Grumbledook Blogs

As well as stuff from NAACE2009, there have been a few other sessions I have been to looking at BSF. Over the weekend I’ll put up some notes on this and things that I am looking at.

The first thing I need to say is that I feel bad that I am going along to these events and not fighting the good fight on technical grounds but it is obvious at the moment that alternative business case proposals are unlikely to work, for whatever reason, but there are still lots of other ways that schools can ensure that they get what they need and a greater chance of getting what they want (the two are not always the same though!)

At NAACE2009 we had a session with Steve Moss from Partership for Schools. This looked at the changes that will happen from wave 7 onwards, learning from the mistakes and sucesses from precious waves. A few key things to note was the stress on stakeholder engagement. Making sure that schools are asking the right questions about what they will get for ICT; raising awareness of using educational requirements as the arguing points and not just relying on best value or technical excellence; getting schools to recognise that service providers will want to stick to specifications and single systems as this reduces their costs as well as reducing the risk that the company will be penalised if something goes wrong when trying something new. More on this bit later.

The other session at NAACE2009 was about Change Management, and without wanting to single out a provider, it was run by Northgate, and as some may have already heard me say, it was vey much a case of “we will do your change management because we know best!”

There was me thinking that *all* partners in BSF had to understand change management? If we
Don’t then we will only get what is delivered, not what has been asked for.

Personally I wasn’t impressed with the message put across, and will challenge that in any bidders I come across. I was also given the impression that many people do not understand that change management means different things to different people, and also in different stages I’m the program.

The other two events I have been to was the guardian ICT in BSF event, and a local meeting with 4Ps to raise awareness of next stages. More about these sessions later

A pretty good conference with a good bunch of folk ( I can’t even say “for consultants and advisors” any more!)

The various sessions generally hit the mark or provoked thought and discussion and rather than do a single post of it all I’ll summarise most of it and the break down a few sessions.

I would recommend you go to http://blackpoolconference00.naaceblogs.org and have a look through the blog posts and comments, the available presentations and the videos when they are available.

The opening address was a vid clip from Jim Knight with JK on twitter answering questions. A record of this twitter session is on the above site.

Anne McFarlane challenged a number of preconceptions around the use of mobile devices and we could look where there are opportunities to make a difference with that.

Mick Waters spoke about the curriculum, the problems with it and why the shift looks as if it is happening to a skills led, information accessing model that operates across the curriculum. There were no Q&A at this session but it did seem as if the curriculum is still being done *too* schools. His parting comment about us having come to the conference to find out where to go next showed this a bit. Perhaps an acknowledgement that many at the conference will tell QCA where to go next… on the curriculum that is! This should not take away from a good session with a healthy dose of reality in it.

The masterclass I went to was looking at what Microsoft had been doing over the last year in pushing things forward and I have to praise the innovative teachers network here… some really good and novel uses of kit going on.

This was followed up with the keynote on day 2 by Mr Bean. Martin G Bean, the General manager Education Products Group, Microsoft that is! OK a fair chunk of it was a sales push for how MS software can push the boundaries, and yes… it can. The innovative teachers network is showing this and whilst the Surface may just seem like a gadget it has potential depending on how good the tools are to allow teachers and students to build high quality resources for learning and teaching. Martin was honest and said that they are looking to us for ideas too and that content providers are also working on adapting existing or making new content. I’ll wait a bit before making a conclusion about it really. In the hands of the right teacher it would be brilliant, but them so coils a snooker table I sometimes feel!

The next sessions, promoting ICT in BSF and change management, I will leave for the moment as they need dealing with separately. One session cleared up a few things but the other pricked a nerve!

The afternoon exhibition was handy to just have an explore of ideas with a few suppliers.

The last two sessions I went to were both with John Davitt, a keynote and then I stayed on for his breakout session. A truly fun guy who seems to have more ideas per minute than I do all day. (no comments on that, please!)

Day three will also be a separate post too. Too much to squeeze in!

So, I am nearly home now and will have to have a break tonight to recharge my brain. Thanks to all who kept up with my tweets and I’ll try and link to the naace capture of that soon. Alternatively you can use http://search.twitter.com and search using the hashtag #naace2009