What about the WOW factor?

When we started out bidding on BSF projects (about 3 years ago), one of the most used phrases in connection with ICT, was “Wow Factor”.

The first time it would appear would be during the bidders open day. Really good authorities managed to get it in at least twice in their presentations. The top man would normally be the first to mention it in the overview presentation. “What we are looking for is extraordinary ICT, ICT with a WOW factor! The explanation mark is obligatory. The designated ICT person for the day would also insist that they were looking for the WOW factor. At no time did anyone try and define what they meant by this.

Once the bid was underway the dreaded WOW factor would surface again, normally in the feedback sessions to the initial presentations or bids. “We felt all the bids lacked a WOW factor” seemed to be a pretty standard response. Once in dialogue you had the chance to ask the obvious question, “what do you mean by the WOW factor, could you give me an example” Never did get a good answer to the question, sometimes they would struggle to suggest some yet to be invented technology, like a laptop that would run for a week on a single charge and could converse in any known language.

The serious point behind this flippancy is there was, and I suspect still is, a belief that somewhere out there is some hither to undiscovered technical magic that can be brought to bear on education with stunning results. I suggest the evidence suggests quiet the opposite. Rather than salivating over how to spend £1.5-£2.0 million per school on “kit”, schools and authorities should really be thinking of spending most of that money on a proper process and set of resources (mainly people) who can properly champion the use of ICT in education.

If you search Twitter each day for #ICT you will find more free ideas and free web based resources than could ever be used. And each day more arrive. Maybe there should be a KPI in the contract measuring how many new ideas a supplier brings each week/month/year rather than how long it took to repair a printer?.

ICT Managed Service – friend or foe? Conversation number 3

The BSF ICT managed service has had a lot of mixed press of late. We discuss why this is and what can be done to ensure you get the managed service you want.

Driving Innovataion – Part 1

ICT within BSF should drive innovation and transformation, sadly this is not always the case.

The easy option is just to fill a school full of products from the ICT supplier’s catalog without much thought for integration, teaching or learning. However, this is not only poor value but a massive missed opportunity to use ICT to transform the lives and aspirations of our young people.

So what is ICT innovation and how can it drive transformation?

Innovation is concerned with applying new ideas, technologies and methods to a particular problem. Furthermore innovation can be further enhanced by taking ideas, technologies and methodologies from other sectors / markets and integrating them into the subject area. In other words cross pollination.

This type of approach can bring about exciting results and help engage young people. For example using the kind of business intelligence technology that is employed by Amazon, such as ‘people who bought this’ recommendations and their star rating system, could so easily be applied to content and target a student’s learning style and preferences, thereby assisting with Personalised Learning.

Key Points for Developing Innovation within BSF

• Local Authorities need to evolve their thinking and specifications during the engagement process – outdated output specs are too often the norm.
• Local Authorities should challenge bidders to specifically identify funding / kpi’s for innovation within their bids – good intentions don’t get delivered
• Once a ICT partner has been selected an Innovation Framework should be created
• Students, Parents and Teachers should be actively encouraged to engage with the innovation process
• The ICT solution must be designed to evolve and embrace innovation, both small and large

Part 2 – The Nuffield Innovation Framework – coming soon

Separate ICT BSF Procurement

It is speculated that Partnerships for Schools wish to change the procurement model and potentially separate the procurement of ICT from that of the LEP and construction under certain conditions from Wave 7 onwards.  This is supposedly to accelerate progress and spending, thus allowing educational transformation to be started early from an ICT perspective.

It is no secret that both RM and Microsoft have been lobbying Jim Knight and P4S for this for sometime.  P4S have always stated that they wanted to retain joint procurement as it ensures that ICT and buildings are closely integrated.  However, with the pressure from the recession it seems that any form of accelerated spending seems the order of the day.

At BSF Conversations we believe that this is a VERY BAD idea and undermines one of the key aims of BSF.  You only need to look at a number of schools being delivered right now from separate procurement processes to see how poor the integration of the building and ICT is and how much money and potential has been wasted as a result.

Furthermore, the proposed model of selecting the ICT partner and then getting them to work with the two remaining bidders to ensure that there is some integration is, in our humble opinion, fraught with danger.  Most ICT suppliers have preferred construction firms / consortia.  It would seem almost super human to put these allegiances completely to one side.

If ICT spending must be accelerated then the one thing that could meaningfully be procured in advance could be the Learning Platform.  However some forward thinking Local Authorities, such as Wolverhampton and Sandwell,  are approaching this by seeking to contract the Learning Platform within 12 month of Financial Close, thereby getting transformational services delivered early whilst still ensuring the the buildings and ICT are tightly integrated.

1:1 Device Ownership

This is a topic I can clearly see both side of the argument. Most authorities through BSF are leaning towards the specification of a 1:1 device ratio and many towards personal devices. At the moment I don’t know which one is best and would welcome comments / discussion.

Pros

* students learn to take responsibility for the device (charging, keep intact etc)
* helps them become a knowledge worker / learner
* support personalised learning
* helps eliminate digital divide
* students can make the device personal

Cons

* students lose, break, damage device often
* no affordable device suitable today
* places huge admin burden on school / ICT techs
* poor spend of limited resources
* need refreshing often
* disruptive – charging etc during lessons

I guess a good question might be is ‘ how would you feel towards and treat a laptop that you had to hand back in at the end of each day, rather than one you were trusted to look after?’

This post was orginally placed on Andy Davies’s Blog.

Personal Learning Devices – Conversation Number 1

Well finally we got the first episode done (this is the hard one surely?). In this episode we kick things off with some background to this series of podcasts. Our main subject of conversation is the topical issue of a personal learning device. 48 minutes turned out not long enough to do this subject justice and I think we will be returning here in the future. Feedback is really encouraged, as are suggestions for future topics and offers to join in on a future conversations.

Listen and subscibe on itunes via the Itunes Music Store (under Education|Educational Technology) or listen here!