Further to my recent post about the 100 ways Google can make you a better educator, Google themselves have published a comprehensive overview of support, tips and tutorials for using the Google apps in education all neatly presented on a LiveBinder. This will be an essential bookmarked site I’d imagine for any teacher who is keen on exploring ways of using these apps with educative purpose. There’s a host of tutorials in the form of video and text, some of which are also graded for beginner, intermediate and advanced. This binder brings together all of the things that you’d otherwise have to delve off into a number of areas to find – and is yet another great example of how LiveBinder can be used so effectively.

While on the topic of using Google in education, yesterday’s post on the RWW titled
When K-12 Moves to the Cloud highlights a point I made in the earlier post – that the use of cloud-based applications such as Google Apps is about more than simply saving money. In their article, the RWW team summarise what is happening in various places in the US, highlighting the fact that in addition to the obvious cost-saving and technical support benefits that come from this move, there is also an emerging cultural shift in schools.

Signs of this culture shift highlighted in the article include:

• increased collaboration between teachers and schools
• participation in personal learning networks for professional growth and development
• resource sharing, including the collaborative development of open-source text books

As Howard Chan, the Director of Technology for K-12 public charter schools in San Diego, California, is quoted, “having a centralized depository for disseminating information has changed the culture of our school. Now there is a platform for distributing information in real time and archiving information for future use.”

Seems that Google’s suite of tools and applications are being adopted by educators in ever increasing numbers – two reasons spring immediately to mind; they are cloud-based (which means they can be accessed from anywhere, at any time etc.) and they are free! Means that for students wanting to follow up on their work at home cost and access are not an issue.

So it’s with interest that I browsed the list of 100 Ways Google Can Make You a Better Educator, compiled by the keepers of the Online Education Database. The list is neatly broken down under headings, classifying the various ways in which Google apps can be used, including communications, news, maps, images and tools for organising. For those who are looking for some good ideas for the classroom this list will keep you going for a while

News just out here in the UK is of plans to develop project to build a shared cloud infrastructure for all government departments – announced yesterday at the Future of the Data Centre conference happening over here at the moment.

According to the release the UK government’s Cabinet Office plans to create a so-called ‘skunk works’ team to develop better ways to manage IT projects.
The proposal was revealed in a strategy document published this week, entitled the ‘Structural Reform Plan’’, which proposes a number of IT-related reforms.

This will be an interesting development to watch – thanks Malcolm for the alert

I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to London, and came across this great little app while surfing.

Called MightMeeting, it allows you to manage a library of PowerPoint presentations directly from your smartphone or tablet. You can share them via email, blog, Twitter, or Facebook. You can start or join web meetings directly from your laptop, iPhone, iPad, or an Android phone.

I’ve managed to create an account and upload a trial presentation. Was very intuitive and user friendly. The process of setting up a meeting is also straight forward – simply select the file you want, then invite the people you want to join you. Once the meeting is started you have control over the progression of the slides etc, and there is a convenient chat facility accessible via one of the tabs on screen. It’s in Beta form at the moment and free to try, but if it works the way it says it does this could be a very useful app for me!

I had the opportunity today to visit the Warwickshire Education Services in Warwick, and their ICT Development Services team who provide a “one-stop-shop” for  ICT services for schools in the Warwickshire Local Authority. The authority provides services to 249 schools (36 Secondary and 213 primary, nursery and specialist schools) – a total of around 80,000 learners and 15,500 teaching and support staff.

I was generously hosted by Chris Page who has worked as Technical Development Manager there for more than 15 years, during which time the authority has seen a lot of development in terms of the ICT systems and infrastructure linking all the schools. IT was a wonderfully insightful meeting and tour of their facility, providing me with some useful insights that I can take back with me to New Zealand where we’re in the process of building regional school networks based on fibre connectivity.

Key features of what I saw include:

• All schools in the authority are using a common student management system – SIMS by Capita
• There is also a common portal service (Sharepoint-based) and VLE (RM provided) for all schools
• All students in Warwickshire schools are entered into a common identity database on entry to school – making the issue of IAM straightforward to deal with, and enabling the movement of students between and among schools etc. to be more easily managed.
• Use of SWIVEL to enable two factor authentication for access – assures greater security without creating more layers of interface for the user.
• Funding for support for ICT in schools is on a user-pays basis by the Ed Services group, and is provided on a subscription system.
• They have adopted the SIF protocol for data interoperability between systems.
• IAM process and SIF usage also enables common access to a variety of services, including the learning portal, the VLE, SIMS, cashless catering, absences and reporting etc.
• Strong emphasis on user support and professional development in all of the planning and visioning of programmes
• Implemented solutions to address the Parental Engagement Agenda, using an application called Insight by Tasq, that draws data from the MIS package and presents it in a form for parents to access – including an iPhone app that is in development.
• Strong emphasis on cyber safety and monitoring of online usage – including the use of monitoring and filtering software from Forensic Software that is installed and managed by the ICT Services group, and also WebSense, used to monitor much of the admin application usage.
• Well developed disaster recovery procedures, with data centres located in four parts of the region, each connected by fibre with regular backups scheduled etc. The software used allows for the virtual backup of all machines (including teacher and student laptops) in all schools on the network.
• All computers in schools are managed using an imaging process, allowing for remote updating etc through a virtualised environment, using Microsoft’s VMware and MS HyperV server technology. In this way the ICT services group are able to set up a new school installation in a morning.

I’m sure I’ll surface more thoughts once I’ve reviewed my notes more – but the key thing I came away with was a confirmed understanding of the importance of a comprehensive approach to IAM at the centre of a shared services infrastructure, and the importance of a common data interoperability framework to enable discrete systems to talk to each-other (or at least share data!)

There are a number of examples and case studies of the work they do available online, including:

• Avon Valley
• North Leamington School
• Ash Green
• Wembrook Primary (Snapshot produced by the WES film unit)
• North Leamington Video or  North Leamington Video blog entry

Today I presented CORE’s ten trends for 2010 to an audience of around 400 delegates at the Learning@School conference in Rotorua. The ten trends are a collection of themes and issues that have been identified by CORE staff as trends in education that we imagine will impact on the work of teachers and leaders in early childhood centres, schools, and tertiary institutions in NZ in the coming year. While our focus is on the bigger picture of education, there is a focus on trends associated with the use of ICTs in education, reflecting the fact that we are living in a world where nearly everything we do has a digital dimension.

Commoncraft have just released a 3 min intro to the basics of cloud computing which is a welcome addition to the great work they do. An evaluation copy of the video is available to view here.

Using a simple story of a growing florist business, this video explains the basics of cloud computing: how it works and why it makes sense for businesses and individuals.

• The difference between on-site computing and cloud computing
• The financial benefits of cloud computing
• What makes cloud computing secure and efficient
• How cloud computing impacts consumers

Purchase details are included on their site.

I had the privilege today of attending day one of the 6th annual JISC CETIS conference “A Brave New World?” , held at the The Lakeside, Conference Aston, Birmingham. The conference is billed as an opportunity reflect on the successes and challenges of the previous year, to look into the future, to speculate, and to consider the interventions needed to realise the information systems for teaching and learning into the future.

For me it was an opportunity to link again with several people I’ve come to know over the years through my work in the area of ICT in education, standards, interoperability etc. It was particularly good to be there for the farewell to Oleg Liber, professor of eLearning at Bolton University and the outgoing director of CETIS. I’ve met Oleg on a number of occasions in the past and have a great regard for his work, particularly in the area of educational cybernetics and his visioning the future of online learning environments.

Opening keynote was Chris Cobb, pro vice chancellor, Roehampton University. His talk was titled: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change…” Chris noted that this quote has previously been attributed to Charles Darwin, but was actually said by Clarence Darrow, an early 20^th Century Lawyer working out of New York! Chris used a variety of Darrow’s other quotes through his talk.

Chris’s address was a stimulating vision of the future from the perspective of a University administrator with an IT background. His main thrust was about how a SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) is going to unlock a lot of the systems we have in our world today. Chris believes believes there’ll be a move away from ERP systems – huge, monolithic products etc. and move towards a suite of interoperable services. He provided a range of examples of the use of Software as a Service (SaaS) being used to illustrate the benefits of this approach over the current ‘enterprise architecture’ approach and the bloated, monolithic systems that inhabit it. This future will see lots of smaller suppliers delivering things in a different way, resulting in a more agile, responsive approach.

Some of the examples he shared were:

• WPM – hosted automatic online payment system – now used by dozens of universities. Includes online shop feature etc – Birmingham University – using a cloud-based, software as a service approach
• The Princeton Review – shared service for post graduate admissions – also “Graduate Advantage” – online application form delivered to institutions, fast turnaround, information ported into SMS etc (a brokerage service)
• campus M – providing mobile apps (downloadable) that link into core corporate systems and allow download into mobile device – eg links into library management systems, uses GPS technology to help students find where they are on their campus, alerts to timetable system etc. Hosted environment – nothing in the institution itself. Breaking the mould of what a university has always done.
• Student Pad – hosted environment for institution to put their own private landlord information on it.
• Careers – eg Target Connect, Olivedon
• Reading list – eg TALIS Aspire – links reading list to library catalogue – marketed to TALIS and non-TALIS users. Allows users to see books from their reading list in the local library and also in local bookshops

A useful resource Chris pointed us to is an article titled Painting the Clouds by Colin Currie, published by Educause. The article provides a balanced view of the issues involved in shifting the administration of IT functions to external entities.

The 2009 Horizon Report (NZ and Australian edition) was released today at the National Broadband Network Symposium at Griffith University.

Again this year I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the development of this report – and again, I feel the value for me has been in the rigor of the thinking and exchanges that took place in deciding what things should be included and what should be left out (and why etc).

This year’s report has the usual list of technologies to watch out for, and the possible impact on education – plus it has some interesting sections on future trends and critical challenges.

The technologies to watch as decided by this year’s panel of contributors are:

One year or less to adoption

• Mobile internet devices
• private clouds

Two to three years

• Open content
• Virtual, augmented and alternate realities

Four to five years

• Location-based learning
• Smart objects and devices

This year’s report provides some excellent background on each of these technologies, and has a list of examples (with links) for you to go and explore further if there are things there you’re not familiar with, or if you simply want to learn more.

The rigor of the debate about what to include and what to leave out inevitably led to a lot of discussion around the complexity of inter-related issues and concerns that come to play with the adoption of technology and trying to anticipate its impact on learning. In this year’s report I’m particularly interested in the summary of the ‘critical challenges’ that emerged from the group’s work – as I believe these are (or should be) of more interest to the future planners in our education system, school leaders etc, than simply trying to second-guess what technologies will emerge.

Here are the challenges that are identified:

1. Practices for evaluating student work will evolve in response to the changing nature of learning and student preferences for receiving feedback.
2. Ageing learning environments do not easily allow for embracing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), or enable the sorts of learning support systems being promoted by modern theorists.
3. There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.
4. There is a growing recognition that new technologies must be adopted and used as an everyday part of classroom activities, but effecting this change is difficult.

These issues are expanded on in brief in the report – and are worth exploring further in staffrooms and professional development meetings as we prepare to enter the second decade of the 21st century!

Download PDF of the report here

With all the talk about the ‘cloud’ and opportunities it creates for schools to re-think their ICT infrastructure, one of the terms that is also appearing in people’s vocabulary is Software as a Service (SaaS).

SaaS refers to computer applications that are delivered over the web as a service rather than being physically installed on school servers or individual desktops.

This morning I downloaded a free e-book from Tech&Learning titled “A guide to software as a service in education” which provides a very readable summary and introduction to what this is all about. While written for the US context, there’s plenty of useful information in here for those embarking on understanding what SaaS is all about.