NAACE Think Tanks

July 22, 2010

Naace are holding three Think Tanks around the country and I attended the one held in Bradford yesterday (21/07/2010).  It was an interesting and I think successful day – the attendees came together from many sectors – commercial, LAs and schools – amid the gloom there was optimism – but the challenge of influencing the policy makers has never been so great.  Naace will be producing a paper in the next week or so summarising the outcomes of the three sessions.

From the Think Tank brief:

Our aim is to work together and plan concise key messages – decide who needs to hear them and what action we want them to take.  Our aim is to build a strategy (and practical products) for defending the place of ICT in Education – and to ensure this is shared with as many people as possible.

Here’s what we will be doing at the Regional Think Tank.

We will be engaging in debate and these are some of the questions we will be asking:
•    ICT IS Important – Do we agree? Why and how is it important?
•    What do we need to do?
•    What are our Key Messages? (The USP of ICT in a learning environment)
•    Who are the audience? And who needs to hear what?
•    What do we want those who hear our message to do? How do we provoke this reaction?
•    Building a Strategy (and Practical Products) for defending the place of ICT in Education – What should it include?
•    Naace is about community – how can we build the effectiveness of that community so that our VOICE is heard and effective?

Here’s a link to the presentation Mark and Bernadette used to stimulate the discussion.

As an aside – there were some useful communications tools in use during the day:

http://visibletweets.com/ – a site that presents tweets in a very visual way – suitable for presentation on a large monitor.  More fun when I discovered that http://visibletweets.com/#query=naace&animation=2 could be used as the URL in a Page Viewer Web part in my Sharepoint MySite – pre-selecting the query and the animation!  The only problem with the above is that you may need to filter the tweets before displaying them!

http://tidytweet.com/ – this allows you to filter the tweets before they appear on visibletweets.com.

http://wallwisher.com – set up a wall here and allow users to post their own electronic post-its – you can specify whether posts have to be approved before they appear.

And finally, for a bit of collaborative writing we used PrimaryPad – Super funky collaborative padding – a useful tool that was fun to use!

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , — Patrick Kirk @ 11:35 am

Link2ICT Summer Conference July 14th 2010

The conference opened with a session looking at the pressures and uncertainties that now face schools following the change in Government.  Link2ICT (Bridget McGinley – Head of Operations) explained a range of new services they’re introducing and improvements to a number of existing services.

Stephen Pincher (Birmingham City Council) then talked about the financial impact of the cuts in the Harnessing Technology Grant – he described the in-year cuts as totally unprecedented and unexpected.  Birmingham, like many LAs, was actively planning for life after HT – not expecting funding to continue beyond the end of this financial year – but the in-year cuts could, potentially, have a dramatic effect on services and hence a significant negative impact on education across the city.

The problems facing LAs and schools as a result of the cuts are varied and listening to views from around the country they seem to cover a wide spectrum.  At one end of this spectrum are LAs where the schools have agreed that the LA retained 100% of the funding – to act strategically and provide and manage service delivery on behalf of schools – either on as the LA or as part of one of the Regional Broadband Consortia (RBC).  At the other end are the LAs where 100% of funding was devolved to schools. 

At the 100% retained end of the spectrum many LAs are now facing real difficulties – they’d entered three year contracts (the length of the guaranteed funding) and now don’t have the cash to meet their contractual arrangements for the remainder of the financial year.  There are some difficult conversations being held by LAs – both with suppliers and with schools – to determine where savings can be made, what alternative sources of funding (if any) are available and what services can be cut.  There will be an impact on service delivery and in some cases there may be questions raised over the continued viability of the delivery organisation.  This will be a nervous time for some of the RBCs and in the worst case scenario the LAs could possibly end up covering redundancy payments rather than service delivery.

At the 100% delegated end of the spectrum there are a different set of problems.  The LAs receive the funding in quarterly tranches but, in the majority of cases they used their overall financial position to effectively enable them to give the schools the funding in a lump sum.  This seemed sensible; it allowed the schools to purchase expensive items at the start of the year rather than having to wait.  However the impact of this is that many schools have made their purchases using money that the LA will not now receive.  There are rumours of schools rushing out to complete their purchases once they’d heard about the cuts and before the LA had chance to tell them to stop spending.  I know of at least one LA where the service provider within the Council has billed the schools annually in April and where the service provider now has the funding.  Again some difficult conversations will be had all round

The majority of LAs and schools sit somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum; they’re faced with a composite of both sets of problems.  One thing’s for sure there are no winners; the impact will be felt throughout the sector as schools and LAs come to terms with the cuts.

So back to Birmingham – Stephen Pincher and LA colleagues are working hard with their school colleagues to determine a strategy to minimise the impact of losing 50% of a grant after the plans had been agreed.  I wish them success.  Cheryl Broad (Head of Sales and Marketing for Link2ICT) had opened the event with the concept of looking forward, planning for the future, and not dwelling on ‘what might have been’.

Mark Platt of Edward and Platt LLP, presented us with his current view of the changing education landscape.  He talked at length of the opportunities that academy status may bring a school; of the need for informed decision making and the need for a school to gain a thorough understanding of the risks and opportunities before making a decision.  Both Mark and the next speaker commented on how historically academy status was something ‘conferred’ on a school in challenging or challenged circumstances whereas now schools have to be exceptional in order to apply to become academies.  We’ve flipped from a bottom-up approach to one of top-down.

The next speaker was Peter Kingham from the OASIS academy group.  Peter was upbeat – we always have challenges in education and we always rise to meet them.  He reinforced the need to be holistic – for a school (or academy) to be successful you have to work with the whole community – doing so has a positive impact on the whole activity of the school – it’s more than just teaching and learning.

Talking about the Oasis academies peter stressed the importance of every child – children don’t deserve to feel worthless.  The academies are the hub of the communities they serve and often provide a range of collocated services (Council, PCT, Police etc).  He talked about there being Mark 1 academies (those opened to date) and Mark 2 (those to be opened in the future) he felt that Mk 1 academies are about changing attitudes.

Following the break there was a presentation about the services offered to schools from Tim Riley and Sharon Cufflin from Link2ICT.  I then had the opportunity to talk about our OPENHIVE environment and how it would integrate with and complement the existing service offering.  Tim had reinforced the opportunities for choice for Birmingham’s schools and we’ve certainly extended that choice.

After lunch Andy Pyper (Link2ICT) talked about e-Safety and Information Security.  He reminded schools that just because the source of guidance (Becta) is about to disappear that doesn’t mean the end of their responsibilities.  These won’t go away – see an earlier blog post – and the next session from Andrew Lawrence (Sophos) provided schools with a range of technical solutions to help them meet their obligations.

I missed the final session – Birmingham Grid for Learning ISP – now and the future – perhaps a reader who attended the event can bring us up-to-date?

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Patrick Kirk @ 10:33 am

Summer conferences, is there a recurring theme?

July 13, 2010

The last couple of weeks have seen a number of conferences with an ICT theme.  LGfL, EMBC, Northern Grid and most recently SWGfL have all held events.  A theme coming forward is the impact of the cuts made by the new administration in ICT budgets.  £100million lost from the Harnessing Technology fund is having a significant impact – in many cases the money has been justifiably committed but not yet spent.  Everyone seems to be very focussed on how to either fill the funding gap or to reduce costs.  In rural SWGfL, where providing broadband connectivity of a quality fit for delivering educational services can be more expensive than in more urban areas, the challenges will be significant.

There’s a good round up of the events linked from Merlin John’s website and the report of proceedings in the southwest can be found here.

This week it’s the turn of Birmingham and their annual conference.  I wonder if the theme will continue?  We’re presenting at the event, talking about our OPENHIVE proposition.

How will the Harnessing Technology funding cuts impact on your school or business?

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Patrick Kirk @ 10:40 am

Martha Lane Fox launches Manifesto for a Networked Nation

July 12, 2010

Martha Lane Fox

Martha Lane Fox

In The Times this morning I was interested to read that Martha Lane Fox is launching her Manifesto for a Networked Nation today at Number 10.   Readers may remember an earlier post following the NAACE annual conference where Martha made a brilliant contribution.  Initially, there was the thought that the role given to her by Gordon Brown would be one of the casualties of the changes in Government, but back in June her role was confirmed by David Cameron and her remit extended to encompass functions previously held by OFCOM.

If you’ve got access to The Times the article was on Page 39 – I’d give you a link but you need to subscribe to be able to read the paper online!  However you can read more in The Guardian and The Mirror and the BBC.

Will she manage to get an extension of the Home Access scheme that will soon be coming to an end?  Follow Martha on Twitter and find out!

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Patrick Kirk @ 2:43 pm

OPENHIVE Leadership Forum Q & A

June 24, 2010

At our Leadership Forums we didn’t have time to answer all of the questions that were raised throughout the day, so as promised we’ve published our responses to you online. 

Presentations from the two days are now available online for you to view and enjoy. 

So where were we?  :-)

1) Do you offer a variety of learner interfaces suitable to age/KS/ability/SEN?  On top of that, can schools get their own look and feel into the system, if so, to what level?
OPENHIVE has a variety of Primary themes and Secondary themes for different age groups and key stages.  Each school has the flexibility to choose which theme they wish to deploy across their whole site.  Individual users can also personalise their own MySite with a different theme to that of the school.  On top of this, OPENHIVElearning allows users (teachers and learners) to change their own background themes, imagery and colours from a wide selection available within the site library. 

2) Can you import taxonomies or external schemes of work?
Yes we can. OPENHIVE supports external schemes of work and taxonomies.

3)  If the portal is provisioned across an authority or campus, does that mean that students will be able to see and add friends from across the authority and not just her tutor group or school? Who has control of this?
This level is flexibility is available within OPENHIVE.  This will be on a site permission basis.  If you wish to allow students to see/add friends from other schools within the authority, your site administrator could set this up.

4) How does OPENHIVEinsight cope with parent access/OLR in these scenarios:

- A child is in care & requires access by 5 adult carers
OPENHIVEiD, our identity management service, would support this scenario.  OPENHIVE can enable and manage access for multiple adults per child, but the carers/guardians must reside in the MIS system as approved carers/adults.

- A parent has 4 children at one school and 2 at another – both use OPENHIVE
OPENHIVEiD supports multiple children across multiple schools through one login, so long as the schools are federated or part of the same Local Authority.

- A child’s parents are divorced.  One parent is not allowed access
OPENHIVEiD takes the MIS information as the authoritative source of data.  This information should reside in the MIS and will therefore affect the access rights within OPENHIVE.  Even if the parent tried to register to access OPENHIVE they would not be able to.

- A teacher is also a parent of a child in the same school. Do they get access to reporting for all children they teach or just their own child?
As a teacher you would have a different interface/area to access information about all of the children you teach to specific parental information about your own child.

5) We currently have a SharePoint 2007 platform with a lot of content in it, how do you accommodate this if we move to OPENHIVE in terms of data migration?
For each new customer we undertake a provisioning consultancy process to identify and agree a migration plan for all of the content you wish to migrate to OPENHIVE.  We have significant expertise in helping customers transition and migrate between SharePoint platforms.

6) Will England win the world cup? 
It is unlikely, but we can hope :-)

7) What information from your VLE and courses is available to Senior Leadership Teams?
OPENHIIVElearning, our VLE provides comprehensive reports and information for Senior Leadership Teams.  Reports are available on the following:
- Attendance
- Subject attainment
- Course attainment
- Targets
- Student attainment
- Student achievement

8 ) Is there a choice of font – in particular Century Gothic?  
Yes, you can have a choice of font.  Like with most websites, so long as you have the fonts installed on your machine you can use them.  If you want to specify Century Gothic as your font in SharePoint, you can.  Our Silverlight applications make use of Trebuchet or Myriad Pro which is embedded in the Silverlight application itself.  

9) Is your VLE based on SLK or is it entirely designed in-house?
SLK sits underneath OPENHIVElearning, although we have added in some bespoke customisation to tailor it for an educational context.

10) Social Networking – How much control does the user have over the provision e.g. Not appearing in friends of friends lists or not being able to be emailed etc?   
Currently no control exists over a user being able to deny or accept friend requests. This is an area we are looking to develop in future releases of OPENHIVE.

11) Ad Hoc Groups – you mentioned you could flexibility allocate permissions for ad hoc groups. Do these groups/could they have team sites created to allow information and resources to be delivered?
Yes, this is currently in development.

12) Can students add resources to the VLE resources library?  Can students create their own courses and share them with each other?
Currently no, students cannot create their own courses or add resources to courses.  We are however exploring possibilities with this in the next release of OPENHIVElearning, which is currently in development.

13) Assigned Courses – Can students join courses that have not been assigned to them, or request to join them?
Currently no, however, we are exploring possibilities with this in the next release of OPENHIVElearning that is currently in development.  

14) Just a consideration – there has been a lot of mentions of the iPad etc, isn’t Silverlight support required for this?
Currently Silverlight is not supported on the iPhone or the iPad.

15) What limitations does OPENHIVE present that a standard MSSP install doesn’t if any? Also can the school add web parts or is this restricted?
The only limitations on the portal are the themes. It is a standard MSSP install.  Schools can add their own web parts, change and customise the layout or add whatever content they wish.

16) Friends in 14-19 – with students studying at multiple schools can friends be extended over trusted sites? Similarly for federated schools?
Currently no, however we are exploring these possibilities in future releases of OPENHIVE.

 17) OPENHIVE Training & CPD – What training do you provide to customers and how is this related to CPD? To what extent is the online help related to:
- the features  and ‘ how to’ in OPENHIVE?
- the features of and ‘how to’ in SharePoint?
- related to the ‘why to’ of school life and learning?  
OPENHIVE modules are supplied as standard with initial ‘getting started’ training. Synetrix offers additional training modules and resources to further develop and embed the learning platform.  The online help service and information within OPENHIVE is more ‘how to’ driven to help our users get started quickly.

Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange email are delivered with specific help files that reference OPENHIVE customisations/adaptations.   Where generic information is required for Microsoft product enquiries, we have augmented our help with useful links to Microsoft help resources.   OPENHIVElearning is specific to the features of OPENHIVElearning.  Throughout our help materials, we have tried to set the ‘how to’ information in context to the ‘why’ for school life and learning.  

28) Beyond individual schools, can you comment on deployment to a Local Authority or a chain of free schools and how inter establishment collaboration can take place? 
Response to follow…  

29) Does your next / planned VLE leverage ULURU functionality?   
Response to follow…  

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Ceri.McCall @ 3:12 pm

Friday was an interesting day

June 2, 2010

On Friday I had the opportunity to visit Monkseaton High School.  The taxi journey out from Newcastle city centre reminded me of my time (in my early twenties!) when the Corner House was a venue I regularly visited for its live music.

monkseaton cropped 20

The school was amazing – the image above is of the rear of the building – looking for all the world like the space ship from ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ – nothing alien here however, just some very interesting people working extremely hard in a unique environment.  The coloured cubes on the roof are wind catchers; an intrinsic and innovative part of the overall design of the building; contributing to the extremely good energy rating of the school.

I met with Paul Kelly, the Headteacher and CEO of the Innovation Trust and his colleague Simon Thompson the Assistant Headteacher.  Simon gave me a tour of the school – versatile teaching spaces around the edge, lots of open spaces for collaborative work and study, some dedicated areas for science and technology, all around a central open area that was a multipurpose sports hall and provided the main assembly space for the school.  The atmosphere was relaxed, purposeful and quiet – the work that had been done to manage sound in such a large space was amazing – sound didn’t travel and the activity in one area didn’t intrude upon its neighbouring spaces.

I spent some time listening to Paul – to his vision that’s taken the school thus far and his ambition for the school, the students and the community it serves.  Paul is going to be addressing delegates at our Leadership Forum on 15th June at Microsoft in Reading – so if you haven’t registered yet there’s still time!

What really shone through were the excitement and the vision – good leadership and management do result in a successful school.  It’s a shame that under the current inspection regime the school is unlikely to ever be graded as outstanding – not until the value that the school adds is truly recognised.   If I get the opportunity for a repeat visit I’d like to spend more time with the teachers and students to get their perspective of working and learning in this exceptional environment.

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog — Tags: , , , — Patrick Kirk @ 8:49 am

Becta to close

May 26, 2010

Monday had been a day of rest and relaxation on the Yorkshire coast, and then as I came back into range of a phone mast my iPhone started pinging.  All of my incoming emails and tweets were ‘Have you heard about Becta? What do you think will happen next?’  Yesterday was spent working with new colleagues from Ramesys (it was good to get together – I think we’ll have a fruitful relationship) so I’ve just managed to catch up with the news, blogs and tweets.

I started with a read of the Becta website which gave an understandably negative view of the closure.  I can’t help but feel sad – I’ve worked very closely with a number of the people at Becta over the years and, on the whole, have enjoyed the relationships I’ve had with them.  They were committed, dedicated, and responsible and understood the needs of both the education community and the suppliers that support it.  Because of the thrust of my work over the years, most of my contact has been with the safeguarding and technical teams.  These teams have been unstinting in their advice and support.  OK – so we’ve not always been in total agreement but the relationship wouldn’t have been as productive if we had been.  

The Guardian had a well balanced article with more of a hint that the savings may not be real unless some of its functions are picked up elsewhere – for example, the savings accrued by organisations utilising Becta’s contracts exceeded the cost of the organisation, according to Graham Badman, Chairman and Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta and echoed on the thinq website.

Looking at the tweets (and the responses to the BBC article Becta: Does it deserve to die?) there appear to be many who think that Becta was doing a good job.  In a number of cases, those that thought killing off Becta is a good thing disagreed with the advice that Becta gave – typically suggesting that Becta has not supported Open Source and seeming to have missed just how pro-active they have been on this front.  On balance I thought that there were more who will miss Becta than there were celebrators of its demise.

There are many of the functions that Becta provides that should be found alternative homes and I’ve only listed a few .  Will the re-christened Department for Education pick up the safeguarding responsibility? Will the ISP accreditation move to the British Standards Institute as it’s already well aligned with PAS:74 2008?  Will the procurement responsibilities pass to the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) alongside other procurement frameworks or will they go to PfS?  Where will their curriculum advice and guidance go at a time when other natural homes also appear to be under threat? What will happen to their Emerging Technologies and TechNews service?  The FITS (Framework for ICT Technical Support) initiative may have a life of its own but will need a home – perhaps with ITIL? The ICT Mark started life with NAACE – perhaps it reverts? What will happen to the many opportunities Becta has created for celebrating the brilliant work of schools, teachers and students? These and many other questions will need to be answered over the coming months otherwise we run the risk of chaos filling the vacuum created by the loss of Becta.

What’s your view, good, bad or unsure?

Which functions do we need to continue?

For further comment:

Naace, thinq, OpenSourceSchools, Steve Wheeler, computing: for and against closure.

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: — Patrick Kirk @ 2:10 pm

Learning platform: steps to adoption grants

May 17, 2010

Reading the NAACE newsletter this weekend I came across the following:

Learning platform: steps to adoption grants

Colleagues will be aware that Becta is planning to support the increased adoption of learning platforms in schools through grant funding to groups of schools working together. This will be targeted towards the primary sector at schools that have not started or are just beginning to use a learning platform. The award will be through a competitive grants process; notification of the Grant Notice is expected following the formation of a new government. To ensure fairness for those local authorities who were unable to attend the recent regional forums the following information was given:

  • Grants will be awarded to groups of primary schools working together;
  • Consortia of schools may be based around a hub school and will be supported / coordinated by local authority, RBC or similar public sector body;
  • Consortia will be expected to demonstrate they are using advice and guidance based on a recognised adoption model and materials;
  • An external impact evaluation will be undertaken to inform future plans

Watch this space, we’ll keep our antennas tuned for the alert from Becta.

A plug for NAACE – Synetrix became a sponsor of NAACE earlier this year.  NAACE describes itself as: “Naace is the professional association for those concerned with advancing education through the appropriate use of information and communications technology (ICT). Naace was established in 1984 and has become the key membership organisation for those working in ICT in education.”

So if you fit the members’ description and you haven’t joined, why not?

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Patrick Kirk @ 9:21 am

All Party Education Debate at NAHT Annual Conference – HIghlights

May 10, 2010

Whilst the negotiation continues…… click here to watch the conference video of the three would be education ministers.

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , — Patrick Kirk @ 8:28 am

Higher priority needed for ICT and learning – OECD

May 6, 2010

Whilst at the NAHT conference at the weekend I noticed that an OECD paper “Educational Research and Innovation: Are the New Millennium Learners Making the Grade?: Technology Use and Educational Performance in PISA 2006” had recently been reviewed on Merlin Johns’ website.

From Merlin’s site:

Governments around the world should highlight the importance of computers and technology for education if schools are to help students bridge a second, emerging digital divide that “separates those with the competences and skills to benefit from computer use from those who do not”.

Given the correlation of these skills to economic, social and cultural success, says a new OECD report, governments should “do their best to engage teachers and schools in raising the frequency of computer use to a relevant level“. As well as bridging a digital divide that is much more than just access to technology, would improve pupil attainment and demonstrate that schools and teachers are serious about their roles in developing learners fit for a technology-rich world.

Let’s hope that tomorrow’s policy makers have read the report!

Patrick Kirk

Filed under: Blog, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — Patrick Kirk @ 8:58 am

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