The Power of Aspen for Trusts

We know that a school’s MIS is at the heart of the key daily functions that ensure the smooth running of their school and that their MIS has an increasingly important role in supporting pedagogy and decision-making. A challenge for Trusts is how to bring all data from their schools together to gain a meaningful and coherent picture across the ‘estate’. For this, a Trust would require a global view of all their schools’ data. Whether drilling down into an individual school or comparing data across schools, a Trust would require an MIS that provides joined up data.

In the UK, MIS development has been piecemeal, with the original early systems adding modules to cope with the increasingly complex requirements. Some of these modules have even been developed in a difference code base from the core system, adding to the challenge of integrating modules within the system and getting the data to flow easily. Modules that struggle to communicate can create additional challenges when wanting ‘clean’ data, not least because it is difficult to drive meaningful reports. These modular systems were born as a result of the challenges MIS providers faced after years of adding new features to systems.

 

To keep data ‘clean’, you enter data once into the system and it can be used many times. For this, the system would ideally have a single architecture for its one data set. This would provide real flexibility in reporting and creating efficiencies. For example, a well designed non-modular system would alert you when entering the same or similar data. In such a system, you might enter in the surname ‘Smith’ and the system would be able to tell you that there are already five ‘Smiths’ and ask if one is a sibling. If a link exists, the relationship and address can be automatically linked, where appropriate, avoiding duplicated data. This would be just one advantage of a well-designed non-modular system.

Building an MIS System

If you were building a MIS from scratch for the UK, you would look to build it as one instance with no modules (so for example, timetabling, parent and pupils portals would be part of the core, built to ensure data was properly linked). You would also want to ensure data was held in one place.

The most technically efficient approach would be one that provides a single database for the Trust, where all the data sits and where individual schools can see their data from their view. The school would also need the freedom to configure their MIS for their school’s needs. This then would effectively look like a stand alone MIS with all elements built-in (no modules) but would give the Trust management the power to view individual school and group data; and this is exactly what that Aspen MIS team has achieved.
 

Aspen MIS architecture

 

Aspen’s proven and unique architecture is built around that single data set and gives each school within any group their own interface ensuring that each school’s MIS has its own look and feel.  This unique approach allows any number of schools, such as those in a growing Trust, to be added to the group ensuring that the management team can view key pupil and staff data across the group.

 

 

We will continue to update our weekly blog with more of the unique features of Aspen that are specifically designed to chime with Trust / school groups needs. In the meantime if you would like to see Aspen in action please contact us for a demonstration. We can provide your introduction to Aspen MIS online or face to face.

Email:  info@novatia.com

Telephone:  01962 832 632

Novatia PLC, 1 Winnall Valley Road, Winchester, SO23 0LD.

 

 

 

 

ASPEN PAGES

 

Aspen MIS gives you your own built in Pages for sharing resources, ideas, diaries, notices and learning.

Aspen customers recognise that much of the functionality they have in their Learning Platform is over specified and under used. Aspen Pages offer a free alternative for sharing and delivering resources whilst supporting learners

 

Aspen Pages can be created by staff or pupils and are great for supporting homework, sharing curriculum themes, setting up staff noticeboards, after school club promotion, governor’s pages and generally communicating.

Pages are easy created and only require rich text input, so if you use software such as Word, you can create and edit your Pages with ease.

Each Page is made up of a choice of ‘widgets’, which are essentially windows to show different information.

Included widgets are:

 

ü  Announcements

ü  Group Resources

ü  Links

ü  Diary

ü  Survey

ü  Reports

ü  Websites

ü  Forum

ü  Blogs
 

Customers can even develop their own! Using a combination of the widgets, users can quickly set up a Page to promote and support learning and activities. As Aspen is cloud based, all Pages and the associated resources are easily accessible, so no VPN or awkward firewalls.

Aspen is a permissions based system; the school decides who can create the Pages and once created, the author can decide who sees them. Pages are a great way to assist parents in supporting their children. Curriculum themes, homework details and resources can be made available and after school clubs and be promoted and celebrated.

 

Aspen is unique in offering this inclusively in the MIS. Why not find out more and request a demonstration. 

Email:  info@novatia.com

Telephone:  01962 832 632

Novatia PLC, 1 Winnall Valley Road, Winchester, SO23 0LD

 

 

Novatia Education ICT Forum

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Novatia Education ICT Forum for the exchanging of ideas and sharing of good working practices. This is in response for the need of high quality and affordable training to schools. 

As a member, your school can access training events and conferences, receive regular updates from Novatia about trends in technology, including information on developments and projects within the Academy and Free School arena.

The Novatia Education ICT Forum is aimed at addressing the desire of schools to share experiences and great practise in computing and ICT. Our events are informal and friendly, with a focus on specific technical items blended with the broader technological and educational issues affecting schools at the time. 

Annual Membership is £100 (+ VAT) and if you join before 3rd June 2013, you will receive your first delegate space free of charge to the forum's inaugural Training Exchange on Wednesday 19th June 2013.

If you wish to know more about Novatia’s Education ICT Forum or request a membership application form, please contact the Novatia Office on 01962 832 632 or pso@novatia.com.  
 

Novatia’s associate programme

Novatia are expanding, both in terms of the business we’re winning in our traditional sectors (Educational, Technical and Procurement ICT consultancy for new build schools) and through expansion into new areas.

Novatia are involved in the launch of an exciting new Management Information System (MIS) into the UK. We will soon be helping schools to move MIS, with all the training and data migration that is implied.

Clearly, lots more work requires lots more people to deliver it – but people of a certain calibre, who will be able to carry out engagements and produce documentation to the high standards of quality which our clients demand, expect and indeed selected us above our competitors for. We are therefore looking to identify a small number of highly experienced and professional associates to provide additional capacity in this period of growth.

There are four main types of work we want our associates to carry out;

• Educational consultancy: supporting schools in raising standards, developing educational briefs, curricula, etc.
• Technical consultancy: integrating ICT into design and build projects, consulting to specify a solution, etc.
• Project Management: overseeing the process which sees new schools go from concept to reality – with all the myriad steps in between
• Technical MIS: SQL development, data migration, staff training

To be a Novatia associate, you will need to have:

• a background supporting education sector organisations in the UK undergoing change
• a personable and professional demeanour
• credibility with education professionals of all levels
• the willingness to travel nationally
• the proven ability to create very high-quality outputs

To get involved in the Novatia Associate programme, or for an informal conversation to find out more, please contact our Project Support Office on 01392 314627

Free schools, ICT and the risk of not learning from past mistakes (Part 2)

My last blog looked at the some of the problems with how ICT is now being funded in Free (and other new) schools, concluding that on top of the reduced budget for technology, PfS’ well-intentioned tinkering with the way the money should be spent is causing some serious issues of quality and risk.

Since then, Michael Gove has announced that PfS is to be closed and its functions (and no doubt the majority of its staff) brought in-house. This political side-step will allow the Government to purge off the final lingering whiff of BSF whilst strengthening its capacity to manage capital schools programmes centrally, as recommended in the James review.

This makes a great deal of sense and is one of the review’s findings which I support; a central ‘client’ with expert advice and strong experience will achieve more with the limited funds available than would be possible if the money was passed out regionally or locally.

The most important reason for this is experience; the Design process, from the build contractor’s perspective, is partially a cost suppression exercise which they only accomplish due to the naivety of clients who haven’t done this before. Most of these clients (currently LAs and Academy sponsors) come out of the process with a firm understanding of what they should have done, but limited opportunities to put these lessons into practice, especially with the same set of staff.

If the DfE’s experts are running repeated procurements of new build schools, one would hope that the tax payer would start to gain the upper hand over the build companies’ shareholders, achieving better school buildings for the same money. Of course, this theoretical benefit evaporates if the central client isn’t quite as expert as it purports to be, but that’s a whole separate blog.

Moving onto ICT and the Design process, however, I have an interest to declare here – I work for a company that specialises in integrating ICT into school builds and refurbs – but that doesn’t change the essential right-ness of what follows…

The current method of designing ICT into Free school buildings ‘works’ like this;

• 1. The Free school comes up with its concept of how technology should be used to enhance its aims (I won’t call this a vision, as the school usually hasn’t had the time or support to develop it in breadth or depth).
• 4. The Free school procures its ICT contractor with the support of PfS. As the sharper-eyed reader will no doubt have spotted, due to the absence of Step 2 & 3, this is little more than a speculative shopping list.
• 5. The school is built/ refurbished and the ICT installed. Due to the absence of Step 3, this will inevitably be a fraught process with impaired results.

What are the missing steps? Well, they’re actually quite simple and established routines for ensuring that school building design takes account of ICT, the problem is they require the DfE to pay someone to do them (Free schools themselves don’t have the expertise, PfS don’t have the capacity);

• 2. The school explores in detail how their ICT vision will be actualised in the building. How will technology support learning in Maths? What equipment is needed to deliver the Science curriculum? Moreover, the school considers what it is that will be important to them in an ICT contractor, as well as the multiple commercial issues which need to be tied down (how will you ensure your choice of Project Manager isn’t shipped off to another project? How will the contractor’s delivery be monitored, tested and managed contractually? Et cetera). The output of this work is an appropriately detailed Invitation to Tender document which leaves the market in no doubt what is being asked for and how it will need to be delivered, and with no room to wriggle out of its responsibilities. Without this, bidders’ responses will be vague and varied, and judging Value for Money is impossible.
• 3. The school goes through its building on a room by room basis working out how many power and data points are needed and in which locations. This should culminate in a Room Equipment Schedule detailing types of equipment, related power and data requirements, and the implied heat outputs. This is a devilishly complex task, as there are so many dependencies and variables, and missteps & omissions will result in either having to live with the mistakes or having to pay the builder’s costs to fix them. The process needs to happen early enough that the information can inform the builder’s plans, so that any required ICT isn’t bolted on as a compromise when it’s too late to design around it (“Oh, that room is full of computers and needs air conditioning? You really should have said something earlier…and the door to the Server Room is too small to fit the rack through? Not our problem”). It’s also a precursor to procurement as it’s essential to know what you need to buy if you’re interested in working out the relative cost merit of suppliers’ offers. Not doing this is akin to walking blindfolded into Waitrose, telling the cashier you’ve got £50 and then being surprised/ annoyed at how little/ how unsuitable the contents of your shopping bag are when you get home.

I have no doubt that the DfE will realise all this for itself after the experience of the first flawed Free school buildings has sunk in, but that seems a high price to pay, especially as these lessons are already well understood and the UK currently has the intellectual capital and industry capacity to do something about it.

Dom Norrish. Follow me on twitter.

Free schools, ICT and the risk of not learning from past mistakes (Part 1)

Having been exposed to the evolving Free Schools process over the past few months, I’d like to raise a few area for discussion, specifically about how ICT will be planned and integrated, as I’m not convinced this has been properly thought through. In this first part, I’ll concentrate on the funding side of things.

The funding model is pretty different from that seen in previous capital projects (Academies, et cetera) and reflects the nation’s more straightened circumstances as well as an attempt to reorganise responsibilities;

• ICT equipment funding spent with the ICT contractor (to cover all end-user kit, essentially) is capped at £800 per pupil, down from £1450. This is an approximate 45% reduction. See here for this potential impact of this.
• The £225 per pupil for ICT infrastructure spent with the builder remains intact but is now expected to stretch further, covering active networking (wired and wireless) and some installation elements.

The positives
The £225 being stretched further is a good thing, as it was always too much money in my opinion for what the builder was being asked to do (the cabling, basically). Value for money was rarely achieved and even more rarely demonstrated – this funding tended to get swallowed up into the project more generally.

Some would also say that £1450 per pupil for equipment was too much – some schools struggled to spend it meaningfully, and struggled even more to maintain this level of investment in future years. I can’t argue with the logic of the second half of that; it is indeed easier and more realistic for schools to pay for the upkeep of a smaller ICT estate than a larger one.

Finally, I think it’s accurate to say that the ambition behind changes in responsibility for delivery (expanded on below) is that any new schools built on this model will be ready to go ‘out of the box’; all the ICT infrastructure (previously split between builder and ICT contractor) will be in place and ready for schools to hang whatever they like off it.

The negatives
Firstly, £800 per pupil for ICT equipment is certainly not enough, especially for small schools for whom infrastructural costs don’t scale downwards as they’re relatively fixed. This number, I assume, is predicated on schools outsourcing many of their services (and hence their servers) to external providers in what is popularly imagined as ‘the cloud’. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but carries several assumptions;

• that the school can afford to dedicate a large chunk (£150-200 per pupil probably) of its revenue to paying for outsourced services;
• that every school (remember, the £800 is a capped maximum, regardless of circumstances) has sufficient bandwidth to receive reliable remote services;
• that every school wants to follow this outsourcing model, and many will be unhappy with the levels of control, flexibility and security it offers.

If I reference those assumptions against the three new build projects I’m currently working on, each project falls afoul of at least one of them.

This approach removes choice from schools and burdens them with an ICT mortgage; it smacks of the worst elements of BSF to me.

Secondly, to enforce the stretching of the builder’s budget (the £225), PfS have changed the standard form ICT Responsibilities Matrix to include several items which I believe are best left in the scope of the ICT contractor;

• Edge and core switching
• Wireless (to be fair, this isn’t a change per se as it was always a builder responsibility, they just never did it)
• The install of Data Projectors, Interactive Whiteboards and Signage screens
• and, bizarrely, Weather Stations (I guess because they go on the roof?)

This raises all sorts of concerns around quality, installation, configuration and testing. The questions that spring to my mind are;

• How will the specification of these systems be agreed? It will be up to the ICT work stream to specify them, but my experience suggests that an appropriately high, future-proof spec will be aggressively resisted by the build contractor. The resulting compromise? Weakened infrastructure.
• How will the standards of installation be agreed? The thorniest issue in any implementation is usually the Audio Visual element, specifically meeting the school’s expectations. Again, without wishing to denigrate the building industry unnecessarily, I have doubts over the success of this.
• Who will configure these systems? Physical installation is one thing, technical configuration is quite another. Even if the builder uses third party experts (they don’t typically retain their own), surely it’s the ICT contractor who needs to configure the network to suit the ICT solution? This is probably the most worrying and highest risk part.
• How will the builder-provided elements be tested? Currently, the ICT providers we appoint are held to account via detailed User Acceptance Tests linked to payment milestones and delay penalties. This is enshrined in the contract and has taken a number of years to mature. I can’t imagine this approach being accepted by the big building companies. What is far more likely is that ‘sign off’ will be achieved through perfunctory testing which gives schools no assurance of a properly functioning system.

The elephant in the room
In an attempt to achieve clearer demarcation, the process seems to have created a raft of issues and risks, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The potential, unforgivable tragedy is the massive waste of public funds implied, and not just through poor outcomes; the builder – unable to do the work themselves – will in almost all cases simply subcontract these tasks to… the ICT contractor.

The outcomes will be worse due to reduced specification and issues over quality and testing, and the same people will do the work in the end. The main difference is that it will cost the country more. Is this really the way to build on the lessons of past programmes?


In the next part, I plan to consider the process by which ICT is designed and integrated into Free school buildings

Dom Norrish. Follow me on twitter.

Digital Clipboards in the Classroom

I’m working with a school that’s just bought a small number of these digital clipboards for use in English lessons, primarily. I doubt this is a particularly new technology, but I hadn’t seen it employed by a school before so thought it worth exploring.

image: acecad.com.tw

The device allows students to write on normal paper during lessons (e.g. recording notes for revision, drafting a piece of writing) with a special pen (though it uses standard ink cartridges). Their notes are then uploaded to a computer as an image when the clipboard is next connected by USB cable.

Even better, the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software supplied with the device converts handwriting into text which can then be manipulated using a word processor or other similar tool (such as MS OneNote).

I’m sure the school will come up with many different applications for this technology. A few which occur to me are;

• Sharing the outcomes of group work with all participants, so that everyone has a record of discussions/ plans, etc. This would work just as well if it was the teacher recording a class discussion or collaborative development of an idea.
• Allowing learners to generate mind maps/ flow charts/ diagrams (something which a computer is often a barrier to) in a natural way, and still be able to use the results digitally.
• Encouraging disengaged learners or those with weak computer/ writing skills to take notes, which can later be expanded on away from the pressure of a live lesson. The fact that you get a high quality, clean copy of your notes in Word will add value here, I’m sure, especially for those who are convinced their work is always poor.
• Digital note taking in situations where you wouldn’t necessarily want to take a laptop/ tablet; observing a sport, on the bus, in the Resistant Materials room.

I’ll report back on how successful they are in a few months.

Dominic Norrish. Follow me on Twitter

Are meaningful Digital Exams actually any closer?

Back in the Winter of 2009 (wow, that sounds a long time ago!) I wrote this in response to some early stirrings around the imperative for examinations to move online. If you have the time to read it, you’ll find it’s a characteristic polemic about the need for change/ the shackles of the systems of the past, et cetera. I wasn’t expecting anything to actually, you know, happen – at least not in the lifetime of this Government.

Late this February, many media outlets (including The Independent and the TES) reported on the announcement by Ofqual that pen and paper exams must come to an end or risk becoming an irrelevance to candidates.

Image: geograph.org.uk

Isabel Nisbet (Chief Executive of Ofqual) remarked of learners "They use IT as their natural medium for identifying and exploring new issues and deepening their knowledge”, displaying a grasp of the drivers and needs of modern youth which quite frankly throws the rest of Whitehall into sharp relief. Just think - exams which measure people’s abilities not knowledge, their capacity to work together, to adapt, to understand and to remodel information. Sounds fantastic doesn’t it?

There are, however, some flaws in Isabel’s logic which (before we go into the street to declare the arrival of a new age of enlightenment in UK education) cause me no little concern.

Firstly, any examination system is by definition the output measure of its curriculum. For Ms. Nisbet’s vision of digital exams to become a reality, it must be preceded by similarly transformational thinking in terms of what is taught, studied and therefore valued by society. In short, the curriculum would need to shift significantly towards the development of the skills of assimilation and synthesis of information that she describes. This might be a problem; to judge from announcements by other offices of the DfE, the national curriculum’s direction of travel is quite the opposite, and is accelerating exponentially. No, I fear that what Ofqual are actually talking about is the digital administration and marking of exams, albeit clothed in the undeliverable rhetoric of ‘21st-century learning’. They are the tail, after all, and not the dog.

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

So if it’s not for the good of learners, what’s the point of digital exams? The bodies which stand to gain the most from a shift towards digital exams (not students – they’ll see no benefit until the content on the exams changes) are the examination boards themselves. The financial overheads and logistical complexities of pen and paper exams are vast and restrictive, particularly for an industry which earns a substantial chunk of its income from overseas markets. The key to retaining the UK’s edge as the world’s leading supplier of qualifications lies in getting the job done more quickly and with fewer people. Of course, I won’t even begin to speculate on how much easier it will be to outsource exam marking to the 2nd world once they are all digitally sat and transmitted.

This may in reality be nothing more than the cynical manipulation of  the educational change agenda to further the interests of UK plc, without evolving to any degree how we actually measure and value learning.

Sadly we seem to lack the vision of the Danes to reinvent what exams are for, but those who make decisions about the nation’s curriculum and exams should consider this; not every country is in awe of PISA league tables and the regurgitation of facts and learned techniques that they laud. Those economies which will produce the kind of entrepreneurs David Cameron was calling for last week will do so through an education system which allows students to discover, collaborate and use their technology skills just as in ‘real life’. Successful C21st countries will have curricula and exams which reflect this, and those which fail to adapt will wither.

I'd be delighted to be wrong, let’s hope I am.

Dominic Norrish
Follow me on twitter @domnorrish

That was the week that was

This week the UK’s educational technology community is collectively breathing out/ succumbing to flu following the annual lunacy of three frantic days at Olympia buying, selling and – mostly – networking. Annual lunacy which this year was prolonged (at least for the well-healed – tickets were several hundred pounds, although the Sunday was free) by the transplanted Learning Without Frontiers conference which took place Sunday to Tuesday.

LWF, clearly pitching to supplant BETT as the event for edtech cognoscenti and international delegations, used its marketing to ridicule visitors to the grande dame of ICT as sheep following the herd… and then proceeded to hand each of its own attendees an iPad without a trace of irony. By all accounts, those who went along had a lovely, multi-touchy time.

Image: opencage.info

However, LWF’s organiser Graham Brown-Martin (@GrahamBM) has got a point. In the post-Becta policy vacuum, the ongoing relevance of BETT 2011 has been repeatedly questioned the twitterati. An inevitable focus of ‘product’ not ‘practice and policy’ was predicted but did not, in my opinion, come to pass. I think this was for three main reasons;

• The decision of an increasing number of companies to use *gasp* real teachers and children to demonstrate and explain how the product in question helps with learning
• The fact that the policy and practice aspects of previous BETTs had always read well in the pre-show seminar list but often failed to deliver, usually being a rehash of ideas or a skating over of the surface of an issue
• The ever-growing prevalence of teacher-led training events such as TeachMeet Takeover

Playful rumours of BETT’s death (from @johnmclear in this instance) therefore proved to have been partially exaggerated, to misquote Mark Twain’s phrase – the place was as full as ever of pushy vendors, excited teachers, and garrulous foreigners - but it's certainly evolving. See @theheadsoffice's blog for details.

Image: timloughton.com

Speculation that education minister Nick Gibb would be speaking on Wednesday proved groundless (which would have been a bit like Darth Vader eulogising at an Ewok funeral anyway), but we did hear from the acceptable, cuddly, eSafety face of the DfE in the form of Tim Loughton (“the time has come to place technology at the absolute centre of our aspirations for a world class education sector” – note the word aspiration. That’s politician code for ‘un-enforcably vague promise’).

Image: trixter.net

As usual, there was a lot of familiar stuff cluttering up multiple stands. The industry clearly seems to think schools really need huge interactive plasma screens (starting at £3000) and 3D projectors. Time will tell, but I’m with Dr. Kermode on this one. I’ll also be interested to see if the virtual mountain bikes being promoted on European Electronique’s stand find a market.

So what was worth seeing? Having long been a proponent of games in education, it was great to see so many games companies emerging into the education space. Playing History seems to be a great way into some hard to visualise topics for KS2 and KS3 students, with players navigating their way through a point and click quest-style storyline. Alternatively, Games Ed’s Sustainaville takes the approach of using a single class version of a SimCity-like game to inspire groups to tackle various urban problems, co-ordinating their approach with other groups and debating decisions before they are modelled by the game. A great approach to developing thinking and team-working skills. Not new but still brilliant, I remain a fan of Stock Market Challenge which, for all its brazenly capitalist ideology, is a superbly motivating way to get students to understand the interconnectedness of economics through competing with their maths and business skills to beat their friends. A use of technology in schools the current administration would unreservedly condone (knew I’d find one if I looked hard enough)!

Image: betterteaching.com

Something else I was pretty impressed with was the classroom observation kit provided by Iris Connect. I’ve been recommending fixed camera's into CPD suites for a few years now, but Iris Connect’s back-end software has been superbly thought through with a view to making video footage a really effective development tool for teachers and observers. It’s portable between classrooms too - highly recommended. I don’t know if the company has been floated, but if so, buy some shares now - with the Government’s plan to move teacher training out of Universities and into schools, these things are going to start selling like hot-cakes.

Dominic Norrish. Follow me on twitter

The Rising Tide of Games in Education

This blog post was inspired by Karl Royle and Scott Colfer’s comprehensive and very accessible paper on Computer Games and Learning which I revisited in the wake of a depressingly pointless Panorama programme on games addiction.

Whilst reading the report, I was reminded many times of the aphorism "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come" (which www.quotedb.com tells me was coined by Victor Hugo) – the overwhelming sense the paper leaves you with is that no matter the direction set by the UK’s current administration, games based learning is irresistibly inching up the beach-head of mainsteam education.

“The Secretary of State for Education may be exposed as a modern day Cnut (not a typo), wagging a finger at a relentlessly rising tide.”


If you are questioning why games should play a role in the UK’s schools, I recommend a quick read of pp13-14, which set out the case admirably, linking a range of vital C21st skills and behaviours (all desirable in the nation’s youth) to the affordances of GBL. Why wouldn’t we want to make use of engaging tools which will help develop a future society of lateral thinking, creative, resilient team players?

The main reason for optimism about the rise of gaming in education is the extent to which our culture is now saturated with games playing. The point that the lives of our children are informed constantly by computer games is well made; the report (p6) cites evidence that 99% of boys and 94% of girls are gamers. That’s more than attend school daily.

But more vitally, the spread of gaming beyond what some would snootily regard as an adolescent pass-time is also made clear; the average age of UK social game players is 43 (p7). Michael Gove was born in the summer of 1967, placing him front and centre of that demographic, but I am not anticipating the imminent integration of Farmville into the English Baccalaureate.

The way games are accessed is also changing dramatically. I remember well the disappointment I felt at not being remotely able to afford the BBC Micro required to play Elite in 1985, when gaming was pretty much the preserve of the technology-rich. The revolution in gaming platforms seen in the 90s (computers to consoles) is being repeated today, with 23% of gaming now done on phones. We’re probably only a year away from another dramatic jump in this figure, as smart phones become the standard and affordable handset of choice for all teenagers, as they already are for those who pay their own contracts.

Despite the undeniable ubiquity of gaming in modern life, this isn’t yet reflected in our schools, which in many other ways are a faithful macrocosm of society.

Royle and Colfer explain that “42% of teachers never play computer games for their own leisure” (p25), a significant barrier to adoption within schools. I’d suggest a couple of reasons for this disconnect; 1) they’re too busy 2) the demographic profile and social background of the average teacher (both obviously generalisations). This profile is changing gradually and the work of several high-profile GBL evangelists (e.g. Dawn Hallybone & Ollie Bray) within and outside the classroom is also helping to create momentum.

More importantly, a shift is needed in policy before GBL can achieve anything more than peripheral success: “to make these initiatives part of a wider engagement with the digital age, systemic change is required that aligns curriculum objectives and outcomes with the process and product skills engendered by engagement with digital culture” (p24). Basically, school should be about real life, not outdated notions from a mythical educational golden age (anyone for Latin?). I fear that this won’t alter in the lifetime of this Government. In fact, the current direction of change is backwards.

This must be understood by policy makers as a massive risk to the relevance of education offered by our schools. Royle and Colfer explain this adroitly; “When ten year olds can play a computer game that allows them to manage Barcelona Football club at an operating profit and make complex decisions on a regular basis it is unsurprising that learning in school leaves them disappointed and less engaged” (p27)

The Secretary of State for Education will no doubt continue to cite PISA data and demand a return to robust measures of success in core subjects, but this policy will inevitably expose him as a modern day Cnut (not a typo), wagging a finger at a relentlessly rising tide. Irresistible change is coming.


Dom Norrish
Follow me on Twitter

The impact of capital cuts will be felt most keenly by learners

If rumours are to be believed, part of the 60% cut to capital spending on schools is to be found in the dedicated ICT funding all new builds and refurbished schools received under BSF and other programmes.
ICT funding for Academies and BSF projects has for the past few years been based on a formula which saw schools receive £1450 per-pupil for ICT equipment and £225 pp for infrastructure. The two sums were kept separate, the infrastructure money typically attached to the main budget, with the build partner delivering the ICT passive infrastructure (cabling and containment, mostly) and an ICT provider being procured through whom to spend the £1450.



These levels of funding (about £1.8m for the average sized secondary) have proved time and again in my experience to be just sufficient to achieve the school’s/ LA’s ambitions for learning, granting schools the freedom to innovate with the interface between space and technology in ways which would otherwise be out of reach for most. New Line Learning, a federation of Academies in Kent, is a particularly good example of this.

However, from talking to several interested parties (builders, ICT equipment providers), the whispered consensus is that this £1450 equipment funding is regarded by the Government as overly generous and will be reduced to somewhere around £800. Presumably this is predicated on the generalisation that ICT is ‘well embedded’ in UK schools and doesn’t require additional investment. Quite how this applies to new builds I am unsure.

This will inevitably impact disproportionately on learners. The cost of server infrastructures, wireless network, smart cards, Management Information Systems and a host of other ‘must haves’ don’t scale very neatly; they cost what they cost. Schools’ only real option will be to reduce their expectations of the number of mobile devices, visualisers, projectors, cameras, etc which their students will benefit from. They’ll simply be able to afford less stuff for learning. The first casualty of this funding skirmish will be innovation, as ‘luxury’ of experimentation will no longer be affordable when set against the harsh alternative of having some spaces lacking even the ability to project, for example.

Some will offer the specious logic that even now some schools don’t have technology in every learning space, but I just can’t see how that has any relevance to an argument about how we should be building (today) the absolute best environments for the next 25 years of children to learn in.

It is probable that the £225 for infrastructure will also suffer similar cuts, which will only serve to hamstring the new environments & approaches it is supposed to enable. Even under current funding conditions, build partners invariably resist schools’ requests for floor boxes (to provide flexibility away from dado trunking) and redundant cables (e.g.providing capacity to expand wireless in future) on grounds of cost. The common number applied is 1.5 data points per student, which is just enough, in my experience. If the £225 becomes, say, £150, I fully anticipate the next round of new/ refurbished schools will be built with partial networks (them::“What do you need it in the sports hall for?” me: “Um, to improve learning in sport through technology?”) and an over-reliance on wireless, in a landscape of ever increasing data demand from a personal devices and changing behaviours. It’s a recipe for unreliability, unavailability and continued reliance on traditional methods. Which is probably the point.

Dom Norrish

Follow me on twitter @domnorrish

Self Review – someone still loves you

This post is about the importance of self review and touches on both the Self Review Framework for ICT (SRF) and Ofsted’s Self Evaluation Form (SEF). My contention is that they have never been so useful as now.

As you will no doubt know, the Government recently removed the SEF from the Ofsted inspection process for schools. Many saw this as a Very Good Thing.

The SEF had been widely criticised by school leaders for being onerous and bloated so, in a further strike against Gove’s current bête noire, it has gone the way of other ‘bureaucratic’ hindrances such as Becta and the QCDA. The sound of supermarket-brand Cava corks popping was heard from staff rooms the length and breadth of the land.

A couple of facts which can be easily forgotten in the initial rush of euphoria should be noted though;
Firstly, schools were never actually required to submit and maintain a SEF by Ofsted. Admittedly to pursue this route you had to be pretty gutsy/ have bullet proof exam results.

Secondly, schools still are required to self-evaluate their performance actively as not only is this by far the cheapest way for Ofsted to get close to understanding a school’s performance, it’s also a pretty rewarding process for the school to undergo. Physician, know thyself.

It seems to me that the SEF is a pretty well designed tool for precisely this, one with which schools are very familiar and which has been further sharpened by the knowledge that its more peripheral chunks can now be safely discarded. My advice is to keep the SEF, or at least it’s tenets, at the core of your schools’ self-evaluation process and use it to continue the detailed discovery and evaluation which leads to school improvement.

Image: sha3teely.com

And so to Becta’s ICT Self Review Framework, the SRF. Those of you who did battle with this tool in its original incarnation will know whereof I speak when I say that the words ‘repetitive, tedious, tangential and fussy’ don’t come near doing it justice. Luckily for me, it’s a big part of my job so I must have been through it with a dozen schools over possibly hundreds of hours.

However, it has recently been revised (from 8 elements and 72 questions down to a more manageable 6 and 57 respectively) and is infinitely improved. Gone too are the same questions asked in 7 different ways (and so poorly worded that it’s hard to tell what they’re asking). In short, it’s been made user-friendly.

What remains is very useful – a simple framework for a school to examine how it uses technology to be more effective across every aspect of its business. It still requires a considerable and coordinated effort to make judgements about each aspect and provide evidence, but it is unlikely to induce homicidal thoughts towards those well-meaning bureaucrats in Coventry anymore.The future of the SRF is still unknown, though Naace are keen to take it back.

Of course, knowledge gained from the SRF can feed into wider school self-review processes (see above) but by far the most beneficial outcome is a Strategic Development Plan which identifies the gaps and sets out achievable steps to bridge them in the coming 2-3 years. For some reason, it’s this step which many schools falter at. What’s the point in self-review which doesn’t lead to change? That’s just narcissism, surely?
All this reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, which puts the case for self-review with a wonderful clarity;

“To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easy." Sun Yat-sen

Dominic Norrish
Follow me on Twitter @domnorrish

Immersive language learning through technology

I have been working recently with a centre which is being established for the learning languages which are rarely taught (in the Secondary sector currently, at least) – Russian and Arabic being two examples.

The centre aims to provide a really rich offering for local schools (whose pupils might study there part time) and nationally, for distance learning. One of the guiding principles of the centre is that language learning is easier, more enduring and deeper overall if students can be immersed in the language and culture in question. It’s palpably true even for language dimwits– a weekend in Paris and I’m bonjouring and shrugging disinterestedly with the best of ‘em.

Technology is seen as a key enabler of this immersion and I thought I’d share a couple of the ideas which we’ve been developing with the centre’s staff to hopefully achieve this.

The centre is very keen for visiting learners to have a fun experience and to not feel like they are at ‘school’ (not that those two concepts are mutually exclusive, obviously). For this reason, one of the immersive technologies being developed is a serious game for language learning, set in the rich context of the target language’s native country and based around an engaging mission (for example, arriving in a city and trying to track down a long lost friend, encountering challenges and twists along the way, naturally).

 Image: alelo.com

The concept is that learners will play the part of the game’s main protagonist and their progress through the game’s challenges will depend on their accurate understanding and use of language, both textual and verbal, through the use of keyboard, mouse and microphone. Other characters will react differently to learners based on the skill with which they speak and their observation of cultural cues. Varying levels of scaffolding will be available for learners (e.g. English language translation of possible responses) and teachers/ peers will be able to play the part of other characters, to offer help to players. Sub-games will build skills/ vocab and a smartphone application may also be spun off from the main game. Similar games have been developed, mostly with military customers in mind, but this FPS will be more First Person Speaker!

There are lots of little immersive touches (such as target-language console games in the student social area and digital room signage which alters to match the right context) but a second ‘big idea’ is the use of digital facades in one of the large spaces to recreate a street scene in which various interactions can take place.
Footage of shop fronts and interiors will be projected onto and around existing architectural features such as the space’s windows to create the illusion of a living street, assisted by various pieces of furniture and props. Fixed discrete cameras and microphones will help learners record evidence of their capability in various scenarios.

Image: 2dcode.com

The use of QR codes, and an integrated MS Surface-like product to recognise them, will enable objects to be used creatively by the educators planning uses for the space. For example, at a KS2 level, the activity could be around buying ingredients to produce a local speciality dish. Procuring various tagged food objects being ‘sold’ on the street would be the basis of an extended role-play between learners of different abilities/ adults. Successful interpretation of the recipe, negotiation of the buying process with the various ‘shop keepers’ and placing the full set of items on the smart surface would result in an output from the surface’s screen; instructions on how to prepare the dish, perhaps (which would then move this group’s activity to the centre’s kitchen facilities). Equally, if the output could be a hint on where to find the missing ingredients (and the vocab to use).

The above example is just one that occurs to my (History-teacher-who-covered-the-odd-period-of-French-when-Madame-was-on-a-course) mind; the opportunities to create engaging, collaborative language use scenarios for students of all ages are vast for talented MFL specialists.

The project is still at a relatively early stage, but we’re approaching the point at which we’ll go to market (excuse the unintentional pun) for the ICT solution to deliver the centre’s aspirations. Watch this space for updates!

Dom Norrish
Follow me on Twitter

Back to the Future for Schools?

This afternoon’s announcement by Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) of the strange death of Building Schools for the Future, a twitstorm raged across the ether as various educators, architects, technologists and seemingly anyone with an interest in this nation’s future expressed their incredulity at the savagery of the cuts. The DfE’s press release is charmingly titled as an ‘overhaul’, in reality it’s the coup de grace on a programme that was, in truth, just too New Labour to be allowed to survive.

For me, the tweet of the day came from @photocritic : “In 'Back to the Future', Doc sets clock in the DeLorean to a day 25 years in the future. Today is that day.”

This co-incidence of policy and zeitgeist is too sweet to ignore.

In 1985, as Michael J. Fox was portraying the time-travelling Marty McFly on our cinema screens, the UK had;

• A Conservative government bent on retrenchment and tradition
• An education system focused on the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next
• An economy failing to adapt to the needs of a changing world market
• A decent national football team

Many things have changed in the interim (well, at least one of those things) but are we any closer to achieving a leading place on the (no longer futuristic) world stage? Are we now well positioned as a nation to provide the next generation of team workers, creative thinkers, collaborative investigators and independent problem-solvers which will characterise the successful economies of the next 25 years?

My personal view is ‘no’. And less so today than yesterday. BSF wasn’t just about school buildings you see, it was about transforming education, it was about producing different outcomes – and this, I feel, was the real target of Gove’s axe. ‘Transformation’ implies change is needed, which is an ideological bridge too far for an Education Secretary on record comparing rote learning of poetry to iPod ownership. Seriously.

BSF’s greatest potential contribution to the UK’s future was in changing what it like to learn at school, providing choice, agency and investment in their education to a swathe of disaffected young people to whom Miss Havisham (Nick Gibb’s barometer of educational success) is an irrelevance, but who nevertheless need to find their place (and a job) in the C21st UK.

£5Bn was saved in a stroke this afternoon, a short-term quick win for a tough-guy Government. The continuing inappropriateness of our education system in the face of technological and global economic reality will cost an awful lot more by the time Back to the Future reaches it’s 50th anniversary, however. Will the Government realise this in time? I doubt it; as Marty McFly says after introducing his parents’ prom dance to Johnny B. Goode “I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it.”

Dom Norrish

Follow me on twitter @domnorrish

Why Becta's demise is a disaster for learning with ICT

The new ConLib government today announced that Becta, the lead agency for ICT in education, is to be scrapped, perhaps as early as November.

I first blogged about this last August, when the sabre-rattling began. What follows is an update to that content:

First up, let me declare an interest; I've worked with several people from Becta on new build school projects and have even freelanced on some research for Becta back in the mists of time when I was an ICT teacher. However, this is offered in the spirit of common sense.

The job of  Becta is/ was to develop the use of technology in schools and colleges and through things like their Self Review Framework, ICT Mark and the targets set for the take up of Learning Platforms, things are (slowly) changing. The pace of this change is the basis for many criticisms of Becta. Schools must bear some of the weight of responsibility to engage in these processes too, though. It is recognised by all the teachers I know that to meet the needs of the '21st Century learner' schools' offerings need to be much more engaging and relevant. ICT is a powerful tool to achieve this, and Becta is doing a pretty good job of pushing schools on this front. It's not fashionable to say it, but I am sure that there are some schools who will take their foot off the gas without this external pressure. The head of steam which has gradually been building will dissipate and progress will stall.

Similarly, working in an industry where it is pretty evident that other organisations are very keen to do things 'their way' (especially if there's a 'saving' to be made), Becta have made themselves fairly unpopular by insisting on a level of standardisation, both technically and in terms of approach. Their guidance on developing visions, for example, ensures that schools think about the full gamut of local and national priorities. Their work on establishing a common framework for MIS data (SIF-UK) will make data transfer between providers effective and timely. Becta's Technical and Functional Specifications have formed the basis for the evolution of many schools' systems. Unless these and similar functions are transferred elsewhere, what we will very quickly see in the Educational ICT Landscape is a return to the 'islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity' situation, as excellent schools continue to excel and those in different circumstances are left to flounder.

Another criticism always levelled at Becta is that despite all their work, little effect on exam results due to better use of technology is evident. Despite this being not (quite) true (see here), this argument is akin to criticising Usain Bolt for not winning gold in the mixed Dressage - effective use of ICT is only ever going to have a tiny impact on something as structured as the formal summative assessment of what 16 year olds can remember about the Agricultural Revolution... If our assessment system measured creativity, problem solving, the ability to work with others, or working to a deadline and to high standards, I imagine Becta's work would be seen in quite another light. Curiously enough, these kind of 'soft skills' are exactly the type of thing most employers value over a C in GCSE History. And this is the nub of the issue; the incumbent government value the latter and barely acknowledge the former.

Stephen Heppell (@stephenheppell) has rightly and pragmatically declared this an opportunity for the "many wise and helpful bloggers and podders and tweeters that are already providing a mass of inspiration and effective practice for others – a bottom-up army of authentic practitioners" to take up the baton. Let's hope their efforts can be shaped effectively by some kind of structure (Naace perhaps?) and pointed towards the Greater Good, rather than personal hobby horses. Most importantly, any ground-up, crowd-sourced approach has to be adequately separated from the distracting attentions of suppliers and other commercially interested organisations... You know who you are!

Follow me on Twitter @domnorrish

Is there any more of that BSF left?

Following on from my wild pre-election speculation about the future of BSF under a Conservative Government, the events of the last few days have led to Michael Gove becoming the Secretary of State for Education.

It is my opinion that Building Schools for the Future is a Good Thing. I'm sure things about it could be improved, but it's pretty hard to argue against the fundamental tenets of the programme (it's all in the title really). However, it wasn't the Conservatives' idea and apparently in politics this can be a problem.

If you are in any way involved in a BSF project, you may wonder what this means for you. Well wonder no longer, as I have put together a brief, equally speculative and definitely light-hearted

BSF READY RECKONER

Take the quiz, find out what you could have won!

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Integrating ICT into a new build school (Part 3)

This series of blogs draws on my experience from various single-school and BSF new build projects in the UK over the past few years, the aggregated lesson of which is that many, if not all problems related to ICT can be easily overcome if identified and planned for at the outset. The inverse of this is sadly equally true - show me a design team which has failed to consider integration issues and I'll show you a 'new old school' which will transform very little about its students' education. There is a reason why on any Risk Register for ICT you will find, right at the top, next to a big red flag, a risk labelled 'Integration with Design'...

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This week, dear reader, it’s the ever-enthralling topic of… integrating legacy stuff! Hang on in there though, as this is every bit as important as the shiny new kit.

Legacy Hardware

As the majority of new build schools are replacing a predecessor (and sometimes one whose buildings which will be providing interim facilities), it is probable, and a financially attractive proposition, that a proportion of the technology in use in the old school will require integration into the ICT solution in the new building.

The first thing to realise is that legacy kit may not necessarily translate into savings - there are always costs associated with the the integration of legacy into a new ICT solution (and its maintenance thereafter).

Legacy equipment and services;
•    may not be under warranty;
•    carry an increased risk of failure;
•    will require integration with new systems, which will have associated costs;
•    may not represent the best product currently available.

This isn’t to say that everything the school is currently using needs to be junked, just that schools should develop a sensible legacy protocol to sort existing kit based on the level of risk it represents;

•    Establish basic standards for devices which will connect to the network (e.g. 10/100 Networking)
•    Set a minimum specification for staff and student computers to be retained (e.g. meeting Windows 7 requirements)
•    Decide an age limit for each device type at which equipment might reasonably be judged too high a risk for inclusion within the solution
•    Identify legacy kit which can be used with minimal risk until it fails (e.g. peripherals such as voting devices, digital signage screens)
•    Ascertain if any legacy equipment not suitable for live deployment might provide cold spares during repairs (e.g. laptops) and redundancy for single points of failure within the system (e.g. switches), or even have a future with new owner, via eBay or similar

The worst thing that can happen is for capital savings to be made (e.g. buying less stuff and making use of inappropriate legacy) which end up costing the school more in the long run and impacting on what they can do with their revenue funding.

Legacy Software

Integration of legacy software can also carry hidden costs if the predecessor school was under-licensed or cannot, um, evidence its licenses, as the ICT integrator has a legal responsibility to only install licensed products. Put simply, if you can’t prove you own it, the supplier won’t touch it.

Up-licensing can be very expensive, especially if you ask teachers which legacy software is essential: the only answer I’ve ever heard is that it’s all essential. Use of an intelligent discovery agent programme to audit actual software use is recommended, to rationalise/ validate the requests of staff for the integration of legacy software. Often it’s a simple financial argument which moves thinking forward: choose between spending £10k virtualising that ‘must-have’ piece of 16-bit times table software, or spend £2k licensing something produced last year which will actually engage the students and do a much better job…It is often the case that the functionality of a valued legacy programme has been matched or surpassed, for a lower cost.


Some new build schools (such as Academies) open as a ‘new business’, meaning that many of their software licenses will become invalid and require repurchasing. This is of particular relevance in the area of Management Information Systems (MIS). If you’re being legally forced to spend £30-50k on a ‘new’ MIS, why plump for the one you’ve always had, just because you’ve always had it, with no further thought? This is an opportunity seldom given schools – the chance to really consider what you want your MIS to do and to pick one which delivers, freed from the ties that bind. Of course, the market-leader didn’t get there by accident and in this era of 14-19, the decision won’t only be about the needs of a single institution, but schools really should think about their requirements in this area just as they would for any other element of their ICT provision.

So, lots of things to think about in relation to legacy but if I had to boil it down to a single sentence of advice, it would be this: consider legacy kit and software just as carefully as you will the shiny new boxes (with blue neon blinking LEDs, naturally) which glitter so alluringly from the pages of suppliers’ catalogues…

Dominic Norrish
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Integrating ICT into a new build school (Part 2)

This series of blogs draws on my experience from various single-school and BSF new build projects in the UK over the past few years, the aggregated lesson of which is that many, if not all problems related to ICT can be easily overcome if identified and planned for at the outset. The inverse of this is sadly equally true - show me a design team which has failed to consider integration issues and I'll show you a 'new old school' which will transform very little about its students' education. There is a reason why on any Risk Register for ICT you will find, right at the top, next to a big red flag, a risk labelled 'Integration with Design'...
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In a previous blog in this series we covered integration with design, specifically making sure you have thought through the spaces required to enable ICT to work properly and to be accessed flexibly. This time, it's integration with third parties:

CCTV

I know what you're thinking, but such are the times we live in, so we may as well make sure it's not a total waste of money...

CCTV is typically provided outside the ICT contract and will be provided and specified between the Mechanical & Electrical people and the Builder. However, value for money as well as environmental and ongoing sustainability can be enhanced if the CCTV system makes use of the ICT structured network, rather than a proprietary cabling system or even (yes, it does happen) a separate IP network.

Liaison between those specifying the CCTV and those specifying the network infrastructure is required as early as possible. This is to identify the location and quantity of the necessary Power over Ethernet (PoE) network points and associated active networking equipment. The joy of PoE is the fact that it removes the need for small power - many CCTV cameras can draw the electricity they require straight down the same network cable they are using to send and receive data. This means that you can stick a PoE device (in this case a CCTV camera) anywhere where there is a PoE cable - and that's pretty handy in terms of future flexibility. The flip side is that switches capable of serving PoE devices cost more and this is bound to be a bone of contention - who should pay for the infrastructure to support CCTV? Should it be allowed to reduce the money available for student equipment? The answer seems stunningly obvious to me, but there is often fun to be had before various budget holders agree on it.

The location of cameras needs discussion, as this obviously has a knock on effect for the number of PoE switches needed. A good compromise, if future requirements cannot be accurately foreseen (imagine that!), is to provision a number of PoE outlets in likely spots or places which no-one can seem to agree on, but not to make them live (i.e. don't buy the switch to plug them into yet). This means there will be some future flexibility without too much initial outlay.

Access control
Electronic access control throughout a school has the potential to provide a token or biometric-based, secure and sustainable access strategy with layers of privileges based on role (e.g. student, 6th former, community user, teacher, site agent) - imagine no keys and a school which intelligently knows who should be able to get into each space. This principle can be extended beyond doors too - Lapsafe offer a pretty cool access-controlled laptop store, and things like the staff car park barrier can also be integrated into the solution. However, access control also has the potential to be prohibitively expensive if not intelligently designed in to the building/ grounds at the planning stage.

Schools are well advised to consider in detail a design which will allow their building to be zoned, permitting the easy and efficient locking down of areas when not in use, sparing the expense of mechanical locks and card/ biometric readers on every door. In a zoned school, only key doors are accessed controlled, reducing costs and enabling the school to focus money ensuring that certain important shared resources (e.g. laptop storage rooms, staff workrooms) are electronically accessed controlled, giving open access to these resources to whoever needs them, rather than who happens to have cajoled a key out of the caretaker. Failing to go through this thinking process this at the design stage an (in my experience) only results in one thing - access control is deemed too expensive and is removed or watered right down (e.g. only the front door or a separate system, not linked to the cards/ biometric tokens being used for other things like cashless catering).

Similarly to CCTV (above), Access Control can utilise of the structured network for cost savings and flexibility. Equally similarly though, the implications of increased PoE switching must not be allowed to detract from the educational impact of the ICT budget.

For both technologies, if the IP network is down or slow, so are the CCTV & Access Control. Who is accountable for designing/ configuring/ testing this aspect of the service and who takes the penalties for poor performance? These matters need to be discussed and understood by all parties.

Next (and last) time: legacy, cabling, M&E and FF&E

Dominic Norrish. Follow me on Twitter