Ephelyon

Can we be very careful about how we define "Asian schools"? South Korea is recognised as having one of the best education systems in the world - however they achieve it - but certainly we must also include North Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam... the list goes on. In many respects - not just in terms of education but also ethos and culture - these countries are all quite different from one another. Brian Lightman of the ASCL commented on Gove's announcement, saying we should not base our education systems on "anecdotes from other countries with vastly different cultures and attitudes to education". I'd be inclined to agree. Also, yes, 24/7 operations work fine in some businesses, but in others they're not yet viable and certainly we must recognise that there will be schools whose staffing arrangements (and budgets) haven't put them in a position to demand anything extra on top of what they are currently offering. Having said that, I'd support Gove's idea in principle but then a feasibility study must be carried out to determine, at a local level, just how viable this is. LEAs might be surveyed to determine the level of viability within individual schools in their purview... but then we must consider counties like Northamptonshire where most schools are now academies, which would complicate this task somewhat...

Personally I just plough... but when I move on I'll be taking a good number of our GPOs with me!

I can't agree - largely because I've recovered them myself in the past. Network Password Recovery Wizard: recovering domain cached credentials This goes into it in more detail (albeit from the point of view of one piece of software) but the top and bottom of it is that they can be brute-forced just like any other hash (salted or otherwise). Naturally how feasible that would be time-wise depends on how secure the passwords are in the first place... but let's consider the sector we work in... However, there is one advantage in that we use full-disk encryption on our laptops. But two further problems remain: 1) I have literally had a user get annoyed with entering a boot password, download the tool we use and physically remove the encryption. Naturally this was dealt with but not before it had been unencrypted for months; 2) Theft isn't the only way an attacker might come into contact with encrypted data - see this: Schneier on Security: "Evil Maid" Attacks on Encrypted Hard Drives

No timetable integration, but I'm aware that's a niche feature (I'm just very fond of it).

... security. Gaining local admin access to a single laptop means you have compromised one workstation in one place which is largely just a node to interface with the main system, but gaining access to locally-cached credentials would mean an attacker could log into our remote access system at 4am and start fiddling with things, stealing or deleting data. Our defences are robust and our backup/DR facilities are strong, but the more remote access possibilities you provide (which is brilliant for productivity), the more risk of compromise. Same with Offline Files; our data is a critical asset and should be stored in one place, locked by heavy doors and yada-yada-yada. Naturally it can be accessed from anywhere, but physically it needs to stay put.

We use HAP+ for remote access to files coupled with RDWeb for remote access to apps to work with them. I also share the local user's home area and then map it back while on the network as \\127.0.0.1\LocalWork (hidden by a custom label) so they can access work they've saved locally while still on the network, avoiding the need to switch user.

I can certainly say I don't regard the primary sector as "simpler". Having also been a "loan tech" in the past I wouldn't dismiss that area of the market either. The first job I got after leaving school was as a subcontracted primary school technician dealing with everything from changing printer cartridges to the design and rollout of a completely new Windows Server environment to replace an aging installation (sometimes RM, sometimes Zentek, sometimes vanilla). Certainly the very varied nature of the role is not lost on me. Accordingly, I acknowledge that there are some who would say a secondary school NM may well view a primary setup as "basic"; I have seen the setups they are talking about and, yes, quite frankly, they are. But I have also seen the kind of setup in a primary environment that would be considered highly innovative even in the corporate world, considering what it has achieved versus the relatively low expenditure. On some occasions I was contracted to replace that setup with a system that adheres to what is laughingly called "best practice" (I say laughingly because best practice is largely established by the business sector with little regard to how such standards might apply to other sectors) when the school wished to make a significant investment; at other times I have merely supported the existing structures. Either way, again, the way we must sometimes take what is there and transform it into a service delivery platform that meets or exceeds expectations - mostly on a shoestring budget - is actually something I would say is common to both primary and secondary school IT installations and - frankly - ought not to be considered a point of contention. Anyone in educational IT is a "GP" of sorts, in Elsie's words, whether they work in a primary or a secondary school. I would refute the argument that secondary staff can always specialise; I am a secondary NM with one apprentice. I don't really get to specialise either. With regard to Tony's points... yes, I acknowledge the dangers of school clusters (in any respect) led by one secondary managing multiple primaries... but this all depends on the quality of the provision. If a secondary school wishes to offer a contracted support service to a cluster of primaries, it ought to put in place the kind of service that accommodates their needs. Bearing in mind that such a service will often be managed by Assistant/Deputy Heads linking in with each other, we might think more carefully about whether the perceived failure of a secondary technical support service to adequately meet a primary's needs has all that much to do with the technical staff after all...

I feel your pain. If you don't have an appropriately-sized/resourced team under you, then the arrangement only works well once you've got the network to a state where it will pretty much run itself day to day, with decent enough monitoring in place that you can be alerted to the majority of upsets automatically. I use Veeam ONE for this, with a separate monitor in my office showing the state of CPU/RAM/disk/network utilisation across the virtual infrastructure plus e-mail alerts for concerning scenarios. Automation through scripting or products like Impero covers the vast majority of daily operations. Comprehensive backup routines blended with onsite and offsite DR arrangements gives me peace of mind for most problems. Once you're in that scenario, the NM can be freed up to work at a more strategic level, but SLT ought to allow for the resources needed to get the system there first (either through more staff or streamlined technical structures) before putting him/her in that position. A strategic manager of any core resources also shouldn't be part-time as you say. Maybe there are examples of case studies, or other local schools, that you could use to highlight the ideal scenario you're trying to progress towards, then build it up into a plan of action over e.g. 3 years (Ofsted is looking more closely at multi-year planning now), including specimen costings, and ask for a presentation to the Governors to introduce it? You'd need to work in constant links back to enhancements to T&L for it to be taken seriously though, even if it's not directly a resource that enhances learning but just something as simple as "teachers are waiting too long for problems to be resolved and this is how we could rectify the problem". Many SLTs like it when departments will take proactive action to remedy potential issues on their own as then all they have to do is just rubber-stamp... =]

In this area of England there is a supplier offering leasing schemes for equipment such as iPads or Chromebooks (or full laptops - and I'm sure they're not the only people doing this!) whereby the leasing cost can be from as little as £7/month per device, with this amount being passed onto each child's parents. This would seem to be an easy and affordable way for families to provide this for their children while the school is able to cut costs significantly.

I suppose it depends if that's what you want. Do you feel more comfortable with the one side of things or the other - or would a fairly even balance be your ideal role?

Surely that could be quite a good model if the strategic lead is at a secondary and the rest are feeder primaries though? Tehehehe...

Perhaps not quite as much for us but it certainly wouldn't be cheap and would most likely cost more than our current licensing/warranty renewals... we'd also miss out on the ability to have the hub nodes at our end and another local school's unthrottled to 100Mbps out of hours so we can back up to each other. But every situation is different.

I've always found it interesting how the arguments for FOSS and for the cloud - while technically unrelated - often tend to go together (I mean in the industry as a whole, not individual organisations). Perhaps it's due to the influence of big players like Google, who traditionally will promote both.

That's because you're on FOSS though, if I recall?

As you say, a different approach. Setting up and maintaining these things is where my skillset lies and where my job comes from; without that there's little to challenge me. CALs aren't that much through EES now and our server warranty renewals are drastically reduced now we've gone virtual and there are far fewer physical hosts. On the CMS side, hopefully the new learning platform will take care of that for our needs. A separate broadband connection would probably cost us more than the combined extras of the above. But whatever works in the end. The way both Office 365 and GMail are going, they'll most likely have enterprise-ready features within the next few years.

Sounds promising but also something that would need to be trialled in practice... but either way though, as I say, it all seems terribly roundabout when we have a perfectly serviceable Exchange installation on-site.

I'm seeing "outbound filtering" on the feature comparison list for the migration (we also need to restrict pupil e-mails to each other and staff, barring certain permitted external addresses for certain pupils) planned for Q3 2013. Maybe it'll be viable by the end of the year... but again I beg the question of why you would move to someone else's solution when you already have your own.

Sure, it has from/to etc, plus contents, but I'm thinking of a few I have on our Exchange where it needs to be "between distlist and distlist" or rules that allow pupils to send/receive with teachers and receive from pupils, but not send to pupils (owing to abuse); it's an important part of our e-mail sanctions policy. It doesn't look that granular from what I've seen.

Broadly-speaking I agree... but there is another side to IT strategy. Developing the core platform in accordance with emerging trends to produce a sustainable, reliable system for the future, that can handle whatever is thrown at it. Considering that, as far as the core system is concerned, whether we are serving 700 pupils, 700 customers or 700 patients every day is largely irrelevant; it's still the same technology doing largely the same job, regardless of the service delivery element (a concise example would be the move to virtualisation, which nobody on the system actually noticed when I did that here and why would they?). This is a technical matter and requires someone with broad experience of the IT field and the various technologies available... but it is still strategy because you are managing long-term considerations, making decisions for the future and potentially committing the organisation to a technological direction. On the front-end, of course, this is completely different. Aligning the way the technology gets used with organisational requirements and priorities is very important (and indeed, all to often it is found lacking), but personally I would define that as more of a "use of IT strategy". Most importantly, in both respects, you need a targeted vision for future developments... a technical vision is required, as is (in education) a pedagogical vision... they will definitely intertwine but they remain distinct entities as well, and neither should be evaluated solely in the context of the other nor confused with one another. To illustrate, I've attached the strategic overview I gave the new Head in January. From half-way down page 6 is the vision for the future, prior to that is what's been done prior to his appointment. EDIT: I would've bothered trying to hide the school name here but I think where I work is evident from a number of my other posts and I have nothing to hide anyway (I always burn the bodies!)... =] Overview of Strategic ICT Developments at Middlewich High School.docx

Alas, not enough I find... too many schools think IT strategy is something that could only be done by someone with QTS... when in fact it is a technical matter which also includes an understanding of how to apply it in practice to enhance T&L. Many senior leaders (read: glorified teachers) seem to think they have a monopoly on this, which I find rather offensive as understanding service requirements and how to ply your craft to benefit the client (i.e. not just implementing other people's plans) is a very basic part of any decent service professional's skillset. Whereas in fact, at my place, 95% of all IT developments, both technical and pedagogical, have come from me for the past three years. Not to say there aren't plenty of techies who have no desire to be involved beyond the technical side, or that there's anything wrong with that. But for those of us who want more of an "educational technologist" role, there are very few opportunities available it seems.

My ideal role would be both strategic and technical.

Director normally implies an SLT position. There seem to be a couple of dozen senior technical people in those roles around the country (seems to be the more progressive schools). There's an outside chance my role will be made SLT in the coming months, though I doubt my job title (or salary) would change.

Kite is the learning platform from e4education, isn't it?

It depends on how granular their control needs to be. I use Transport Rules to manage pupil e-mail bans and silent message forwarding in concerning cases using Exchange, for example, which is (mostly) possible with Office 365 but not offered by Google Apps / GMail. Or they may find themselves in an environment where less-enlightened leaders will blame the internal IT department for a Microsoft/Google/other service outage even when there's nothing they can do...

For me the Cloud is something you move to if you are a small startup or you have an issue with an area of your existing infrastructure, i.e. it is overpriced or underperforming (or both). Maybe a Cloud-based solution offers more features (but are they features you couldn't get in-house?), or maybe your Internet connection or backup arrangements are poor and the initial outlay of bringing them up to scratch is prohibitive so you could benefit from using someone else's infrastructure. The issue with the PATRIOT Act and the like doesn't have to be a problem for a British school if you use a European-hosted Cloud service that's decent (like... ermmm...). If your infrastructure is fine, however, I don't really see the point. As NM I've spent the past three years building up an infrastructure that works well and runs itself a lot of the time; I see no advantage in using someone else's when the downside is that it introduces a certain degree of dependence and lack of fine-grained control on our part. Also, the way we've been able to structure our backup arrangements means our data retention is often greater than your average Cloud-hosted solution will offer, offsite too because the County has unthrottled the broadband link between ourselves and another local school to 100Mb in the evenings and at weekends so we can colocate servers between our respective sites to back up to. This is all aside from the massive middle-finger it represents to whose of us who had been hoping for a long and prosperous career in technical architecture, infrastructure design and technological leadership for a single client, thank you very much.