Where do you see IT going in education in the next 5 years?

[Qas]

Hi All,

 

Many schools have already migrated to Office 365 or G Suite while some have not. Some are using Microsoft or Google Classroom . iPads still seem to be the main tablet of choice in education.

 

Where do you think we will be in the next 3 - 5 years? Do you think iPads will still be in the classroom? Will all projectors and boards be replaced with touch screens? Will we all be using Azure more extensively.

 

Interested in your thoughts.

[FishCustard]

I sincerely hope most projectors are replaced with large format displays (whether touch or not - some areas probably don't need touch).

 

What I'd like to see is more mobile devices that link to central resources - e.g. a Windows 10 tablet that was domain and Azure AD joined, and therefore integrated with things better than say, an iPad or Android tablet does. That way you get the best of both worlds, mobility and manageability. I will be watching the Windows 10 ARM developments very closely indeed.

[FN-GM]

I sincerely hope most projectors are replaced with large format displays (whether touch or not - some areas probably don't need touch).

 

That was already done 5 years ago here.

[DrPopkorne]

That was already done 5 years ago here.

 

Oh my, we are about 85 rooms off this goal. Many few years left I'd say.

[Qas]

As Large screens are dropping in price, I do see these replacing projectors in the classroom. Integration for tablets has always been key which is why I thought Microsoft would have nailed it by now....maybe in the near future?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Oh my, we are about 85 rooms off this goal. Many few years left I'd say.

 

Haha.. I feel your pain. 7 down, 80 to go!

[FishCustard]

That was already done 5 years ago here.

 

About to do it here - new site will be a projector-free zone apart from in the dining hall (for external hirers).

[mavhc]

Nowhere, no money. At least we don't have to pay for Windows updates any more. So free Windows 10, free google docs, cheaper laptops.

[unixman_again]

Short answer - even further down the pan than it has gone in the last 15 years.

 

Experience has always shown that when a perfectly good simple, mechanical system is replaced with technology, the result is a disaster.

 

More sensible answer. More fairly useless technology will make our job more difficult. Case in point. We, like many schools have classroom doors controlled by swipe card, which are forever refusing to open for the teacher. So IT have to go along and use a key to open the door. If just key locks had been used in the first place, we wouldn't have any problems.

 

Somebody in SMT decided that having teachers take the register was too difficult, so we moved to a swipe card system so the students can clock themselves into a lesson. The boxes are USB powered and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I think if they had the capability to plug in an external power supply they would work, but they don't. The old register system (class list printed on a piece of paper and a pencil) never, ever failed.

 

Final case in point. We have interactive whiteboards that have been around since the XP days. They still work so they haven't been replaced, but the PCs have been. W10 comes along and we have to jump through hoops to get the interactive whiteboard to work. I have two Prometheans which work. I have an identical Promethean on an identical PC with exactly the same W10 image and it refuses to interact. It used to work fine under W7.

[localzuk]

By current plans, it's going to be 6 years until we've moved to interactive touchscreens.

 

Regarding where we are generally? We'll be fully using Office 365 within the Trust by then, but I can't see the makeup of our general IT usage changing much - we just don't have the funding to do it. We'd need to spend £135k per year on equipment to go 1:1 across the Trust, and we'd still need to maintain a couple of IT suites too. We'd need to increase the density of wireless in all schools too, and upgrade our internet connections. So, you're talking about £160k per year for 1:1. On top of the infrastructure costs, and the costs for licensing, staff computers etc... It'd end up putting our spend up by around 75%.

 

As our funding is some of the lowest in the country, we can't afford to spend 5% of our entire budget on IT.

[mjk]

No more onsite servers !

I'm only 15% into this project so luckily I have another 5yrs to go !

[maark]

The pace of change can be slow in schools unless you get management behind it and the funds.

Case in point - the paperless office - both recent schools I have worked at print/copy 2 million pages a year - environmentally disastrous but difficult to change the culture.

I can see a gradual reduction in servers - particularly file servers if you can get seamless connection to 365/Gsuite.

Also less installed software and more apps.

We are lucky in having all touchscreens but many schools can't afford it.

[FishCustard]

Experience has always shown that when a perfectly good simple, mechanical system is replaced with technology, the result is a disaster.

 

More sensible answer. More fairly useless technology will make our job more difficult.

 

In general, I agree. There are some good use-cases for electronic locks, etc. but they should be installed to solve a specific problem rather than just "because technology!". That's a good rule of thumb for everything - when someone says "can we have X new technology?" my first thought (if not my actual response) is "why? what does it do that the existing solution doesn't?". In some cases there really is a benefit and that's great. If not though, tread carefully.

 

 

EDIT: I'd be interested to know what's going on with W10 and those Promethean boards - I wonder why they're not working? Can't see any reason why they shouldn't.

[sparkeh]

Depends entirely on funding. Currently we are barely keeping what we have going. We are one of the lowest funded LAs in the country and the main focus is actually funding as many staff members as possible.

[round2it]

probably still trying to get SLT to recognise GDPR

[ReverentCreature]

Well we are getting another batch of ipads. We will soon have 80 to try and maintain using Lightspeed. They are great but I'm not sure that we need that many but the others insist that we have lots. Soon I will have to replace some of our touch screen boards. I'm open for ideas as to where to take the school next. I still feel its important to have a dedicated suite with desktop computers that are on and ready to use. SFFs with decent SSDs will be best I think.

[caffrey]

Our school ? I've suggested that we install chalkboards and chalk during the summer and maybe installing paper based registration systems

[mjk]

I don't think Ipads are the way forward because it's difficult to word process with them. With things like Chromebooks it's easy to justify their use in a public exam because its the students normal way of working.

Putting an entire yeargroup through an exam with laptops is hard enough, but it's more difficult if you have to deal with bluetooth keyboards.

[BKGarry]

I am working on "Disconnecting" the teacher from the front of the room.

 

First tests seem promising, Microsoft Wireless Display Adapters using Miracast are quite good, and I have been impressed by them. Then it will get convertible devices that mean the teacher can use them to write on etc.

 

I also feel that Azure will be a much bigger part to play, I am watching Intune for Education with eager eyes, and we may even have a case where all we have onsite is a Primary DC running DNS and DHCP and the rest will sit within azure, especially if the new web based version of SIMS is fully deployed within 5 years time

[flyinghaggis]

Judging by the level of input and support IT staff (and non-teaching staff in general) seem to have in education "Outsourced" is more than likely the direction it's going

 

But yeah, Servers migrated to Azure, services in Google Gsuite or Office 365 and more 1:1 BYOD devices like iPads/tablets/etc. Projectors with AppleTV's or a similar solution for wirelessly mirroring devices.

Edited March 21, 2018 by flyinghaggis

[mavhc]

Short answer - even further down the pan than it has gone in the last 15 years.

 

Experience has always shown that when a perfectly good simple, mechanical system is replaced with technology, the result is a disaster.

 

More sensible answer. More fairly useless technology will make our job more difficult. Case in point. We, like many schools have classroom doors controlled by swipe card, which are forever refusing to open for the teacher. So IT have to go along and use a key to open the door. If just key locks had been used in the first place, we wouldn't have any problems.

 

Somebody in SMT decided that having teachers take the register was too difficult, so we moved to a swipe card system so the students can clock themselves into a lesson. The boxes are USB powered and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I think if they had the capability to plug in an external power supply they would work, but they don't. The old register system (class list printed on a piece of paper and a pencil) never, ever failed.

 

Final case in point. We have interactive whiteboards that have been around since the XP days. They still work so they haven't been replaced, but the PCs have been. W10 comes along and we have to jump through hoops to get the interactive whiteboard to work. I have two Prometheans which work. I have an identical Promethean on an identical PC with exactly the same W10 image and it refuses to interact. It used to work fine under W7.

 

Problem is you bought closed sourced cheap devices, so you can't fix them and they don't work. Don't do that.

[gshaw]

At some point I think the days of free cloud will be taken away but only once the majority of on-site servers go. Microsoft already starting to go down that road with the recent price increases on EES and slowly changing the agreements to be cloud-first and per-user rather than per-FTE \ site license.

[mavhc]

Once everything's online you can switch to linux and save even more

[kennysarmy]

 

Nowhere fast unless our funding issues are resolved!

[FishCustard]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]48193[/ATTACH]

 

Nowhere fast unless our funding issues are resolved!

 

That's nothing! My budget at my last school shrunk from £40k pa to £12.5k pa over my four years as NM! I fear my ability for cost-saving became something of a weapon aimed at my own foot...

[free780]

I think the 1:1 question will keep coming up. Schools/Colleges won't the the budgets despite MS/Google/Apple focusing on this rather than shared devices. More workloads I'll head to the cloud. Filtering will using a transparent proxy with authentication at the connection. More security 2FA,auditing.