Kerry Turner (Twitter feed – http://twitter.com/4goggas) kicked off the conference by explaining how schools should start exploring ways to bridge the great divide between the “technophobes” and the “technocrats” in the classroom. For me, this formed the premise of the conference – finding the balance between engaging pupils, maintaining a teacher’s confidence in the technology and using the latest online applications to your advantage.

José Picardo’s (Twitter feed – http://twitter.com/josepicardo) demo showing how he uses Web 2.0 applications for his language lessons was fascinating. All the more valuable when considering that the technology was free and seemed like such a great way to maintain the engagement with pupils. The talking hot dog from voki.com was my personal favourite! The theme of collaboration in José’s talk was also evident in a presentation by Alex and Oliver from Bedford School who demonstrated Google Wave. Where José explained that using an online tool allowed his pupils to peer review each other, Alex and Oliver showed how their class undertook a Geography research project via Google Wave.

Ian Yorston’s (Twitter Feed - http://twitter.com/IanYorston) presentation titled “Why we don’t need teachers” was very interesting. I must admit I was a little sceptical when I first saw the title, but Ian explained that teaching in the traditional sense would need to change to accommodate new technology. His anecdote about the point of creating hand-outs particularly struck a chord with the audience. Melanie Strickland followed with a talk about social media and the law reminding us that the Internet does have a shady side and that schools should be aware of this when embracing new technology.

Mike Munn from Apple gave a great presentation about iTunesU and how it can be of benefit to schools and pupils…or anyone in fact. With over 350,000 pieces of audio, video or written content available to download, it’s definitely a source of information worth tapping in to. For those who were not able to see the video that Mike played, I recommend watching Walter Lewin’s (MIT) Physics videos here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=341599916 as they are a great example of how iTunesU opens lessons and subjects up to a worldwide audience.

Ruth Goddard and Dave Mellor from AQA gave a great presentation about how e-assessment could be used in the future. Still in the pilot stage, the audience were treated to a preview of what an exam paper of the future may look like. I was personally very excited about this, having taken online exams before and been faced with a boring multiple choice test – these questions were interactive, tracked how pupils had arrived at their answer and provided online “tools” for the students. It was very exciting to think that exams of the future may not be like the ones I took in a dusty school hall!

The afternoon concluded with a talk from Kathryn McCaulay and Ian Philips (Twitter Feed - http://twitter.com/IanHabs) about the strategic side of moving to new technologies. I found that Ian’s experiences with upgrading their VLE very interesting as they were also similar to my own experiences when upgrading ISC’s servers. His point about not being afraid to make small mistakes was absolutely correct, as with anything in life this is how we learn and gain more experience.

The main points I took away from the day are that online tools are a great way for a class to work together. Pupils are able to utilise the existing knowledge that they have of using web 2.0 applications and bring it in to the classroom. Teachers should have no reason to be worried about this new technology, but should look at ways to embrace it. The role of the teacher will not be replaced, but will be enhanced. Is this all a fairy tale? I personally believe it’s going to be reality.

Related posts:

1. How can schools think strategically to cope better with the rapidly changing digital landscape?
2. Embracing the future of learning
3. Dynamic learning through 3D technologies

Schools increasingly have to deal with Facebook-related problems, including cyber bullying, defamatory posts, safeguarding and data protection/ privacy concerns. As social networking sites are here to stay, it makes sense for educators to understand what they are about and how you can help your pupils manage their online activities responsibly and safely. A strategy of managing and minimising risk is likely to be most effective.

If you find yourself in a situation where it is necessary to remove content from a Facebook page, here’s how you can go about it:

1. If the material is posted by a student, the easiest way to remove content is to ask the student to log in and to delete it themselves, and get them to show this to you. If the student has set up a Facebook group, they can delete the group by deleting all the other members, and then themselves.

2. If the comment is illegal or malicious, or raises serious safeguarding issues, consider referring the matter to the police/ social services at the outset.  

3. Contact the parents of the student who posted the material. Support from the parents can speed up the process and encourage the student to take the matter seriously and respond swiftly. 

4. Contact Facebook and ask them to remove the material. Facebook’s terms impose obligations for users not to bully, intimidate, or harass other users. Also, they must not post defamatory comments, or post hateful or threatening content. Registered users of Facebook can report abusive content by clicking on the ‘report’ link next to the content itself. However, school staff may not be registered users and schools have reported that Facebook are not always helpful or speedy in responding to requests to take down content.

5. Bear in mind that confiscation of electronic devices may be an appropriate sanction the circumstances. (But do review your disciplinary and acceptable use policy.)

You may also be interested in accessing Facebook’s ‘Safety for Educators’ page: http://www.facebook.com/help/?safety=educators (and you don’t need to be a user to do this). 

Related posts:

1. ICT Advice: How to get adverse material removed from websites
2. Online safety – ClickCEOP application launched on Facebook
3. The Appropriate Relationship between staff and pupils in cyberspace

Overview
The smart phone is an example of the convergence of many devices. The mobile phone, PDA, camera and laptop.

Mobile phones were small pocket sized devices which allowed instant communication ‘anywhere anytime’. Laptop computers allow users to work on the move. A PDA was originally a smaller handheld device for managing contacts, appointments, tasks and other Filo-Fax features.

All are ‘portable’ devices, and now there are a whole range of devices with a mixture of old and new features. Indeed laptops can now have ‘mobile phone’ facilities built in, and ‘smart phones’ and PDAs now have many of the facilities we are used to in laptops.

You used to use a laptop because it had the same ‘Office’ software as your PC – word processing, spreadsheets, etc. and because the bigger screen and keyboard makes it easier to see and use. Now you also expect it to be able to use a wide range of features including the ability to connect to a wireless or phone network, browse the web and send and receive emails.

But now your smart phone can connect to wireless and/or phone networks, web browse, send and receive emails, and some of the more sophisticated can run office applications like word processors and spreadsheets. It almost certainly has a reasonable quality camera and/or video camera. Many can store considerable quantities of ‘iTunes’ like material, which could include music, MFL audio material or GCSE revision podcasts.

It is likely that your pupils carry around at least one such device. The challenge is to understand how these can be used to enhance learning and what difficulties they will present to the school.

What you need to know
What your pupils can (probably) do now:

• Signal permitting smart phones can access the internet, make calls, send texts and emails. They can connect to Wi-Fi networks and other Blue tooth devices all whilst in your class.
• They can connect to the School Wi-Fi network system in order to access your school network resources (email, fileservers, web browsing).
  Using their mobile device they may be able to browse to any web site (including unsatisfactory sites), because they are not going through the School Web Filter. The phone will only have the safe search filtering provided by the phone network.
• They could take and edit notes, photographs, video of a science experiment, email it to the teacher at the front of the class or upload it to YouTube or another web site, within the space of a few minutes.
• They may be able to connect their laptop (or another pupil’s laptop) via Bluetooth or similar technology, through their phone so that they can web browse (from a laptop) without going through the School Web Filter whilst exchanging files and/or controlling devices.

What you might like to discuss:

• What educational resources can we provide in ‘iPod’ format for pupils to use on their devices on the way to and from school?
• What benefits are there in allowing the use of cameras in lessons, particularly practicals, and allowing independent web browsing for research during lessons? 
• Should they be using social networking applications like Facebook, Myspace, DIGG to share information and understand a breadth of opinions from different cultures and situations in a very short time?
• Should we be making use of text messaging to communicate with pupils and/or parents?
• To what extent do we want to restrict pupil use of these smart phones at school as this would impact on how the whole school community uses this technology?

What you might do next:

• Consider carrying out a small controlled trial with a good chance of success and ICT support to assess the value of Smart Phones for your school. 
• Look at your policies. It is better not to create special policies for ICT issues other than the acceptable use policy (AUP). The AUP should be signed by student, countersigned by a parent or guardian and held by the school. It is better to ensure that your school rules and policies cover the use and misuse of these devices, whether explicitly (difficult, as the technologies are ever-changing) or implicitly.
• The taking of photos/videos, and the potential for distributing and/or publishing these may require special thought, and dealing with copyright, data protection, performance rights etc. require particular care when dealing with these small devices.
• Ensure that your pastoral and PHSE programmes include educating your pupils in the safe and appropriate use of these devices. There are a great many useful national initiatives to support raising awareness of both students and parents.
• Work with an external organisation to hold parent and student sessions. Use these to explain what the school is doing and how parents can support the school to keep pupils safe.
• Consider the costs and implications of providing easy but secure Wi-Fi access for pupils and staff to use these devices at school, and/or to access information and school network facilities while on the move.

Related posts:

1. ICT Advice: Wi-Fi
2. ICT Advice: Cloud Computing Explained

What you need to know

With a lower specification computer, good bandwidth and a browser the user can go onto the internet, access and manage:

• Cloud Infrastructure – servers, networks and related hardware held in data centres worldwide. Part or all of the School’s technical infrastructure can be hosted in a data centre.
• Cloud Platform – the infrastructure applications/operating platforms eg. Microsoft Azure. The data centre infrastructure can run the operating platform for the School.
• Cloud Applications – The School can manage its own software using the data centre and it can also use available free or paid for applications eg. Google mail and docs, Office online.

The Old Way (in-school hosted data and systems)

• Purchase desktop computers and servers with the knowledge you will need to dedicate a good deal of future investment to upgrade storage space or specification to provide for new technological development.
• Finance and manage an in-house large technical team which deals with all aspects of ICT – Academic and School Information Management systems.

This is what many schools are used to doing. As a school decides to upgrade and spend a good deal of money on ICT infrastructure it should consider whether a large investment for similar provision is needed or whether a combination of in school and Cloud services would save money and allow more flexibility in the future.

The New Way (Cloud – hosting data and systems in external data centres)

• Purchase a ‘pay as you go’ option for server space (or even data centre rack space and install your own servers), server operating platform, software applications, volume of data storage needed and technical assistance to set up, back up and maintain it all.
• These ‘off the shelf’ ICT products are scalable (you only buy the amount you need) and flexible (you can increase or change the provision quickly and easily).

What You Need To Consider

• Some schools already use some Cloud services eg. Google docs, Google mail or similar. Few schools have yet to move many of their systems onto ‘The Cloud’.
• Some businesses and schools are worried that hosting data and services off-site may compromise data security and reduce the control of access to data. Even Google and Twitter have suffered when internet traffic problems or hacking have resulted in data centre systems being affected.
• The next 12 to 24 months will see improvements in bandwidth provision and data centre services. There are already providers offering Education a similar service to that established for Business. As user confidence grows and acceptance of The Cloud as a basis for ICT service provision it is predicated by many to become the preferred choice for the provision of systems that manage ICT data for schools.
• It is likely we will have an interim period of adoption (possibly the next 1 to 2 years) of some new Cloud services while other traditional services are still hosted in schools.
• The strategy for development of virtualised servers in schools and use of Wi-Fi, Mobile Devices and Thin Client technology integrates with the procurement of Cloud services . The ISC has a wide variety of ICT Strategy Discussion Papers that can give helpful information on these subjects.

What You Might Like To Discuss

• Your infrastructure solution should match the particular needs of your School. There are excellent cost effective solutions available. The knowledge, wisdom and experience of your ICT Academic Senior managers and your ICT Technical leaders are the essentials in your strategic development. The ICT purchases only provide the tools for the new work.
• Many schools have ICT infrastructure which will need a major upgrade in the immediate future. The potential low cost of services on The Cloud will make this a very attractive option and the security concerns of concern to many (data held offsite, possibly in another country, without as much control in protecting the data) will be minimised to an acceptable level as time goes on. An intermediate approach is to choose The Cloud for one or two solutions and then increasing as the School develops experience and capability in use.
• When planning your ICT strategy consider how your technical team may need to develop skills in management of these offsite services as well as how you would like the team to be deployed more in the support of the hands-on pupil and staff user.
• Consider whether you need to invest in your internet bandwidth provision for School as multiple connection to wide scale Cloud services needs very good bandwidth.
• Consider reading these two books by Nicholas Carr to stimulate debate in the context of your School’s needs:
  • Does IT Matter ISBN 1591394449
  • The Big Switch – From Edison To Google ISBN 039306228

Download a PDF of this here.

Related posts:

1. ICT Advice: Management Information Systems
2. ICT Advice: Wi-Fi
3. ICT ADVICE: Smart Phones meet classrooms

What you need to know:
- Schools face a new problem: it is has never been easier to publish information and schools have no control over what is published.
- Videos, pictures, articles and comments can be published on the internet instantaneously.  There is little effective regulation or restriction on what can be published.
- Schools cannot prevent the publication of material. Anyone with a grudge or an axe to grind can reach a world-wide audience immediately.
- Some schools have experienced problems of pupils and former pupils posting defamatory information about the school, its staff and pupils; video clips of lessons; or of pupils behaving badly.
- Those who create these sites or forums have administrative control of the sites and, in most cases, there is little that the school can do to ‘edit’ what is posted on the site.

Some of the key sites used by pupils
- www.youtube.com. This is a very popular site for posting video material. On the one hand it is a great teaching resource; but it is possible to post videos of lessons, pranks, and pupils behaving badly.
- Social networking sites including Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. Pupils can post pictures and videos on their own areas. Pupils and former pupils have set up ‘groups’ for most of the schools in the country.
- Rate your Teacher (www.rateyourteacher.com) – this is a site where pupils can write comments about their teachers and give them a rating.
- Unofficial websites purporting to be the school’s official website.
- There have been instances when parents or pupils have purchased domain names (website names) which are very similar to the official school site name (eg. …..school.co.uk rather than ……school.org.uk).

What you might do next
Monitor key sites regularly by logging onto each site and using the site search facility (tag) putting in the name of your school.
Purchase all of the domain names relating to your school ( ….school.org.uk, ….school.org; ….school.com; …school.co.uk; ….school.sch.county.uk etc.)
In most cases, for instance when there is another organisation of the same or similar name, the school will often have a right to own the domain names.
Some schools have trademarked™ their school names and logos.

Practical advice on getting material removed from websbsites
1. Contact the website administrators, (eg. of YouTube or Facebook)
- Schools have enjoyed varying degrees of success in getting material removed by administrators.
- Administrators are usually supportive if there is a child protection issue.
- They often take the stance that if the material does not break their publication rules (ie. that the person posting the material has the right to do so and that it is not pornographic etc), there is a freedom of publication and that schools do not have any right to regulate the material just because they don’t like the content
- Schools do not have the right to regulate material just because they don’t like it
- Rateyourteacher.com is generally very unsympathetic
- Administrators are responsive if there is an issue of libel. So the material has to be defamatory and untrue. Opinion (as opposed to what is purported to be objective material) is more difficult to deal with as any opinion “honestly held” is not regarded as libel unless it contains untrue facts.

2. Contact the person who posted the material or who administers the forum.
- This is the easiest and the most effective way of getting material removed from a site.
- Some schools have encouraged “on board” pupils in the school to persuade other pupils that they should remove material (“pride in the school”, “reflects badly on us all” etc). Pupils usually know who posted the material on the website.

3. Contact the parents of the person who posted the material, or who administers the forum.
- Where the publisher is a pupil, some schools have found that the most effective technique is to write to their parents.
- In one case where a video of a very drunk pupil in boarding house had been posted on YouTube, the headteacher wrote to the parents explaining the long-term danger to the reputation of the pupil.

Useful Phrases:
- I am very concerned that this particular footage is extremely unflattering for <your child> and could have serious repercussions in the future.
- Some employers are beginning to use social networking sites to vet potential employees: http://www.collegejournal.com/columnists/thejungle/20041018-jungle.html; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11recruit.html?

The legal route
- Is the content defamatory of you, your school, or another member of staff?
- Are the damaging facts untrue?
- If the content is damaging and untrue, you may contact all of the websites who are publishing the content and ask them to remove it pending libel action. You may also contact internet service providers such as BT Internet, Tiscali, AOL etc. ISPs are not generally considered liable as long as they act to take down potentially libellous material when notified.

Related posts:

1. How to get adverse material removed from a Facebook page
2. The Appropriate Relationship between staff and pupils in cyberspace
3. ICT Advice: Wi-Fi

What you need to know
School Management Information Systems (MIS) should:
- reduce bureaucratic burdens by reducing time spent on administration;
- raise standards through enabling collaborative working to provide the knowledge needed for assessment and self evaluation;
- provide more time and information to support teachers and parents so that they can take an active role in the child’s education;
- create better informed management.

MIS can now be used as an essential business tool for day-to-day school management and accountability.
- Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) linked with a school’s MIS can provide opportunities to develop the school’s analytical and reporting functions.
- The Government’s e-Strategy will make heavy demands on the use of information to inform the public, support learners, transform teaching, learning and assessment, and assure the effectiveness of the education system itself.

What you might like to discuss
- Does your MIS system help you with the above
- Are you able to use your electronic data to improve how you teach, learn and assess?
- Is the information you get from data transfer with other schools what you need?

Checklist – is your MIS:
- Future proof?
- Low profile – integrated (functionally and at a database level) with seamless upgrades?
- Easy to maintain?
- Intuitive and easy to use. Does it use skills staff have learnt elsewhere?
- Expandable in the future?
- Resilient – up and running without failure on a regular basis?

What you might consisider doing next
- Ask key staff to use a self evaluation tool and compare the responses.
www.new-media-learning.com/data_confident_print.htm
- Consider the use of analytical tools that work with your MIS to enable you to explore achievement issues.
http://4matrix.org/4Matrix_example_reports.pdf

Further reading:
- Government website – www.teachernet.gov.uk/ims
- Becta Expert Seminar on MIS http://www.becta.org.uk/etseminars/presentations/index.cfm?seminar_id=14&section=7_1

Related posts:

1. ICT Advice: Cloud Computing Explained
2. ICT Advice: Wi-Fi
3. ICT Advice: How to get adverse material removed from websites

What do you need to know

• Social Networking Sites [e.g. www.Facebook.com facilitate the sharing of up-to-date personal information including photographs and videos with ‘Friends’.
• These sites are not totally open to the public. The user can determine with whom they choose to share their information by accepting them as a ‘Friend’.
  - Users can request that they and other users become ‘Friends’
  - Users can either accept or refuse requests to become a ‘Friend’.
  - Once a Friend the other user will be able to see and download any pictures or information on the site.
  - Some sites [e.g. Facebook] allow for different levels of information to be available to Friends
• Thus, Staff and pupils who are ‘Friends’ on a social networking site are likely to have access to each other’s personal information, including any pictures and videos that have been posted there.
• Established principles that staff do not socialise with pupils in their private lives are challenged by the use of these sites.

What you might like to discuss:

• Under what circumstances, if any, should staff and pupils be ‘Friends’ on a Social Networking Site
• What advice should Schools give to staff about their use of Social Networking Sites so that staff can protect themselves from an accusation of behaving unprofessionally?
• How will the school management police your decisions?
• How will the school respond when it becomes apparent that a member of staff has known through a social networking site that pupils are at risk [e.g. having under age sex, taking drugs] but did not inform the school?
• How will the school respond when a video of one of the staff drunk at a party with their friends circulates around the sixth form at school?

What you might consider doing next

• Drafting a policy for the Staff Handbook

The Debate
All contact between staff and pupils in this forum is inappropriate

• Teachers are expected to keep a professional distance from the pupils whom they teach.
• There should be a clear separation of the private social lives of teachers and that of pupils. It would be
  inappropriate for a teacher to go clubbing with a sixth former, or to share details of their private life with them.
• There is no need for social networking to go on between staff and pupils. There is no clear educational benefit.
• Schools need to protect both staff and pupils and the easiest way to do this is to have a policy that deems this inappropriate.

Having contact with pupils on a Social Networking site should be permitted

• Teachers should be allowed to exercise their professional judgment as to what personal information they choose to share with pupils.
• It may be prudent and appropriate for schools to advise staff not to post any information which would
  compromise their position and authority as a teacher in the school. The use of allowing pupils to see limited profiles may be the best way to achieve this.
• It is impossible to police any regulation that is made by a school as the use of social networking sites is a major part of the leisure time of many users.

Download a pdf of this here

Related posts:

1. Cyberspace: facing up to reality (I)
2. Cyberspace: facing up to reality (Part 2)
3. How to get adverse material removed from a Facebook page

Wi-fi is being used increasingly as an easy means of accessing information while on the move, whether around the campus or outside the campus.

What you need to know

Devices
- Traditionally, laptops have been able to access networks wirelessly, and most laptops now have this facility built in.
- Many phones and palmtops (PDAs) carried by pupils now have wireless built in, and these can access a network or the internet in the same way as a laptop.
- Once connected to a wi-fi network, users can access the Internet, emails, and most facilities that would be available over a conventional cabled network.
- Phones, PDAs and increasingly laptops can also access network facilities (e.g. the Internet) via the ‘mobile phone’ networks, which is of course wireless.

Provision of wi-fi within your school
- If you decide to provide wi-fi access to your network, it could enable your staff, pupils, guests (and possibly even strangers walking past the school), to use your network from any wi-fi enabled device (laptop, mobile phone, etc.)
- You need to decide whether you wish to go down this line, and if so what security measures you are going to implement.

Provision of wi-fi near your school
- If there are domestic or business properties near your school, or your boarding houses, it may be possible for your pupils to connect to these wi-fi networks and use their network rather than the school’s (filtered) Internet connection.
- In principle, these domestic/business systems should be secured so as not to allow this, but experience has shown that many are left ‘open’.
- Some companies (MacDonald’s) and some wide areas (Milton Keynes, Cambridge etc.) have decided to provide wi-fi areas for free or chargeable access to anyone.

Security considerations
- Users would potentially have the same facilities available to them as if they were plugged into the cable network.
- You must ensure that the system allows you to restrict access, and/or restrict what facilities are available to anyone connecting.
- Many of the modern ‘wi-fi management’ systems allow you to decide exactly what, say, a visitor to the school could access via your wi-fi system.

Health risks
- There are some who think that there might be health risks to users of wi-fi, or that some individuals might be susceptible to the wireless radiation.
- There is as yet little scientific evidence of this, and much scientific theory which dispels the theory.

What you might like to discuss
Are we going to provide a wi-fi facility at school, and if so will it be site-wide, or restricted to certain areas?

- How refined do we need the management and security to be?
- Are we going to allow access through ‘non-laptop’ devices, such as PDAs and phones?
- Have we got the expertise within the school to answer these questions, or do we need to bring in external consultants?
- Are we proposing that visitors to the school might be allowed access to certain facilities?

Are there potential risks of our pupils using neighbouring unfiltered wi-fi (in domestic or business properties) and if so how should we deal with this?

What you might consider doing next
Review any existing wi-fi coverage, both from the viewpoint of coverage, and of security and other issues.
Discuss the advantages or otherwise of providing (more) wi-fi coverage within the school.

Related posts:

1. ICT ADVICE: Smart Phones meet classrooms
2. ICT Advice: How to get adverse material removed from websites
3. ICT Advice: Cloud Computing Explained

1. If there were a major fire in the server room, how long it would be before each of these services would be restored.  List . . e.g. email, School MIS, etc.

2. If a generous donation of £250,000 was given to the School specifically for ICT developments (in addition to the normal budget) what would you recommend we spent it on, and what would be the advantages for the School and end users (Pupils, Staff, Parents)?

3. If your budget was suddenly cut by 50%, how could you cope, and what would be the effects on the School and the end users?

4. For each member of your technical staff (including yourself) what would be the immediate effect on the running of the system if they suddenly (with no notice) left.  What specific tasks would it be difficult for the others on your team to perform, and how long might it take to recover fully from the loss?  Is there adequate documentation to minimise such a problem?

5. What would be the effect of our main Internet connection being severed by a JCB somewhere?  What services would we lose?  Have we any backup systems in place, or would they have also been severed by the same JCB?

6. Can you show me any records of the systems’ reliability over the past 12 months?  Do you regard the reliability as acceptable?  If not, how could we improve it and how much would it cost?

7. What might happen if a major incident occurs while you (or any one specific member of your staff) are away on holiday abroad for 2 weeks?

8. How many individuals are sufficiently privileged administrators that they can see my (the Head’s) documents, emails, etc.?

9. If a pupil got hold of a staff password, and started using it, how would we ever know, and how long might it take?

10. Can you retrieve a file which was last seen one month ago, and how long would it take to retrieve?

Download a pdf of 10 questions to ask your ICT manager here.

Related posts:

1. The Appropriate Relationship between staff and pupils in cyberspace
2. ICT Advice: Wi-Fi
3. Special Educational Needs (SEN) and Independent Schools