Changes to Hwb coming, and contract extended

[3s-gtech]

For those in Wales who are familiar with Hwb (most of us are, love it or hate it)

 

Welsh Government | Google for Education to be rolled out in Welsh schools next year

 

They're going to add EVEN MOAR to it. And spend another chunk of public money on it. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for the admin page to load to reset a password because somebody thought it was a good idea to not have it work with Azure AD Connect.

[MkII]

"the Welsh Government will also not be renewing the Hwb+ virtual learning platform (Welsh version of Learning Possibilities) once the current contract expires in August 2018"

 

We're celebrating here.

 

"As well as announcing plans for the roll-out of Google for Education, the Cabinet Secretary also provided an update on other areas of the Learning in Digital Wales (LiDW) programme"

 

We thought the LiDW money tree had ceased giving. Good news!

 

"Guidance will also be published shortly to help schools understand how local area network issues can affect their internet connectivity and how they can make the best use of investment from the LiDW programme."

 

Couldn't help but chuckle at this bit

[PotNoodleTech]

Oh boy oh boy.

 

Imagine the impact those millions of pounds would have achieved if they'd put it towards upgrading secondaries from 100-1000 meg and upgrading primaries from 10-100 meg, or implementing BYOD in every school, or Remote desktop for all staff and pupils, or a chromebook for every pupil. All of the things that LEAS and schools are really struggling to afford to achieve.

 

I am not gonna say any more otherwise I'll prolly end up getting sacked

[3s-gtech]

Yeah, Hwb+ won't be missed, and they've been hinting that would go. They missed the boat by about five years when they launched it.

[adrianjones]

We gave up on HWB+, But we are using Teams in Office 365 successfully in HWB

[thebyronic]

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for the admin page to load to reset a password because somebody thought it was a good idea to not have it work with Azure AD Connect.

 

^^^

Ughhh HWB

Just glad my school aren't using it! The odd member of staff have asked for access to retrieve materials etc from other local schools.

 

Interested to see what Google will do to it!

[Bionic]

I'm very interested in how they intend to incorporate Google tools!

[MkII]

I'm very interested in how they intend to incorporate Google tools!

Me too! We already have a Google edu account. I counted five versions of office available to our users currently.. the LA provided ones.. O2016 + O365, HWB O365, j2e link to HWB O365, j2Office (looks like open office online), and then or locally installed O2010.

 

It'd be much simpler to switch wholly to gsuite.

 

Meanwhile our LA Digital Lead is trying to push all high schools to ditch paid LA O365 and adopt freebie HWB O365.

[Bionic]

I don't understand why O365 was chosen over G-Suite to be honest. With ever shrinking budgets it just doesn't appear as though anybody in charge has properly thought about the long term. The potential of G-Suite combined with Chromebooks and Android tablets in education is far beyond what Microsoft Office/Windows on PC/laptop can offer. We are teaching the minds of the future using technology of the past, it makes absolutely no sense.

[3s-gtech]

Hmm, don't think O365 is past tech, even if it may not be as good. It's all a little pointless until they can do some tie-in with schools ADs (I hear murmurings of LEA wide AD trusts again, maybe this is why).

[mavhc]

Aren't they both free for schools?