Technology may be too good to be true!

I have been concerned about the degree of 'Due Diligence' being carried out by schools since teachers started developing their own programs using amazing online resources such as Google classroom, Edmodo and OneNote Classroom.  I worry that much of the fine print on educational sites and in apps is ignored as they are such fantastic resources.  

Is the responsibility for ensuring the suitability of sites and apps is purely left at the teachers discretion? There is a huge potential for problems with inappropriate management of student information and activity if that’s the approach schools are taking.  

I’ve worked with a school Integration Team to create a process ensuring the School approves of the educational resources for teachers to use.  This should be seen as vital in all schools to ensure acknowledgment of the risk web and app based activities could present for teachers and students in particular.  

The process decided on means the school, through the Integration Team, takes responsibility for assessing and documenting appropriate education resources for teachers to use in their classrooms. The first stage is making sure any teaching resource provides an educational value which is not being met by other systems already in use.  The system is then assessed to ensure the technical, legal and ethical values of the School are met before any educational resource can be used in the classroom.  This standard is then applied to any service or system which requires a student identifies themselves.

When we started developing the standard it quickly became apparent this was going to be a significant undertaking.  As soon as we started looking at the fine print in those user agreements, which sometimes were very long and not necessarily written in easy to understand English, it became obvious that this was something which was badly needed.

The most important part of this procedure was defining responsibility for assessing all of the important decisions ensured teachers didn't have to assume someone else had looked at it.  I feel sometimes the assumption that all apps and web sites are compliant with Australian privacy legislation is a very dangerous starting point.  

It seems to me that all schools and governing bodies need to take far more responsibility for the implications of technology programs.  The online services and apps deemed as appropriate for teaching and learning need to be better understood before schools push them to student devices or send student there as part of their learning.

The Rise of the Four Letter Acronym

I remember in the later part of the 20th century when everyone in IT was searching for new Three Letter Acronyms (TLA).  Every project need to be reduced to a new TLA, IT became ICT, DR became BCP and we used to have challenges in meetings to see who would use the most meaningless TLAs.

To prove it is 25% better than ICT, the education sector seems to be caught up in a spiral of Four Letter Acronyms (for simplicity I will reduce that to a TLA of FLA).  The rise of BYOD and STEM in the language of education has emphasised the influence ICT is increasingly having in this area.

To quote Pauline Hansen "I don't like it".  The use of catch phrases is incongruous with these terms being adopted to suit a message and that has a huge influence of the meaning of these terms.

For instance the much maligned (by me) BYOD, has attempted to be morphed into BYOT, BYOX, and just about every other BYO? possible.  All of these are trying to express something which would be far clearer in plain English.  I believe calling a 'parent supplied iPad program' just that, to be much clearer than 'BYO?'. Is there a problem with calling a schools Notebook program "Parent Owned Notebook program" rather than a 'BYO? program'.  Those terms will both explain and differentiate the concept correctly.  If you are implementing a true platform agnostic device program there would be far less confusion if the terminology for the program reflected your educational expectations not use a trendy FLA.  If you really need a FLA for your bring any device program I suggest you call it a Device Agnostic Learning Environment (DALE) and then the acronym will mean something.  By the way one of the problems I have with the term BYOD in education is that not many students want to use their own device for learning it is far more useful for socialising and gaming.

So on to STEM, or if you are really smart STEAM, once again these terms seem to simplify the complex but in reality confuse the masses.  What does STEM really mean?  It means we need to make some of the dryer (Math and Science) subjects seem to be important above the humanities and creative subjects.  This seems obvious, as technology advances these subjects should be where we need to concentrate the 21st Century learning.  Unfortunately, from my experience and following on from some significant reading and listening, this is not the case.  It seems the only jobs we are going to do better than machines in the mid term view are based around humanities and creativity.

Admittedly a lot of that creativity is going to be in the Scientific and Engineering areas but the key differentiation is still human imagination.

What is next?

What is next can be the hardest question to get right in the context of ICT, not only for schools and individual classrooms but also for every industry and company.  Crystal ball gazing can be very dangerous, especially with the rate of change in technology appearing to be extremely high.  However, when you look at trends, it is normally a predictable rate of implementing innovation into schools.  It is only when there is an unexpected disruptor we normally experience rapid change.

An example is the change in 1:1 computing expectations within schools.  Until 2008, there had been slow progress by schools towards 1:1 Laptop programs.  These were normally very expensive and required a strong commitment from the School Leadership to implement such programs. Having started in Melbourne, the 1:1 ideal had spread slowly across Australia and in some US school districts and state wide in Maine.

2008 and 2009 saw two disruptors that changed the vision of schools around 1:1 technology access.  The first disruptor was the Prime Minister making 1:1 technology availability in schools a policy imperative and committing federal funding to make it happen.  The second disruptor was in 2009 when Apple announced the iPad, which provided a smaller and cheaper alternative to Laptops as student technology. 

The Horizon Report

One of the best resources for planning for the next big thing in technology for schools is the Horizon Report.  The Horizon Report is published by the New Media consortium (NMC) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN).  It provides guidance on technology trends thought to be a significant impact in education.  The research is thorough with the process for determining what technology makes it onto the list open and visible.  I have heard the Horizon Report referenced many times in presentations about technology and it is widely referenced for strategic planning.

Therefore, with the disclaimer that all predictions depend on the lack of a significant disruptor to the status quo I have some thoughts surrounding the trends, challenges and technologies highlighted in the Horizon Report.

Trends

Increased use of Blended Learning

I think most teachers in Australian schools are seeing the value of blended learning.  In the resource and technologically rich schools, this can include flipped classroom models, which seems to offer great benefits for educators.  In less advantaged schools, the ability to scaffold using digital resources, although limited by the cost of those resources, is still of high value in allowing some personalised learning opportunities. 

If technology is reliable and simple to use, blended learning for traditional subjects will become deep-seated and should eventually become good practice.  The challenge for teachers is to know just what resources are available.  With that in mind, teachers really should be collaborating in order to share resources; one great opportunity for that sharing is TeachMeet (http://www.teachmeet.net/).

Rise of STEAM Learning

There is increased emphasis within the Australian Curriculum for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).  The idea of incorporating other more creative activities into the technology spectrum has created the idea of STEAM learning, in STEAM the A is for the Arts.  Incorporating the creative pursuits into the traditional very dry content promotes the option of project based learning.  The move to project based learning is one of the strengths of technology rich learning as the depth and variety of resources available through technology enhances the learning experience and will potentially engage students at a deeper level.

The level of technology provided into classrooms must support the students by having the freedom to access the most appropriate resources.  These resources could be in the form of software or just be information from the internet.

Challenges

Creating Authentic Learning Experiences

This challenge is one Australia is moving towards covering as technology is adopted for virtual experiences of many of our greatest assets.  The distances and travel costs within Australia seem to have energised the tourism industry with the energy to provide digital experiences; perfect for schools to incorporate into the learning experience.   A dive in the Great Barrier Reef can be accessed digitally and from that, any number of real life exercises can be created to cover many subjects. 

There seems to be a slow uptake of these type of resources.  I see the role of resource identification being very important as the number and quality of digital resources increases.  Schools should be supporting teachers with this identification of resources.  This is probably the new role for traditional Librarians, as the digital resources will augment the information resources in the library.  It may also be an opportunity for the ICT department to become more involved in the educational process.

Integrating Technology in Teacher Education

I think schools treat their teachers as lifelong learners and expect they will in turn produce students who will also become lifelong learners.  The learning of appropriate use of technology for teachers can be one of the best investments in staff made by a school.  There are many options for staff Personal Development (PD) to build technology skills.  I have previously written about the need for appropriate PD for Teachers.

Technology

Bring Your Own Device

I am not a big fan of this terminology as it really about ownership, but the key take away in the Horizon Report is, students should be able to use their phone or other technology in addition to their primary learning device.  As long as there is a specified device for learning, the biggest restriction on the additional devices will only be the capacity of infrastructure to handle extra connections and PD for teachers.

Makerspaces

I think the creativity of STEAM curriculum and Makerspaces work well together as long as the goal is to engender creativity and entrepreneurship in students.  The most difficult part of this will be incorporating those traditional elements of learning into these spaces.  A key thing to keep in mind is the need to cross over from the digital ‘virtual’ world into the analogue ‘real’ world. 

 The entire Horizon Report can be viewed at http://www.nmc.org/nmc-horizon/

Lemonade from lemons

As always ICT Departments all over the country will be busy with projects of all shapes and sizes.  At some point through a project, many will be faced with some kind of problem.  Problems can arise due to the lack of planning or resource shortages, which almost every school ICT program deals with.  Other issues will be caused by external sources such as vendors/suppliers, unexpected incidents or even extreme weather.

During my time supporting ICT in schools and talking to many other specialists in ICT support I have often been witness to and or part of many potential disasters, which has provided me with the experience to be able to offer some simple pieces of advice that may assist you by turning these ‘lemons’ into ‘lemonade’.

Communication is “King”

You need to communicate

You can end up with a negative outcome should you fail to communicate the current status of projects to stakeholders. If you regularly set the timeline expectations and planned outcomes of projects, everyone tends to become more involved and empathise with you about the effort you seem to be expending.  In 2011/2012 we were deploying a new model of laptop into our 1:1 Notebook program.  As it turned out the manufacture of the computers was delayed by effect of the Japanese Tsunami and flooding in Thailand.  I acted as soon as it became obvious the supplier couldn't meet our planned timeline for students to start the year with a new computer.  I contacted the affected parents, students and teachers and informed them of the delay and the expected delivery time table.  We worked with teachers to ensure curriculum delivery was impacted as little as possible.  Even though the delivery was achieved one term late we had negligible complaints because everyone felt they had been on the same journey.

Your vendors need to communicate

The most frustrating project I have been involved with was another supplier delay issue.  This time the manufacturer of the equipment was promising us and our reseller that the hardware was ‘on the truck’.  This happened right up until a week before school started when they finally let us know there was no stock in Australia and no plans to bring more in.  After more than ten years being our preferred hardware platform we immediately purchased equivalent products from another vendor and that long term relationship ended.  If we had been informed of the supply issue as soon as they knew we could have ordered an alternative item from their catalogue.  The lack of communication ended the relationship which was worth a considerable amount annually. 

Hold your suppliers to account

We spent 8 months planning a complete network upgrade with the engineering staff from a major hardware supplier.  The entire network was designed in accordance with our needs and was specified to be of high enough quality to last many years.  When we started to unpack and configure the network it became clear they had not specified the network switches to be able to provide power to the wireless access points.  This oversight by their design team had gone unnoticed by quality control, it is very easy to miss those sort of details (letter suffixes on switches) when reviewing complex proposals.  Immediately the manufacturer offered to supply us with equipment to power those access points and another set of switches was ordered and sent to us to replace those power injectors.

Manufacturers can afford more than resellers

Have you ever had an issue with an IT project that wasn’t your fault?  You have more chance of relief from a manufacturer who has generated a significant profit from the supplied equipment than from the re-seller who made 5 – 10% in your competitive bidding process.  Always start by communicating with your supplier/re-seller and have them in your corner, if the issue isn’t your fault and you’ve made sure your specification is correct, manufacturers will have many more resources to throw at remediating problems.  Of course I’m only talking about the tier 1 manufacturers, this is why you pay more for Cisco, HP, IBM, Toshiba and similar brands.

Don’t assume – anything!!

The most common mistake I’ve made is assuming that everyone can see the picture.  In the old days (remember them) when we had to order a new piece of hardware for every server you wanted to build I would often order HP servers from their parts list on the web site.  A few times I received servers that were missing important parts of the configuration because I assumed the engineer with whom I had been working would look over the configuration and check I hadn’t missed anything.  Having to order a hard disk controller or battery backup card for a controller was often needed when we came to build the hardware.  I found the best way was to have the engineer from the supplier specify the server and me look over the specification meant far less errors.

Prepare for the worst and be grateful for small mercies

When planning projects in schools I think we often expect the best and get caught out when things change slightly.  Sometimes when we look at the timing for our projects we end up missing a detail because significant information is in silos.  When we plan an upgrade put the plan in place, send the email to let everyone know we will be taking the system off line and suddenly there is an exam, an administrative process running or some event which has happened for years that we didn’t know about.  Don’t panic we can get away with it.  Rule number 1 is important; just communicate.

The lemonade is far more common than lemons

Despite the issues over the past 15 years, the results of my projects and my methodology has actually improved.  The lemons are now down to less than 5% of the projects I have started and I think overall there is a 100% lemonade rate.  I think this has been achieved by just not panicking.

The Law of Diminishing returns as it applies to ICT in schools

Several of my previous posts have focused on how effective and efficient ICT Departments operate in Schools.  This is true if you look at the number of users and most other metrics used by IT.  However, maintaining this efficiency could be a much bigger impact.

I can see that by having very small IT teams, projects are completed.  It's the next stage optimisation, which is invariably under resourced. Optimisation ensures the installation incorporates into the operational practices. There is usually a significant overhead in user coaching; users will not always understand why technology has made it's way into their life.  Over time it will be used.  But to ensure technology is used appropriately and immediately, we need to allocate resources to training users.   Sometimes these resources can be more expensive than the rest of the project.

In addition we don't normally get to complete any standard IT Industry 'best practice' such as bench marking, and stress testing systems or completing full documentation.  This should be built into the project plan but is often the easiest to remove in reducing costs with a plan to do it 'soon' after the project is completed.

Even though the IT part of the project is complete the School really doesn't obtain the full potential advantages of the system.

Is this a critical shortcoming?  No, but it means full value isn't always achieved.  The most difficult part of this scenario is the expenditure to complete these important stages and can often push the cost of the projects out to a point where they're not even actively considered.

As a decision making Manager, what do you do with a shrink wrapped piece of software that looked fantastic in the demonstration?  How do you ensure proper utilisation for some new piece of hardware sitting in a classroom waiting for the teacher to understand how to use it?

We invariably try to get it done but we're not in the position to finalise it in a way we're entirely comfortable with.

The end user application of technology seems to be a management/organisational issue and beyond our scope of authority.

I remember an operations meeting where I was quizzed as to why an enhancement to our School Management System was going to cost so much when we had paid a 'fortune' for the installation and more money each year to maintain it.  The disconcerting part of the conversation was all of the critical records for the School were on this system and the cost was minute when considered against similar software for a Corporate.  This distorted perception of the value of any IT system is part of the challenge faced by the senior IT staff in schools, either Director or Manager.

So what does this mean for us?

Should the IT Manager be the champion selling the value statement to School Management?

I don't believe they can be the champion for every system. It's not sensible for the IT specialist to know exactly what the workflows for every department look like.  However, consultation regarding IT should be highlighted as the best way forward enabling the optimisation of IT to deliver real benefits across all business units.  The business unit can then take real ownership of business based technology project.

This seems like basic business theory doesn't it?  However, from my experience I believe it's not always the case that this methodology is used within schools.
   

ICT is the global enabler in Schools

I have been hiding the evangelist in me away from blogging for the last few months.  I feel that now is the time to release the evangelist.

This release is probably due to the fact I have been trying to rationalise the frustration I felt which moved me to leave the School I had been very happy working at.

I have been considering for several years how important ICT is in modern Schools and how little understanding of this importance goes into the Strategic and Operational Management outside specific ICT areas.

I can't imagine how a modern school could manage to function with paper (as opposed to ICT) based systems.  Everything from classes to school management to events with public, parents and alumni involvement to facilities management and even supporting grounds and gardens is now dependent upon Information Systems.

There is no-one involved in a school who is not touched buy the Information Technology deployed by the school.  The first contact most people now have with a school will be via the web site. Parents and family are contacted by schools with digital newsletters and other information, reports are now delivered digitally.  Every class and hence every student now will be exposed to, or facilitated by a computer system.  The teacher reports attendance, performance and behavior digitally before analysing these inputs on a school provided computer system.

Why then do some school leadership teams believe that scrimping on these systems will deliver long term benefits?  Spending wisely and well will deliver unbelievable benefits in the medium term.

My issue is how do those ICT specialists convince school leadership of this potential.  Every vendor I speak with expresses a frustration with  how little schools are prepared to spend on ICT.  Most school ICT professionals express the same frustration.  In the indomitable words of Professor Julius Sumner Miller "Why is it so?".

Why do they not get IT?

Why is IT seen as a cost, not a benefit when everyone benefits so strongly from IT?

Even for me the first years managing ICT in a school was about devices and hardware, I now see that the potential is so much more tied to the educational and societal vision for the school.  The ICT in a school is now so ingrained it needs to reflect the key values of the school and that won't happen by buying the cheapest solution, it will only happen by;

Putting IT into the vision!

Spending strongly to make IT deliver the vision!

ICT Risk Management in Schools

Thinking about Risk Management has been the impetus for several of the posts I have already published and is likely to be in the future.

This subject probably needs a book written to cover all of the significant risks ICT adoption presents for Schools.  These risks will continue to evolve as technology changes and more technology exists in the classroom.  The risks have grown exponentially with the increase in connectivity in the classroom, especially when there is no-one tasked with analysing and recommending how to manage and minimise that risk.

From Wikipedia;

Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks (defined in ISO 31000 as the effect of uncertainty on objectives) followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events^[1] or to maximize the realization of opportunities. Risk management’s objective is to assure uncertainty does not deviate the endeavor from the business goals.^[2]

I am not sure what Risk Management philosophy schools in general take, as I have never been involved in the process of risk management within a school.  As the Manager of ICT Operations I did expect to be involved but it didn't happen.  At my previous employment, Risk Management was a significant management expectation and assets were liberally applied to identifying risk and reducing potential impact.  At various times I have been involved in a Risk Management task force, Risk Management Committee and Business Continuity Planning group.  I was also tasked with writing many of the Risk Management policies for ICT at my previous employment.

Without formal acknowledgement of the potential for risk there will never be any effort spent on true assessment and reduction processes.  I know this isn't core business for Schools and has never been part of the process, however, we have now started creating organisational and personal risk from deploying technology.  The worst part is we have been slowly increasing this risk for many years and at no time stopped and analysed that risk.

I was going to list the risk schools are exposed to but think I will save that for my next post on the subject.  Instead, I will propose some examples which are real.  I won't acknowledge either the schools or staff involved in these examples, however I will point out the risk exposure a real business would have to address.  The first is a legal risk within the bounds of new privacy laws; the second is operational risk associated with running highly complex ICT environments without sufficient succession planning.

The Lighthouse Teacher

I know those of us who promote the constructive and adventurous use of technology in the classroom seek to develop the Lighthouse teacher.  They are adapting technology in their classroom to achieve the best outcomes possible.  However, they're the ones who could potentially be exposing their Schools to the greatest risk.  I know of one such teacher who was putting together lessons on edmodo, then setting up Google accounts for students and linking to many web sites which were able to fit very well into thelesson plan for those students.  Sounds great doesn't it?
Who was taking the due diligence on the sites to ensure the students privacy was being protected?
As the teacher was creating the accounts used for this exercise should they have been ensuring everything was suitably secured?
Should the teacher have been checking the policy for every site to ensure everything they were trying to achieve was within their guidelines?
Did the teacher know and understand the legal implications of signing up for these 'free' on line services?

Of course the teacher was blissfully unaware of any implications of their actions.

The School was blissfully unaware of the teachers actions and hence the implications.

The busy ICT Manager in the medium sized school

This is a person who has come into an educational setting with a wealth of industry experience and is the only ICT support person on staff.  He picks up on the poor quality of hardware previously deployed and uses his abilities to build a fantastic infrastructure package for the school.  He then leads them through a deployment of significant numbers of devices.  Now he is the only full time support person supporting technology in a school with more than 600 deployed student devices and all of the supporting infrastructure.  

The work is overwhelming, however, the school doesn't need to worry as this person is fantastic he makes things seem simple.  Unfortunately for the school he is the only one with any knowledge of the very complex environment and has pointed out to school leadership the risk this poses but no-one seems to care.  

This significant operational risk is easily mitigated by having a company come in to audit and document the infrastructure.  However, this isn't seen as a risk so no action is taken.

Final word

I know that risk around ICT exists in schools.  How schools monitor and address that risk without impact on teaching and learning will be an interesting exercise.

Can other industries learn from the efficiency of school ICT support?

I wonder if many ICT Managers in general industry understand the efficiency many school ICT departments must maintain.

When I think of my life before school support I remember the PC support team of four, which grew to 6 if you included the contractors supporting the Apple hardware.  There was a network support team of 6 and more than 20 in the servers/applications area with at least five managers leading up to the CIO.  

The total number of endpoints would be very significant in local industry terms with more than 600 PCs but these were all corporate managed desktops with less than 50 mobile devices and about 120 Apples.  There was also several hundred mainframe terminals which were maintained by the IT department.  The network was big with multiple redundancies and about 20 Cisco switches four VLANS but it was before wireless so that was not a concern.

Now I think of the school, 4 technical support staff with me as a manager.  More than 1200 endpoints, more than 800 of them mobile devices taken home by students who were quite happily using them to get as many malware infections as possible.  The other 400 were mostly mobile with about 150 desktop computers.  We had 35 switches, almost 100 wireless access points and a constant battle to ensure the network wasn't attacked from within.

I have recently met with two smaller schools both of whom have support departments of one but never the less support hundreds of end points, virtualised server infrastructure, complex networks with 10 - 20 switches and more than 30 wireless access points.  I consider this almost untenable but the schools expect that they will have systems available at the same level as you would expect in a corporate environment.

The advantage all Corporate/Business IT support departments have is the ability to put costs to outages and use ROI calculations to determine the value of IT support staff.  I have yet to see a dollar value placed on outages in a school.

What is the cost of a student being out of class having their Computer fixed?  How much do we lose if a teacher loses a lesson due to system outages.  What would the cost be if that teacher then changes their teaching practice to avoid technology following an issue?

So schools end up using as little as possible to do as much as possible and accept the risk of failure caused by insufficient resources.  However, very rarely are there failures which put systems off line. Without management having realised the risks we took, new systems come on line, systems are updated and old systems decommissioned
.  

Why Cloud deployments are not the answer for ICT in schools

It's apparent that 'Cloud' has impacted significantly on the development of school's ICT. 

However, this isn't necessarily happening in the way vendors had hoped.  The adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) has been huge across the board with everything from Microsoft Office 365, Google Apps for Education to Mathletics and web based learning solutions to the innumerable iPad apps with web back ends.

The thing that seems to be missing at the moment is a similar focus on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).  In the immortal words of Professor Julius Sumner-Miller, "Why is this so?".  Some schools have deployed IaaS, most commonly a Back Up as a Service solution or some virtualised machines in data centres; these services seem to have had much more traction in the commercial space. 

Why have schools not adopted this?  This is a very important question for many vendors as they see IaaS as a large opportunity for sales growth into the school sector.  However some very significant issues will hamper sales of these infrastructure services into the school sector.

Single site

Most schools exist as a single site. There won't be many companies with IT infrastructure the size and complexity of a school who exist on a single site.  The value of having an IaaS cloud solution is multiplied many times when you operate a diverse multi site environment.  In a single site the cloud solution means the school is totally dependent upon their Internet connection.  This could mean significant extra cost in having a second link to remove the single point of failure.  The main effect of this is when looking at the benefits of cloud we immediately remove some of the most significant positives and increase the negatives.

There are a few schools who are not single site and the organisations representing multiple schools such as Catholic Education Office and Swan Christian Education Association which are not limited by this concern.

Of course the other consideration is we do have significant access needs for parents and students from of campus which is improved by cloud technologies.

Lack of a cost benefit

Significant numbers of schools have adopted Virtualisation at a higher rate than other industries.  The immediate benefits of Virtualisation is important to schools with significant hardware and support cost savings. Now many of us are on our third generation of virtualised servers and have no interest in losing those savings.  This means when we are comparing the costs of IaaS solutions to our current environment there are normally no savings available and often the cloud based solution is costing more with little obvious benefit.

There are schools still moving down the virtualisation path. They will benefit from moving direct to IaaS.

Hiring patterns

Most schools went through an expansion of their ICT support teams in the period up until 2012.  As a result of this timing most of the Manager/Directors with technical backgrounds came into schools prior to the widespread adoption of cloud.  This means most senior technical staff come from their previous environments with no experience in deploying IaaS, this doesn't mean they're not sure of cloud or doubt it is going to rule the future, it just means we are going to need to be convinced of the real value and security of IaaS.

Bad experiences

Although not widespread there have been pioneers who tried IaaS solutions or even as we did PaaS as part of older projects.  We were trialling a PaaS solution in 2007 but we ended up leaving the trial due to the providers of that service not understanding that taking the service down for updates in week 4 of term 1 would be detrimental to uptake within the school.  When updates were applied to the servers which bought the system down for an extended period and the provider was quite comfortable that they had no need to provide us with an assurance they would not repeat the exercise we decided that we couldn't continue with that risk.

The result is that in 2007 we started to virtualise our environment and continued to prefer the option of controlling our own schedule of updates and patches.

Summary

To summarise my post - The 'Cloud' in particular IaaS is not the answer to any school's IT problems.  We (schools) are not looking for a quick solution to problems which don't exist.  We're looking to make every dollar we spend deliver the best value possible.  At the moment a tenancy in a very expensive data centre doesn't deliver any savings.  We're looking and waiting for the technology to deliver savings for us.  What vendors don't want to understand is; we don't care that much about your profits, and we won't necessarily sign up for whatever is "trendy". 

Protecting the kids

I believe the most important issue with school mandated 1:1 Technology programs is Student Protection.

If you've been following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse you know that the passage of time will judge harshly anyone not monitoring and working to make children as safe as possible.  I have seen some attitudes to monitoring student activity on their school mandated technology which leads me to believe in 20 years time we could be watching a Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to online protection of students. 

My first concern is that school leadership don't fully understand the risks for there to be significant harm delivered by a device mandated or even provided by the school. 

The security of the corporate grade firewall we maintain at school may not even pick up on the patterns and sites which are part of activity and could be of harm to students.  Even worse, those limited protections may not even be there when the device leaves the campus and is used for web browsing at home. 

I have seen many schools with great products deployed to make sure students using their device are always under the watchful eye of child protection software which is being developed and updated constantly to fulfil only one purpose, to make every effort to keep students safe.  The decision to abrogate that responsibility to parents is almost certainly flawed.   We have seen over the last few months students leaving their home country to join extremist organisations and their parents apparently not aware of their radicalisation.  

I worry greatly about the first time a school mandated device is used in the grooming of a young person into a radical movement.  I particularly worry because there are far more important problems the student protection software can help with identifying.  I have seen first hand the ability to use this software to identify and potentially intervene in the circumstance where a student is displaying suicidal tendencies.  There are far more students in need of support than there are those likely to become radicalised.  It's my belief that all parents would gladly pay almost anything for the device to have that protection built in.

I know some schools believe students need to be exposed to some risks and taught how to manage those risks.  I believe this is a risk you should be very clear in discussing with your entire community and ensure they're buying in to the premise of allowing that risk; they also need to be well informed on all aspects of that risk.

Legislative Solution

Student protection has been looked at by many companies with strong solutions available which will work in the background on just about any device.  I believe this type of software should be compulsory on any student device.  It should be mandated that devices used by students, if mandated or even proposed by schools, should be required to meet certain child safety standards. In this case Government has not kept up with the risks.  When the Federal Government instituted the NSSCF it was fantastic to see the acknowledgement that students having 1:1 access to technology was essential in the 21^st century.  Unfortunately, at no stage was the impact of take home technology considered as being dangerous for children.

  

The Internal Salesperson

One of the most important roles we take on as the ICT Manager is the job of 'Internal Salesperson'.

When you're presented with an idea, technology, option, and/or proposal that you can see would be of value to your school, you have to be able to 'sell' it to the appropriate person.  This skill is probably the most undervalued and untrained skill expected of you.  You often don't even know this is what is expected, you just have a feeling someone should be told.

How do you become that 'Internal Salesperson'?  We all have most of the skills needed to be able to sell ideas to your Leadership when they need to be involved in the decision.  There are several things to consider as part of your preparation present an idea.

Sanity Check

The first stage of working out the value of a proposition is a quick sanity check with a knowledgeable party.  At one stage I'd seen a fantastic presentation at a Conference I thought would be great for adding some extra data into assessments.  I went to our Dean of Studies with the idea and found out they had been doing something similar using our current database.  This quick 'sanity check' saved me wasting time on further investigation.

How should I present the idea?

The next question is critical to the internal sales effort.  How much effort you put in to the presentation will be at least partially driven by your 'passion' for the proposition. I always tried to figure out the most appropriate person to work out the proposition with.  For instance when I was trying to get approval for print management I had the CFO and Director of Staff and Services involved.  When we were looking at new hardware to work with scientific sensors the Head of Science had to be the co-sponsor of the proposal.  In this way an effective sales pitch will already have some traction before you try to sell it to the Principal.

I'd always start to write the proposal out.  This helps you consolidate the idea into your environment and work through potential issues.  I would do this even when it will only be presented verbally as I find the writing process focusses my mind and I will quite often identify potential issues or even unexpected benefits during my writing.

A very long time ago I had 12 months purely writing strategic papers.  This experience helps me produce reasonably succinct but very dry proposals which all seem to work in my favour when presenting technology proposals to Principals and Leadership teams.

A piece of advice in preparing presentations is highlight risk in the proposal, not only for the execution of the proposal but if there is risk in not adopting it.  It seems there is a limited understanding of risk within School Leadership particularly around technology.  You'll need to use your expertise to highlight not only financial and operational risk but issues such as privacy, copyright and child protection.

How can I sell technology ideas to the Curriculum areas?

Sometimes you can't, but if you can see the technical/operational benefits you should try.  It's a great starting point if you can get input from someone within the Curriculum delivery area to make sure the idea has merit and can fit within their classroom practice. 

I always tried to allow for consideration of other options when the technology was directly for the classroom.  An example; each time we were looking for upgraded display technology I would have determined there was a need and had a demonstration of something which interested me.  However, there was always several options open to us, so the consultative process was critical and my sales pitch included multiple options.       

You are the expert!

This is always the concerning part and the piece of the puzzle that needs you to maintain your self confidence.  You have been empowered by the school to be the expert, don't be afraid to be a advocate for what you see as the best solution.