One of the areas we covered on the FITS : Advanced course (also known as the FITS : Manager course) was about financial management … but, as with all of the areas covered, it was not dealt in isolation. For all of us on the course it was a good chance to look at all financial aspects which impact on IT / ICT in schools.

I’m not surprised that Ray has pointed out that 33% of headteachers could not state what percentage of their budget was spent on ICT … but I think that is more a reflection on the honesty of those headteachers and the complexity of what we are talking about.

Let us look at what we could include in this budget.

• Desktops
• Laptops
• Servers
• Peripherals (printers, cameras, scanners, etc)
• Audio – Visual equipment (projectors, IWBs, speakers, DVD players, etc)
• Consumables (toners, backup tapes, mice, etc)
• Educational software
• Contracted support
• Network Infrastructure

And then you get into some things that people might not have initially included in this pot.

• Broadband connection
• Broadband / LA services (email, web filtering, etc)
• Management Information Systems
• Staffing
• Reprographics (and perhaps the paper in the printers)
• Telephony
• CCTV

… and they might not have included things that individual departments buy from their own pot.

And what about the energy consumption … surely that should be included in the pot too.

So … I am actually surprised that it was only 33% who said they didn’t know, as I didn’t think the Becta survey quite drilled down as far as some of the above, but I will be suggesting to my local schools if they can use the above as the basis of their planning. It should help with those looking at virtualisation as an option which might help to reduce the energy consumption as well as helping to establish long term, sustainable plans for funding IT, or at least being able to manage the impact of some investment in refreshing equipment is put off for the next year or so.

As with many others who have experienced working with Becta over the years I would like to thank the various staff there and others who have worked closely with them (and yes … that even means consultants). I have had the pleasure of having input from Becta in 5 roles. The first was way back with I was an IT Technician (in a pretty forward thinking school) and I was able to attend various events include expert workshops and the Annual Research Conference. It shaped my view of technology as a tools for education, and with things like FITS for me to be an enabler. Next I experienced then as a middle leader … a network manager. They allowed me to talk on a level playing field with teachers and other Heads of Departments. As a Senior Leader their work helped give direction for my school, especially around the Self-review Framework and as an LA worker the advice, guidance and clarity means I can cascade this down to schools and support schools moving forward with using technology.

The fifth one? Why, it was their support (and patience) with EduGeek. The first EduGeek Conference in Corby had Becta staff coming along for the keynote and happy to take an ear-bashing from a bunch of techies … EduGeek members and mods (I don’t think we even consider calling ourselves admins, never mind staff!) had the chance to air their views about the IT Infrastructure documentation … I was invited to give input into the advice and guidance to schools on Data Protection.

So … yes, I have a healthy respect for what they have done over the years and I am really thankful for it.

Do I think some things could have worked out better? Of course I do … some of the targets they were given were political.

But where do we go from here?

It will take some time for all the projects to run their course, for legal and contractual requirements to be sorted out and for elements of work they do to be taken on by others. People should not make the mistake that just because the organisation is gone the work will finish. Until Becta, DforE and others sort this out we are all down to speculation.

However, there are some things we do know and can do. If nothing else, make yourself familiar with the Becta site and materials. Even if you have thought “They don’t have anything to offer me,” still go and have a look. Dig into the research section to see some of the background work done over the years, because just as the Laptops for Teachers and IWB projects were large funded projects they came from small beginnings.

Have a look at the different schools and teachers who have won awards from Becta. See if you can track them down today. Are they still in successful schools? Are they now senior leaders? Do they work for LAs? Consultants? See if you can speak to other schools they have worked with? Can you find some good practice you can use.

Look at how they examined emerging technologies. What criteria did they use for seeing whether there would be benefits to learning and/or teaching? Look at how they took on some of the procurement frameworks. See how they worked out how to challenge companies to get the best deals they could, even if it meant doing a bit of a deal with the devil at times.

Look at the technical documentation. Examine how it has changed over the years … try to spot where it is going to change again. Look at the work, both historical and fresh, on open standards. Will this have an impact on what you choose to use in the future?

Why all this effort though?

Simple … you don’t know what bit of this work you may have to do yourself, or find someone else who is already doing it with whom you can work with. Some part may be taken on by other groups … some might get dropped and schools / LAs / Companies have to do it themselves … but start preparing now for what your requirements for the future are and learn how to plan.

If you are a school which doesn’t engage with stuff then this will mean nothing to you … you will still plan poorly, have a panic every few years because you have a sudden bill for hardware, and you will see computers as something to keep kids quiet with.

If you are a very proactive teacher / school / LA then you will be happy because you can gloat about being able to do it all yourself anyway and will be able to tell everyone how wonderful you are … but please start talking to others about how that can be effectively shared without costing the earth.

If you are the other group … those who happily work away, waiting for the early adopters to do their bit and learn from the experience of others, who know that in the mountain of priorities which is education you sometimes have to put things to one side and pick up a bit later or you have to get the advice and info from others … well, now is the time to start developing those networks of support and advice. Stuff that could have been cascaded down via the LA might not be there because some of that stuff will have come from Becta …

As you form those links then let me know … I will be doing the same and happy to share mine with you. I’ll also happily share any news about what I find out about the future of what is happening with technology in education … and I hope you will do the same for me and others.

The hope was that the model would spread. It has, but as those who have created and helped pull TeachMeet together over the past four years, we want to see it spread further, deeper and with increasing quality of input from practitioners. This post outlines how we think we might manage this. This is the beginnings of a conversation with those who care about TeachMeet. Add your views in the form of any blog post or comment or tweet – tag it #tmfuture

What are the goals of TeachMeet?
TeachMeet was originally designed to:

• Take thinking away from the formal, often commercialised conference floor, and provide a safe place for anyone to pitch their practice
• Provide a forum for more teachers to talk about real learning happening in real places, than one-hour conference seminar slots allow
• Showcase emerging practice that we could all aim to undertake; sales pitches not allowed
• Be all about the Teach, with only a nod towards tech that paved the way for new practice.
• Provoke new ways of sharing our stories: PowerPoint was banned. We wanted people to tell stories in ways that challenged them, and the audience
• Empower the audience to critique, ask questions and probe, all online, through SMS or, later, Twitter.

Over the years, these ‘rules’ have altered, leading to some great innovations, others less so. The answer to “What is a TeachMeet?” has become a myriad of meanings, some pretty far off the original goals. We need to help and support people to organise, run and contribute to events that build on previous ones. We need to make TeachMeet as accessible to newbies as it was in 2005. We need TeachMeet to once more find its focus.

Supporting the “infectiousness” of TeachMeets

Enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Common sense? I thought so too but it seems that a major failing that occurs is that although school may have the flashiest desktops and lots of laptops there are still a number of examples where the infrastructure and backend (cables, swithces, servers, power requirements, storage, backup systems) is underfunded … usually because senior manglement only invest at the desk.

Wouldn’t it be nice if when you planned your desktop expenditure you also put on a ‘backend’ overhead so that it is included in the costing or at least put to one side to allow for backend / infrastructure investment every other year or so.

I know it will vary from set up to set up and the technology used (eg thin client, MS based, Mac based, etc) but what figure would you stick on there? 2%, 5%, 10%, 15%? How did you get that figure?

Oh well .. here is the wordle in question anyway.

Oh, and the other thing you can do if you are running office 2000-2003 is to add the bullfighter plug-in … it does some very interesting analysis of words used and language.

First we have our project at a local primary, and the ideas are starting to come out how we can get the kids fired up to be contributors to the world instead of just suckers for information. Looking at things like the use of mobile devices (PSPs, etc) in providing access to materials but also what they are going to create and what difference it will make to some of the targets the school has put out there. The mains targets are reading with boys and writing. A look at the work of folks like Tim Rylands opens up just some of the ideas we can run with, but fitting them into how others are working with the school will be fun.

Next we have a look at what is an ICT Vision. We have all seen those bland, buzzword full documents, with a heap of rhetoric and few examples … well, we want to try and see what a truly generic document looks like and then almost wikify it for people to fill in the blanks with examples. Sounds easy? In that case thank you for volounteering to add items to the wiki when it is available!

Finally we have the toys. ICTiS need to continue to look at emerging technologies, or new ways to use existing technologies … but we don’t really have much time for ‘play’ or coming up with ideas. Time to change that. As part of the primary school project we are going to get a few bits of kit for people to try out and come up with ideas. We are not saying that we are going to write huge schemes of work for schools, but come up with ways (and examples) about how staff can learn to make use of ‘different’ things. How many people use IWBs to advance a slideshow rather than annotating work or resources .. which can subsequently be saved and uploaded to a VLE for students to look at and comment on … or even add to?

So … yes … a few fun hours will be spent just throwing ideas around.

Admittedly, this has given me time to catch up on some podcasts and this week I have mainly been listening to EdTechRoudUp (#etru is the hashtag on twitter now), Digital Planet, JISC Podcasts, The Art Of Service (good old ITIL), The IT Training Podcast, Whitelist – The BCS Security Podcsat, a few MS Technet podscats on the use of MS tools for increaing productivity … as revisiting the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast (Marc Gunn is a genius!)

I have considered doing my own podcast, but at the moment I am happy to listen, or pop my head into ETRU occasionally (finally made it a fortnight ago!) to give some of my views, experience or ideas.

I will be looking out for Sharepoint specific podcasts shortly, as well as a few eSafety podscats too. Any pointers appreciated.

I mist also dig out BullFighter again. It is a little add-on to Office 2000 / XP that will check your documents against a dictionary of certain words that I tend to call ‘Manglement speak’. It can be very enlightening. Unfortunately it has not been kept going for Office 2003 or 2007.

My colleague (the illustrious Mr Ford) has dug out a multitude of possible resources over the last week whilst I have been digging out schools or contacts. I would point people at http://future.ncsl.org.uk/ (thank you Mr Ford) as well as http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/

More later … must go and update my other blog (talking about sharepoint).