Towards your vision- evolution or revolution? RM Strategic Conference Spring 2007

Towards your vision- evolution or revolution Ian Wilson Assistant Headteacher Manor High School, Oadby

Manor High School  A Leicestershire High School with 920 on roll.  High performing pupils with low indices of deprivation and high prior attainment.  A modest budget, without specialist status (until January this year) or other additional budget streams.

The Vision  “Strive for Excellence”  Pupil standards in ICT should be comparable to those in core subjects.  The use of ICT for teaching and learning in all subjects should be excellent.  Management and operational use of ICT should be models for the pupils.

Steps to success  Staff confidence  A stable and resilient network  Increased levels of access  Embedding, in SoW and pedagogy  Openness to new opportunities and ideas

Staff confidence?  Involvement  Listening  Training  ICT development needs integrated into Performance Management outcomes and School and Departmental Improvement plans  Good exemplars

Stable and resilient network.  Staff and pupils have to trust that the system works  Invest in high performance servers and infrastructure  Include resilient features such as RAID, UPS and redundant power supplies. (Don’t be complacent!!)  Over 99% Network uptime for the last 2 years

Who will help? Build partnerships!  Local Authority  Suppliers  Other schools  Business  Other professionals  QCA/BECTA/SSAT/………. With:

Government initiatives  NOF  NGfL  ICT SAT (or not)  LfT  ELC  Re-modelling  …..and there must be more!!

A message for the Head teacher “It ain’t broke because it’s different” Look at outcomes not methodologies.

Innovation  The “mosaic network” based on using the most appropriate and cost effective hardware solution for delivery of classroom ICT.  Move away from a one size fits all, homogeneous technology based on “fat client” PC running the current version of MS Windows.

The mosaic solution  Thin client PC and devices for low demand applications.  “Fat” PC for demanding and varied environments.  Mac computers working natively and integrated into the network.  Flexibly and sustainably deployed. Consists of a combination of:

Some considerations  Thin client computing is a viable solution for low demand applications on very modest hardware platforms.  Thin client is not necessarily a solution for all situations.  However since you can save money elsewhere, some environments can benefit from high specification “fat” PC, within the same overall spend.

Outcomes of the mosaic  Longer life cycle for hardware performing low demand tasks  Ability to focus expenditure on those machines where high performance is critical  Deploy varied technologies to match the task, e.g.: MAC for media work, fat client for CAD  Flexibility

Left to do……..  Learning platform, more than just content delivery!!  Web 2 (Wickis, blogging, podding and Webcasting)  What about the communication bit of ICT?  Wireless and portability

Towards your vision- evolution or revolution?