PC Pro - Is this what ICT looks like in your school?

[fiendishlyclever]

Is this what ICT looks like in your school? PC Pro went to visit a school to see their ICT provision.

 

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/05/20/my-first-hand-experience-of-a-first-class-it-education/

[Dos_Box]

I think we can see an article coming in the next edition then I reckon.

[Guest richard_s]

How about them doing an article showing the actual state of IT in a lot schools rather than this bit of government PR.

[maniac]

How about them doing an article showing the actual state of IT in a lot schools rather than this bit of government PR.

 

Not to mention the not so skillfully woven in plug for Dell in the middle of the article

 

Edit: Sysman_mk, you beat me to it. lol

[Guest Guest]

Well id love to see them doing video editting on TS over a wireless link. Hmm...

[Guest richard_s]

Well thats nice I have just noticed that my reply to the article has been cut mid sentence

 

Luckily I made a copy before I posted it. It should read as follows:

 

Having worked in several schools over the years I have to say that your article does not represent the state of IT in many schools in this country. Yes its nice to things being done well but what about an article showing the other side of the coin. Support staff doing their best to keep ageing kit running with little or no money, whilst dealing with teachers and senior management who have no clue about IT but keep coming up with hair brained schemes that are either not feasible or just down right stupid. I know of a lot of very talented IT professionals who have left education because they became disillusioned with the whole system. They wanted to give their schools systems like this but were given no support or encouragement to do so.

 

Go on I dare you to stop being a mouthpiece for the Government and their big business cronies and report the real state of IT in our schools.

[tmcd35]

In fact, virtualisation is second nature to these children. Work completed in school is saved to each pupil’s virtual hard drive, which they can remotely access from home to complete their homework.

 

- Like the idea but the logistic's would kill me. I have enough problems explaining to staff how they are supposed to download, edit then upload documents in the VLE. Trying to get them to run a VHD at home is whole other can of worms...

[localzuk]

Well id love to see them doing video editting on TS over a wireless link. Hmm...

 

I can't see a problem with doing that. Use VDI instead of TS, using wireless N infrastructure. With groups of kids like they had, that'd be about 10 laptops on the go. Wouldn't be a massive issue I don't think... a single 64bit dual quad core server with 16 - 32GB of ram and some speedy disks would handle it easily.

 

The main issue I have with this article is the fact that they don't actually discuss anything of substance. Every school involves IT in their lessons - we have audio recording devices used by English, French, ICT, and our KS2 classes. We have video equipment used by Drama, KS2, English and for events. The only thing we don't have is laptops which can be sat all over the place, wireless linked to mega-servers. We just don't have the funds for such things.

[GrumbleDook]

Erm ... yeah, I know a few schools quite similar to this one actually and I could probably come in to a fair few of your schools and write a similar report. Of course it doesn't tell the full picture ... it's journalism for $deity's sake ... but it isn't that bad a representation.

 

For a start, the school has heard of Becta as they are an ICT Register school and will have worked on things like the Self-Review Framework. Likewise, the work with SSAT and as a Training School will have brought them in touch with Becta. And although Becta rarely do direct mail-shots ... there have been some, so the school must not read their post!

 

Also consider that this is a PR piece for the school ... not the Govt. The school are selling themselves as a wonderful school, working with wonderful kids and wonderful staff. Most schools do the same.

 

I wouldn't take it to heart if PC Pro do a few nice pieces about schools for a change, but not every school has down-trodden techies, are poorly funded, no idea of sustainable IT, no innovation ... try not to forget the positive side of what we all do.

[GrumbleDook]

A quick addition to above ...

 

Have a look at this report - Asus Eee PCs in USA Schools: A First-Hand Report - OLPC News - but remember the following line.

 

Laptops make a good school better, but they don't make a bad school good.

 

You can say this about all technology. This is an Oustanding school under OFSTED. If the same was tried in a Satisfactory school it probably would not work as well ... and in a failing school?

 

Horses for courses as my dear, departed Pop would say.

[mattx]

...whilst dealing with teachers and senior management who have no clue about IT but keep coming up with hair brained schemes that are either not feasible or just down right stupid.

 

Amen to that !!

[SimpleSi]

Use VDI instead of TS,

 

What's VDI

 

regards

Simon

[tmcd35]

What's VDI

 

regards

Simon

 

VMware View (VMware VDI) Enterprise Virtual Desktop Management, Remote Desktops

 

In a nutshell Remote Desktop for Virtual Machines. Instead of connecting to a single Terminal Server, each ThinClient has it's own dedicated VM to connect to. The VDI protocol is supposed to be faster than RDP for multimedia type stuff.