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?.