Secretary of State for Education -switching to cloud! Why took so long!!!

[CloudGeek]

Secretary of State for Education -switching to cloud! Why took so long!!!

 

In one breath accepts the bad decision re: interactive boards and another probably 8-10 years late, recommending to switch from on premise to cloud and this will include MIS.

[AlanD]

Were interactive boards a bad decision? While it remains true that many teachers fail to make the most of them, its also true that a good number make excellent use of them - with pre-prepared material that they can amend and add to year on year without reinventing it from scratch each time. And they share it with colleagues. Did it raise attainment - probably not - because doing that depends on engagement with students and while it might make it easier I don't think there was ever a promise that it was going to make it higher attainment. It certainly as the potential to save time. Like so many things - its not cost of the technology that is the barrier to making something work - its the cost of the training and support, which are often assumed to be absorbed without effort and cost. And not only does that training and support cost money - it also costs time....and teachers have never been as busy as they are today....partly because of the endless checking and reporting systems demanded by everything being controlled by IT run processes.

 

 

And while cloud based systems CAN save money...they are not a panacea for all evils. Serverless schools are a fantastic idea for reducing the capital cost of the servers.....but then you start looking at your Azure cloud costs, and high speed (possibly gigabit) internet links and over a period of 7 years, you discover the cloud has cost you twice as much as the hardware. Thoughts of saving the costs of technicians and network managers soon evaporate when schools realise they still have to update the cloud computers and install software patches....deploy packages....etc. Yes, if you start outsourcing support and want hardware maintenance contracts cloud computing might at least break even....but only just at best. MIS systems hosted in the cloud always work out considerably more expensive than shoving it on a existing virtual server...and cloud MIS systems are - at least in my experience...painfully sluggish even with a fast internet connection.

 

 

Has money been wasted....yes, I'm sure we can all think of examples (microbit springs to mind....) but sometimes its only by exploring some of those avenues its possible to determine what does work.

 

 

It used to take two office staff to pay salaries and collect fees (yes, we are an private school) system and photocopied letters. Today - with a frighteningly expensive computer system with eye watering annual maintenance costs it now takes 6 staff to do the same job - even though the school is half the size it was 30 years ago. This, more than anything is the problem that needs to be solved....because too often IT ends up making work, rather than saving work.

[Ephelyon]

And let's not forget the Microsoft fudge of a couple of years ago when they tried to pretend they could save us all money by moving everything to (their) cloud because they thought an average secondary school spent £50K/annum on on-prem solutions...

[localzuk]

I have a question for Mr Hinds - can he show me evidence that being able to explore the Amazon in faux-vr improves outcomes? Can he show me that buying this kit is worth more than putting that same money into a member of teaching staff?

 

Those are the questions that should underpin any push for more technology in the classroom. On the administrative side, absolutely technology can improve things, but it isn't just technology that's the issue on this side. You've got a workforce of teachers who have done X for so many years, you then need to retrain them. When is a school supposed to do this? Schools have 5 inset days a year total. At best, we can incrementally change things if we want to ensure the change works properly, at worst we make a big change and then spend a year chasing our tails fixing all the mistakes everyone makes.

 

The other aspect of it all is - more tech, more support. If you increase the amount of technology in a school you will need more tech support. One of our first schools bought enough iPads for 1 between 2 about 4 years ago, and got rid of their IT suite. They thought that iPads "are simple" so wouldn't need much support, so halved their tech support contract too. Well, it backfired miserably, and they ended up having to double what they originally had. They also realised that the iPads can't do everything they need, so have now put an IT suite back in again...

@AlanD, the issue with admin now needing more staff is not down to technology. It is down to there being more paperwork needed for the myriad of legal requirements we now face. Everything we do ends up being documented for one reason or another, because earlier ways of doing things were not good enough. Just look at something like child protection - how that has changed in the last 10 years. We've got GDPR now as well, which is even more admin. The growth in admin needs would be much worse without IT.

[jemal]

DfE published similar news story yesterday with slightly more details of organisations etc - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-technology-to-spearhead-classroom-revolution

 

Couldn't help but think mentioning Microsoft and Apple, but not Google, seemed a bit odd.

[synaesthesia]

Like anything, it's a matter of how it's used and *why* it's used. People typically learn best with a hands-on approach; doing something physical helps commit to memory far better than theorising. And student moral goes a long way towards increasing attainment. Attention spans are forever decreasing (ironically technology likely has a large part in that) but if you can enthuse someone enough by showing them what their on screen avatar does in a physical form, or even getting them to experience something in VR they otherwise might not ever experience - perhaps those will help drive someone to think "I'd like to do that. I'd like to aspire to travelling the world, robotics, mechanics".

IWB's when used properly and correctly can be a fantastic resource but it's extremely rare for that to be true in anything other than primary and special schools; the best use I see in secondary is purely as an electronic whiteboard with notes, guidelines etc scribbled on them and that's something already being overtaken by other methods/systems which are just as, if not more effective.

It's a double-edged sword though; that enthusiasm for learning can come from a damned good teacher too. The trouble is that this isn't a one size fits all world and the sooner the powers that be recognise that, the better students will be for it.

[Ephelyon]

DfE published similar news story yesterday with slightly more details of organisations etc - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-technology-to-spearhead-classroom-revolution

 

Couldn't help but think mentioning Microsoft and Apple, but not Google, seemed a bit odd.

 

Also doesn't mention the cloud once...

[sparkeh]

I seem to remember one of the few bits of research done on the impact of investment in IT in schools found that, overall, IWB were a good investment in primary but bad in secondary.

IWBs are used fantastically here, also terribly, depends entirely on the teacher and they engagement with technology.

 

Its ironic that Hinds is repeating the mistake that he is calling out, ie a politician who doesn't really understand education pushing a technology he doesn't really understand.

[nicholab]

Often technology is too expensive to be rolled out quickly in schools so losses momentum. Also standardised classrooms could not be developed mean teachers did not know the resources they would fine in a room. IWB could have been projector and graphics tablet as this would have been cheaper and worked for legacy teaching styles.

[Banjo]

I have a feeling this falls under the category of telling schools why they they don't need (and wont be getting) an increase in their funding levels.

 

"Labour MPs have criticised a Department for Education letter that suggests schools could make up their budget shortfalls by purchasing cheaper photocopiers or switching energy suppliers.

 

In a letter to the Labour MP John Cryer, who wrote to raise concerns about the funding shortfall for schools in his constituency, the schools minister, Nick Gibb, said the government recognised schools “are facing increasing cost pressures” and was advising schools about how to save money.

MPs condemn free schools policy as incoherent and wasteful

 

“Schools could save, on average, up to 10% by making use of our national energy deal and over 40% by using the national deal for printers and photocopiers,” the minister wrote. Other suggestions included following advice on better staff deployment from the Education Endowment Fund and the government’s school buying strategy.

 

Cryer said the comments showed the department was “living in a fantasy world, utterly divorced from the reality in our schools” and said one school in his constituency was due to lose £960,055 in real terms over the next four years."