10 Questions to ask your IT Manager (that s/he doesn't want to be asked).

These questions were drafted in order to empower school leaders to take greater ownership of the key strategic area of IT in schools.

1. If there was a major fire in the server room, how long would it be before each of these services could be restored: email, telephones, school MIS and accounts?
2. If a generous donation of £250,000 was given to the school specifically for IT 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. 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? 
5. 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? 
6. 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? 
7. How many individuals are sufficiently privileged administrators that they can see my (the Head's) documents, emails, etc.? 
8. If a pupil got hold of a staff password, and started using it, how would we ever know, and how long might it take to find out? 
9. Can you retrieve a file which was last seen one month ago, and how long would it take to retrieve? 
10. 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?

These questions were drafted by the ISC IT Strategy Group in 2009. 

ICT and its impact on Schools Infrastructure, teaching and learning

Keynote speech at the haysmacintyre Schools' Conference at Drapers' Hall, 30/01/2013

 

What Heads need to know about ICT: Structures and People

My article on What Heads need to know about ICT: Structures and People has just been published in the Independent Schools' Council Bulletin 26 - May 2010 pp. 29-33.

Click here to download the Bulletin in pdf format.

School ICT - Be clear about what you want from your ICT team.

It is very easy to blame the ICT team for the poor performance of a School Network, but the School Leadership team needs to recognise the part that it should play in making strategic decisions about what is and what is not an acceptable level of performance. There needs to be a constructive dialogue between the Senior Leadership Team and those responsible for running and developing the School Network. One way of achieving this is to establish agreed key performance guidelines for the Network Manager and the ICT Support Team, in the form of an “Internal Service Level Agreement”.

No school network can be 100% reliable, but it is a reasonable expectation that there should be a very limited “down-time”, when the network cannot be accessed. An internal SLA might outline that there should no “down-time” during the teaching day either for maintenance or for Internet access. This may mean that the ICT technical team need flexible working contracts to do maintenance before school, in the evenings or at weekends. The bigger jobs, such as replacing servers and key switches, need to be planned in advance, ideally to be done in the holidays; but, say, on Field Days or during the whole-school Carol Service if they have to be done in term.

Likewise, it would be reasonable for a school to insist that all work is backed up regularly, say on a daily basis, but that some key areas, such as email and the school management system, are backed up more regularly. An internal SLA might outline, not only the agreed expectation, but also the time to retrieve a given piece of information from archive.

The same principle applies to ICT support. An internal SLA in this area might, for example, outline an expectation that a technician will attend a lesson within five minutes of receiving a call that a teacher’s or administrator’s computer is not working; and that if it can’t be repaired immediately, a replacement will be provided within 30 minutes. This would require that the ICT support team have spare machines that are pre-installed with the relevant software that are ready to go into classrooms. There are budget implications and questions of policy in having this level of support available. For example, Heads need to balance the policy issue of having perfectly good machines sitting on the shelf in an ICT office, when they could be used somewhere around the school. This is another instance of an SMT decision that should not be left to the ICT team.

Internal SLAs allow Heads and Senior Leadership teams to agree acceptable standards and thus provide a framework within which School ICT purchasing, network development and training decisions can be made.

This blogpost includes material from an article "What a Head needs to know about ICT - Structures and People" which will be published in the ISC Bulletin next month.

Think differently about ICT strategy - think of ICT as you do electricity

There is a real danger of putting ICT strategy into a special category, but this status is unjustified. It may be helpful to consider ICT in the same way as we think of electricity. Electricity is taken for granted in every classroom; it undoubtedly facilitates teaching and learning, but it would be odd to ask how teachers might use electricity in a Geography lesson. This might have been a hot topic a hundred years ago, but not today. ICT in essence is no different to electricity. It is the newness of the technology that has blurred our vision. Much is made of ICT networks, but, when distilled down, there is very little fundamental difference in delivering electricity to a classroom and providing connectivity and Internet access. Both are delivering power through cables, routers and junction boxes.


Consider how you organise your school ICT team.

Our forebears throughout the twentieth century had to come to terms with the power of electricity – first light and heat, then plug-in appliances, such as washing machines, televisions, dishwashers, microwave cookers and so on. Two key aspects that faced electricity users of a previous era, face schools today in regard to ICT today – namely infrastructure issues [wiring the building] and training needs [how to use and maintain the appliances]. It is helpful to think of ICT strategy in terms of these two categories. ICT has now reached a stage in its development in schools where there is much to be said for separating the two areas of ICT network and ICT support.


The ICT Network Team

Network managers are concerned with infrastructure issues – thus this is essentially an “Estates Department” matter. As with the wiring of a house, there will be times when an area needs to be upgraded in order to cope with the additional demands of what is plugged in [consider how schools have had to put additional electricity sockets into boarding house studies in order to cope with the demands of the twenty-first century student], but fundamentally supplying connectivity is something that will be routine from now on.


The ICT Support Team

There are two key areas of ICT support: maintaining the machines [think washing machine or photocopier repair man]; and training people to use the machines and to get the most out of what they can do. The computer is, after all, just another electrical device.

On the whole, school ICT support teams have focussed on the first of these roles, replacing maintaining, repairing and replacing computers, upgrading software, distributing printer cartridges. Schools will always need this sort of support to trouble-shoot the inevitable technical problems, although as ICT equipment become more reliable, the relative importance of this role is likely to diminish. However, a strong ICT Support Team that is focussed on training can transform the way in which ICT is used in the classroom and can make a significant difference to teaching and learning. This is the more important area to which School Leadership teams should direct their energies over the coming years.

This blogpost includes material from an article "What a Head needs to know about ICT - Structures and People" which will be published in the ISC Bulletin next month.