucky a bit of network infrastructure. All students would need to bring their own gear which would be unsuported and difficult to teach for/with.

Privacy would be dead and everything from homework to student reports would be searchable in Googles ultimate wet dream. Internet connections with rubbish SLAs would mean that the services would only be usable 60% of the time with cloud outages removing another 10%.


Either way any government would likely lord their foward and innovative thinking that allowed for every single pointless marketing buzzword to be used in a single sentence.

[spannerman2]

Privacy would be dead and everything from homework to student reports would be searchable in Googles ultimate wet dream. Internet connections with rubbish SLAs would mean that the services would only be usable 60% of the time with cloud outages removing another 10%.


Either way any government would likely lord their foward and innovative thinking that allowed for every single pointless marketing buzzword to be used in a single sentence.

An absolutely brilliant and accurate summation.

In effect you have just described Ground Zero for school ICT.

The question is then begged: how can we (ie not them) define a new ICT that gets teachers back on board and makes new spending seem attractive again. Also to preserve jobs how can the tech talent be elevated to become more than fixers of kit that otherwise would not work much?

[apoth0r]

I think to get teachers back on board we need to stop the current trend of throwing new ideas at the constantly, let them catch up with the technology that we currently have. We've had over the past 3 years the slow introduction of VLE's, this has been a huge stress in many cases and we would go a lot further by continuing with them rather then having them replaced with the next big thing. VLE's have plenty of scope and the newer version of Moodle as an example can only bring better things, but at least it remains with what teachers have been working with.
Teachers need to do what they do, teach. It shouldn't be the case of flooding them with new/cutting edge technology every year. IMO

[SYNACK]

I think to get teachers back on board we need to stop the current trend of throwing new ideas at the constantly, let them catch up with the technology that we currently have. We've had over the past 3 years the slow introduction of VLE's, this has been a huge stress in many cases and we would go a lot further by continuing with them rather then having them replaced with the next big thing. VLE's have plenty of scope and the newer version of Moodle as an example can only bring better things, but at least it remains with what teachers have been working with.
Teachers need to do what they do, teach. It shouldn't be the case of flooding them with new/cutting edge technology every year. IMO

Depends on the pace of the teachers, I don't think that there can really be a "no teacher left behind" policy as it will turn into a race to the bottom. We would probably still be using BBC Micros. I fully agree that the learning curve should be a summountable one but simply stopping and waiting for everyone to catch up may cause more damage than keeping pace. At least the jumps are smaller in that scenario, a forced upgrade every 10 years because the stuff has simply stoped is to nobodies benifit as the learning curve will be discontinuous, a gapeing chasam rather than a gentle slope.