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!

Is this the start of the end of NAPLAN?

Does the Machine based scoring of Standardised testing signal the end of Single Point in time Standardised testing?

Late last month the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) General Manager, Dr Stanley Rabinowitz was quoted in an ITNews Article. He talked about the use of Cognitive Computing to assess the written English part of the NAPLAN tests which will be digitally delivered to students in 2017.

Although this move was opposed by English teachers around Australia I have been talking about this as the emerging and most transformative trend in technology as it fits into education.  

There has been very little real change driven by the huge deployment of technology into education over the last 10 - 15 years.  The reason for this is the quality of education is determined by testing which doesn't assess the competencies delivered by technology.  We don't assess ability to collaborate, create or research, from the myriad forms of information produced by students (and everyone else) or consumption patterns of data from digital sources, in any current assessment I am aware of.  

Although Dr Rabinowitz forecast the standardised test will continue and the change is primarily in the assessment regime.  I believe standardised testing should eventually be delivered as a micro test, a single part of the normal measurement of progress.  The test data can be passed instantly into the ACARA systems to produce a constant progress report on each student which is standardised across all schools.  In this situation the student's progress is constantly being measured against the international standards Governments are so worried about without interfering with teaching and learning as the NAPLAN currently does.

Of course this will disrupt the industry spawned by producing NAPLAN study guides.  

If the questions are digitally trickle fed into the ongoing assessment process, I don't see any opportunities existing for 'teaching to the test' which is one of the widely held concerns with the current NAPLAN system.  

The long term effects of utilising Cognitive Computing 

I can see some big changes flowing from the use of Cognitive Computing at a Government level, initially for assessing NAPLAN but, then for who knows what. 

If it works at this system wide level it will only be a short time before the technology becomes affordable at a school level and will be incorporated into school assessment systems so potentially in the future we will see a system where teachers teach and computer systems assess and analyse.  This would be the first real broad systemic change delivered by technology into education. 

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
.  

Happiness is a connected digital classroom

As a technical specialist not a teacher this might seem to be a bit off topic for me.  However as part of a life skills program at my school the ICT support staff ran a Computer Skills course one period a week for the Year 8 students.  The experience of being in the classroom was fantastic.  It also put into perspective the challenges teachers face with technology in the classroom.

I had no idea how effective technology was as a tool to engage students until we were supervising those classes.  The curriculum was focused on teaching the use of technology, so  we were able to have project based tasks which were fun for the students.

My enduring memory of those classes was how often we'd run late as students would get so engaged with the technology.  Often they were problem solving the capabilities of the software within the context of the task they had been set.

I have no illusions about being a teacher in a conventional classroom.  I would not feel comfortable and probably couldn't engage the students by myself.  However, when we were using technology and with my personal comfort level with that technology I found it quite easy to make things happen and could see how easily the students engaged with their technology and the tasks, despite my lack of teaching skills.

The entire experience did reinforce my belief in the value of anytime access to technology in a connected classroom.  It also reinforced my belief in the value of a solid support network for teachers in the use of the technology, the value of teachers feeling confident about the reliability of the technology as well as being competent in the use of technology.

Creating 'Community' for ICT Support Staff

I had a thought provoking conversation with Rob Barugh on Friday.

Rob was talking about how he values the sense of 'Community' within the scope of some ICT Conferences and how a shared sense of purpose is important.

That triggered some serious self contemplation on the value I have for community and how it fits into the overall self value of anyone in a specialised field.  I've spent a lot of time contemplating why my sense of 'Community' within the school faded over the twelve years I worked there but grew with other ICT Professionals over the years.

I think it's the feeling of shared challenge and achievement we feel when we gather as a community.

Within the school, the acknowledgement of achievement by the ICT team was very limited.  There was in fact, normally, no acknowledgement for what we were achieving with very limited resources and wasn't valued or in any way worth taking about.  The classroom challenges for teachers were shared in the staff room and acknowledged at staff meetings and in public forums at every opportunity. 

Within ICT community gatherings (normally at conferences or PD opportunities) we all got an opportunity to acknowledge each other's efforts and converse about them.  This served to increase our sense of worth and community.

It's been spoken about for many years; there needs to be more opportunity for the growth of community of ICT staff in schools.  There are State based collaborative areas and some of these are quite strong with the AISNSW group as a great example of how this can be achieved.  Unfortunately we still don't have a national group supporting this community. 

Fortunately I am now in a position to expend some effort on building the platform for that community.  I wonder what it should look like and how it can be curated to be of value as well as capture the strengths of community.  Any suggestions and comment would be gratefully accepted but I will make something interesting happen.