Grumbledook Blogs

A recent discussion on EduGeek.net was about the introduction of someone above the Network Manager, but line managed by the Bursar / School Business Manager. Full details can be found here.

Since I have just come from a similar role (actually part of SLT and line managed by the Head) I thought I would give a response, which covered most areas.

Yep, this was me apart from not answering to the Business Manager but to the Head (me and BM were both on the SLT).

The Role can take on a number of the following areas but they are, as pointed out by Bossman, an extension of the Strategic Leadership of ICT (a course that Heads / Deputy Heads went on and usually followed up by a team of 3/4 key staff in the school going on TeamSLICT … typical group would be the Bursar / Deputy Head with responsibility for ICT/IT and Head of ICT Curriculum. Occasionally you would also get the Network Manager or the Data specialist or even an eLearning specialist)

Strategic Planning
Break this down into needs analysis, financial planning and sustainability

Strategic Delivery
Break this down into change management, service management and release management

Strategic Review
This is the tricky one IME, but break it down into 360 user feedback (consisting of user feedback from staff, students, SLT and support team … don’t forget to get user feedback from the support team!), suitability feedback and innovation/change studies.

Needs Analysis – You should be providing a system that does what is required to deliver the curriculum, run the school and cover other agendas such as Parental Engagement. It is a two-way things … sometimes the technology will dictate the use and other times the user will dictate the technology. It *has* to be a two-way discussion and will involve conversations with subject leaders, keys staff in the school (eg pastoral care, exams officer, finance, buildings / caretakers, even the school nurse and PCSO) and has to fit around the present School Development Plan. It will feed *back* into the school dev plan too but more on that later.

Sustainability – There is no point in planning for stuff in one year unless you know how it will be paid for in years 2-5 (or longer). You need to refresh equipment on a cycle. Becta have some tools for this (already linked somewhere … will add the link again later) but that ranges from desktops and laptops, to servers, to backup tapes, to network hardware, to printers, to scanners, to … well … I think you get the idea. Consumables are important here too and can easily be forgotten … and we go back to the needs analysis again … just because the teachers need it in year one … they will need it in year two and so on. Digital cameras get broken and lost, batteries for netbooks in science could do with replacing. Try to base it in experience within the school and talking with others. (hey … I bet that place EduGeek could help there!)

Change Management – Oh my … the more you look at change management in schools the more you realise that it is not just in IT that it is desperately needed. Introducing new courses, refurbishing the carpet in classrooms, changing break duty systems … many people follow change management processes based on the important (and oft forgotten) skill called common sense. Important to remember that not everyone follows it in the same way and the key to it being smooth is communication. Strategic planning introduces the chance to take a bit more time and not having to set out an new ICT suite based on the idea of the Head 3 weeks before the end of term! FITS really goes into change management and if people don’t look at anything else in the full ITIL or in PRINCE2 then change management is the key!

Service Management – This is the bit that tends to affect most members here. Small things like the introduction of an SLA help, improved documentation, training, a helpdesk (either physically or as a process) …

Release Management – This is often bundled in as part of Change Management but I have it separately for a single reason. Politics! As much as we might hate to deal with politics in schools it happens, from that little bit of gossip about who earns what for however much or little work they do … through to Union involvement in changes to working conditions (eg teachers signing the AUP often gets reviewed by unions). Not everyone needs to know the full picture all the time. The big picture … yes … but not every little detail. It is not their job, they have to trust you to get on with it the same way you trust them to do a good job teaching / preparing science facilities / looking after the buildings / etc. When to share knowledge is important and both communication and training are the key links between change management and release management.

360 User Feedback – You can only know if what has been planned and delivered is doing the job if you get feedback. It is not a bad thing to have students saying nasty things about the techies … perhaps they are moaning that the filters are too harsh … in which case perhaps more eSafety awareness needs to be done with them. Staff should have a chance to say whether what they use to teach with and what students learn with … that it does the business or not. Often these things may be small items that are tweaked as part of service delivery, but that is based on user feedback … If it turns out that feedback requires a significantly larger change that expected then that goes back into the planning section. Remember that in most sectors you can measure ROI quite well … in schools it is hard (hard in other areas too) and so user feedback is an important metric, similar to up times, adherence to project timelines or timescales in change processes. As the person dealign with the strategy the often missed group are the support team themselves. If they are not delivering is it a training issue? Time management? Sheer lack of time or too great a workload? Are they doing extra stuff such as working in the classroom (eg Music tech as a sound engineer) and they wish to continue (so do the music department) but that has an impact on service delivery?

Sustainability Feedback – User feedback will often result in changes to services, which require changes to financial planning and sustainability. Other areas affect this too. Change in staff in school, courses getting dropped because they don’t give the required results, additional provision is needed, increased cost of particular software or hardware, software and hardware no longer being available …

Innovation / Change studies – The last thing you shouldn’t forget is that these are schools we are talking about. Some schools go with the flow but others push the boundaries. There are a number of examples in this group of early adopters of Windows 7, schools testing Solus, and so on. There are others here who are doing fun and interesting things with VLEs / Learning Platforms, developing software, etc … and there are those at schools at the cutting edge of teaching too. This requires support teams to be damn flexible and accommodating. As I have on a t-shirt of mine … “Miracles we can do today, the impossible requires 24 hours notice … and chocolate … and bottles of coke … and perhaps a pizza …” it goes on …. Someone has to be the middleman between innovation and normal service delivery. Again, it fits into a variety of previous elements including change management, financial planning, etc … but is an important feature. A pilot that has been successful in the school may need to be rolled out school-wide, changing carefully laid plans … you know the ideas I mean. It may be that staff have seen something new at a tradeshow and it changes their future plans. It may be that the support team have evaluated a new solution that saves money, saves, electricity and gives more flexible working (eg TS, Citrix, etc)

So … there you have it … a brief run down of things. I haven’t covered SIMS in here yet, or eSafety, or staff training (though that is part of change management and release management) partly because I would say that next you need to understand the role of data at the school, who has ownership of it within the SLT and so on … eSafety is part of teh wider safeguarding side of things and should fit into the pastoral side of things, involving the head of pastoral care, the child protection officer, PSHE, citizenship, parent support advisor, etc … staff training should be integrated into the general training program that also covers things like lesson observations, leading from the middle, classroom management, behaviour and a heap of other CPD items.

And the last thing … every school is different and the above is just an elementary framework.

I know this doesn’t cover everything, but I would be interested in any feedback from others, based on personal experience or what your ideas would be in this role.

For those that may not be aware I have recently made a permanent change of role. I have been on secondment for a year with the LA and over the summer my job became a full time position so I had to decide whether to apply for it or not … I was a harder choice than I thought, but I did apply, was interviewed and was successful. Pending contracts, notice periods etc I am now at the LA full time … with a new structure in the team, a renewed vigour to get things done and with some fantastic opportunities ahead.

We have 4 Harnessing Technology Managers, each with a focus to a particular area. The LA and agencies; schools and school improvement; technical development and delivery; contracts and projects. For those who may not know I am the bloke dealing with technical stuff.

Don’t read that as I am going back to my ‘Geek’ roots, becoming all hands-on with setting up servers and so forth. I am not. I am translating technical into educational and back again. I recently spouted it off as ‘dealing with integration and interoperability, and ensuring that the appropriate, best value technical solutions are chosen for our schools and by our schools.’ If that is not Manglement speak of the highest order I don’t know what is.

What does it really mean? How will it affect folk in the server room and folk in the classroom? Simples … for the school to do it’s job it has to have tools. Those tools need to be the right tools for the job, be available when they should be, cost the right amount of money for what you get out of them or what it takes to support them, be able to talk to other tools when needed … and it should be able to go from the smallest infant school to the large consortiums of schools sharing students in sixth forms.

How will I do this? Well, there is a strategy from Becta talking about this (Harnessing Technology Strategy) and it fits in with a few other things too.

For many at the chalk-face it will be the delivery of Becta’s FITS program in the county that will be most visible. Becta run a stripped down version of ITIL for a number of years call the Framework for ICT Technical Support. This is about to enter version 2 (version 1.5 was released earlier this year) and covers areas from the helpdesk (from a notebook for the visiting technician through to the permanent support staff sat on the end of the phone logging incidents to servicedesk software) and change management through to service management of external contracts or even managed services.

Others will gain benefit of work done with our RBC to integrate VLEs to the regional portal, development of standards for exchanging data about pupils and staff, new tools and software, sustaining the growing, reliable network as part of the NEN and even simple things such as the chance to regularly meet other technical staff at county and regional events.

The things I am going to miss (and have done this year already)? Hands-on work with the kids. Even as senior manglement I enjoyed getting involved in music technology … getting into the recording studio and helping as a sound engineer. Hands-on with the techies. Helping the Network Manager out with patching servers, unboxing and imaging new kit, testing software. Hands-on work with teachers. Sitting down with a colleague and offering advice about hardware or software, and talking about how it might enhance or change what they do in the classroom. I will even miss Senior Leadership Meetings, and the support you get from one another in the role. It is a hard role to take on and I am glad I had the opportunity … I hope to return to schools one day as well to continue.

But back to my immediate work. A new strategy is needed in this brave new world at the LA. And the old strategy was pretty good … we just needed the staff to do it. The advisory service has now been reshaped, the education tech support was sold off a few years back, the RBC is now a separate but integral body and our schools are as independent as ever.

Over the next few weeks I will be looking at the strand of the Harnessing Technology Strategy I am working on most (there is a lot of cross over between the strands and the four HT managers) which is based around a world-class, joined-up digital infrastructure. I am not re-inventing the wheel, I am not going to be saying that my thoughts are either the only thoughts or even the best thoughts on the strategy … I just want to make sure that it makes a difference in the school and in the classroom … and the stuff that is not apparent is a tad more open … as well as opening myself up to challenge by my peers.

Talking of peers … for those of you who are twitterers / tweeple / twits (though I am sure that TWITS are the fore-runners to TOGs … Terry Wogan Is Tops Society) I would recommend Steve Wheeler’s growing list of Learning Technology professionals to follow. It is not a definitive list, is open to more suggestions, is more practitioner focused rather than Geek / techie focused … but still a good place to find a heap of information and helpful discussion by following these folks.

A thread has popped up over on EduGeek.net about setting up user groups in schools … quite a step forward to have more input into how IT is set up at your school, but it is more than just about sharing a few ideas.

This isn’t too disimilar to one of the learning conversations at TeachMeet Midlands really. I put forward a few suggestions and requirements for this and will expand this a bit more.

1. It has to have the backing and support of your SLT. It may have been your idea, a department idea or their idea … whatever way there needs to be backing and support from SLT.
2. It has to have some defined goals, preferably some that tie into your schools’ development plan, is part of student voice and you have SLT backing that decisions / recommendations made by the group will be seriously considered. 
3. It needs to be tied into staff CPD to ensure that it is not just an elite few who benefit from it. The idea is that IT/ICT is a tool, so you need to work out how to get as many people using the tools and resources as possible. This means sharing by a variety of methods. It could be formal training sessions, it could be just-in-time training via video tutorial, it could be cascaded good practice within departments … the wider the range the more likely you will get uptake.
4. There needs to be a good cross-section taking part in these types of groups … not just the ICT elite … get more mid-range users involved too. Enthusiasm will often be more important than ability, but it is also handy to work with ‘realists’ (not pessimists) who can be critical friends.
5. Do not get disheartened if for every 10 ideas the group has only 1 gets used … it will grow over time. Eventually, you might be lucky enough to have a 50% development rate. Having good examples of who the ideas were used elsewhere can help.
6. Make sure that although only a few people will attend as representatives of the large school community, the conversations / discussions / presentations / videos / software is available to as many people as possible. It is an important factor that all feel included and helps with continuity planning for the group, people will move on, members will run out of ideas or take on other groups and tasks, new or existing staff also need a chance to have their input too.

There are a number of other things that could be put into this list and feel free to suggest more links and examples, this is not a definitive list of things to do, just a starting point.

There is more work to be done on suggesting *how* student voice can have an input in to user groups … I would be interested in hearing of examples.

A comment that you can frequently hear in some schools when you talk to IT technicians or Network Managers… usually not long after someone else at the school has made a decision about kit being purchased, new IT suites, programmes involving laptops and students, or policy decisions involving scrapping a heap of security protections.

Often it comes down to problems with communication or possibly a lack of understanding on both sides, so I thought I would run through a few ideas that could help. Some of these are mine, some have come from other schools (mainly via edugeek.net) and some are based on ideas from outside of education.

1 – Understand your clients. A common complaint is that techies are only interested in the boxes and cables and don’t really do things that benefit the teachers or students. One way to help with this is to look at your school’s development plan, identify the areas where technology fits in and then try and translate that into what kit you have, the kit that is needed and what it means to the dev plan. A good example is VLEs. Most techies have a pretty good idea about idependent learning because, lets face it, most have to learn things on their own, trying to structure a lot of knowledge about a wide variety of specialisms into a very short space of time, and usually a case of ‘just in time’ learning (where you learn the the knowledge and skills as you need them) rather than ‘just in case’ learning (where you learn knowledge and skills and try to remember it all).

2 – Understanding your school’s need is important if you are trying to make sure you have a long term, sustainable model for IT. Whilst it is hard to plan for technology too far ahead, you can have a rough idea and make what you do flexible enough so that it would not take a major refit to adapt.

Financially your school should have a three year finance plan but many will go for a five year one. Sit down and work out you refesh program for desktops, laptops, servers, network hardware, peripherals and software. Servers should always run with a support warranty for the hardware. This will tell you when they need to be replaced, but 4 years is a good basis. Laptops would be 4 years too. You can get 5 year warranties for desktops but be prepared to stick more RAM in them in the last two years if needed. And so on…

3 – Once you know what you can technically do and what the costs are then you need to see if the refreshed kit will provide what the school needs. If you are going for arts and media specialism or Creative & Media diploma then can you provide facilities for it. Do you require a change in software? Will it run in the planned hardware? Do you need to make a larger change such as introducing Macs? What are the CPD issues for you, for the teachers and for the students?

The more active you are in this sort of discussion and the more practise you have a judging educational needs the less you will have decisions taken out of your hands or made without your knowledge.

I am not saying it is easy or will work overnight, and a certain amount of compromise is needed on both sides … but to start with you are the one most likely to have to compromise.

I’d be interested to hear how various schools have worked on this compromise from the techie, the teacher and the senior leader too.