IT Strategy - Threats and Opportunities

[pcstru]

As an adjunct to the IT Strategy document thread, I thought (since I'm having to write one) it would be useful to get a sense of what Edugeek thinks will be the technological (or even pedagogical) threats and opportunities, what will be the drivers over the next 3-5 years. This is not @GrumbleDook's suggested small group, nor an attempt to get a full strategy document (which to a large part has to depend on the individual school, since it is a journey that needs to start from where you currently are), but just a list (elaborated) of things that will affect what we do and how we do it. So, to begin, pulling directly from my document, two items :

 

An ongoing trend in IT is toward more use of and reliance on services available online. Suppliers are increasingly hosting services and delivering only the customer facing element to customers. There are pros and cons to this but increasingly suppliers are taking the choice away from us and supplying only web based services. We need to accommodate both growth in internet traffic and provision a suitable level of redundancy to secure uninterrupted access to those services.

There is a clear desire from users to access services from mobile devices round the school and for students to be able to access services from whatever device they may have. We would need to make a significant investment in our site wide wireless system to accommodate large numbers of additional devices and support a high density of devices in all areas.

 

Please do post your thoughts on items, explaining what the driver is and what the response to it might/should be.

[pcstru]

Government policy is pushing schools towards becoming Academies and this is likely to affect us over the 3-5 year period. This may have a direct impact on software licensing and service contracts. Indirectly, strategic goals may be disrupted as resources are directed to delivering the organisational changes of converting to an Academy.

 

(is there a better way to sum that up?)