Category: Primary School ICT

The 2009-2010 Salute

Posted on by John McLear

End of the 2009-2010 school/work year and it has been an immense year.  I’m signing off from work for a bit (2 weeks) to regain some sanity and reality but before I do here are the people I want to thank for this year.

Ian Addison (Great to chat with seems to understand both technical and teaching aspects of my work)
James Langley (Great at everything to do with ICT and primary schools)
Chris Mayoh (Fantastic feedback on our services)
Jo Dean (Amazing understanding of making managed service contracts work)
John Sutton (Fantastic understanding of encourage schools to adopt blogs)
Simon Finch (second to none understanding of internet provision in schools)
Kumar (Brilliant Android/Java developer)
Takeektas (Amazing artist)
Redhog (Breathtaking brilliant developer(this guy would blow your minds))
Teeny Tiny (Supportive, supportive, supportive.  Lucky to have known her so long)
Mark Chambers (Every sentence is like a change factory)
Harshad Taylor (Amazing sys admin with great network stability and flexibility and great personality)
Ramsbeb (Great supported of modern technology)
Stefan Richter (Genius behind scribblar very open to work with new services)
Joe Cornelli (Great philosophical mind, I’m expecting great things)
Terry Freedman (Always supported my articles, always been there for guidance)
Chris Ratcliffe (I hate sales blokes but Chris breaks the mould..  Has been so keen to share and help, he puts edu first)
Tim Rylands (Probably most inspiring man of year)
Deputy Mitchell (I can only say thanks to this man, he works so hard, does so much, I think he has a doppel)
OmnomnomTom (If code needs writing properly, this is the man I turn to)
Margaret Vass (Great supporter of blogging, I truly hope glow supports her as well as we did)
Sharon Dominik (the only person I always answer my phone to)

Everyone who works on an open source project.  Kudos, gg and ftw and obviously (this is delivered in person) those at Primary Technology who support and endure the challenges we all face on a daily basis.

And last but not least is my dad, who as you know is my alpha, beta and gamma.

Thanks so much for this year, everyone has made it special and I’m hoping 2010-2011 can provide some fruits for you to pick from!

Basic overview of my workload till next year up till April:  Launch new PST, Launch new SC (inc new standard), polish PGA, launch SIMS service, launch XPArena,

Primary School Web2 meetings

Posted on by John McLear

I have now completed my visits to Bradford schools covering some basics of being empowered by web based resources.  The meetings have usually lasted about an hour and have been relatively structureless & informal.

Considering their approach..

to identifying their pupils, parents(current and prospective) and teachers requirements for a learning platform.  Including showing the school example of how other schools are using web based technology.  The main idea of this is to get the school to think about what they want the web to do for them, not what they can do on the web.

Web based vs downloadable

I showed each school how to access to the Primary School Web2 searchable database which will allow them to search for web2 resources in the future when they are contemplating replacing a current legacy application.

I showed off Microsoft‘s Live at Edu showing how even the most pricey of apps are moving on-line and the experience is relatively high quality compared to a few years ago.

I explained why I believe web based is better than downloadable especially for mobile projects.  I also tried to explain the new method for distributing apps through systems such as Google Market and iStore.

Web2 after school

I covered some useful web sites and resources that are focused on extending pupils learning outside of the school gates.  The examples I used were Mr Thorne does Phonics and Primary Games Arena amongst others.

The biggest problem I faced during the sessions were the amount of sites that were filtered so access was not possible.  This is something all LA’s are working on and struggling with.  This problem wont be experienced at home so I suggested that the teacher/head continued investigating resources from the searchable database at home.

Summary

I enjoyed doing the sessions and I spent the last few minutes of the meetings asking the school if they thought the meetings were valuable.  Many schools have expressed an interest in pursuing things further with their own web based systems and all have said they will use some of the web based resources already available on the internet.  Nearly all of the schools were not aware of all the resources available and were amazed at the quality and ease of use of a lot of the sites I showed them.

It is worth remembering that these sessions are often required just as a way to introduce schools to the basics around web based technology and they aren’t meant to be a thorough session with direct outputs or goals.  I hope/think they went well and will probably run them again next year depending on funding from Primary Technology who funded all of the sessions this year.  I do hope that some schools begin exploring Web2 in more depth and begin working with the Education Bradford ICT team to embed Web2 into their whole school plan.

Security Warning: Using a mobile phone to take pictures of kids activities/work

Posted on by John McLear

Did you know when you take a picture on your mobile phone it may add your current location to the Exif data of the image?

So if you are out on a school trip and have GPS or location enabled on your device then you upload an image to an e-portfolio or blog anyone will be able to see the latitude and longitude of where you took the picture.

I discovered this when working on Classdroid and Kudos to Hak5 for the useful link.  Safe to say all images uploaded from Classdroid will set the location as: “The moon”.

This is especially a concern if you out doing school trips and updating your blog on the fly.

How to turn off location tagging. On Android, Click Settings then Locations then un-tick My Location.

3D in the classroom

Posted on by John McLear


The claim that 3D can result in higher test scores makes me cringe!!! Arghz

I had an interesting email today from our installs team leader, it read:

3D projectors are now priced at pretty much the same level as normal 2D units, and are of course backwards compatible. If we started offering them to schools, how much of a pain would it be to upgrade existing PC’s to be capable of projecting in 3D?

Naturally computers should begin supporting 3D natively, most Nvidia graphics cards already do and intel have it on their roadmap.

The life span of a projector is 3 to 5 years max, will there be enough 3D content within 3/5 years to warrant purchasing a 3D projector?

Yes and no.  So much interactive educational content will be provided as Flash objects and Flash simply can’t do it.  The thing is if a 3D projector is going to be the industry standard then that will increase the demand on 3D content creators and more 3D content will be created.  I would rather see a lower price point for projectors instead of trying to cram technology in that the consumer hasn’t requested.

Does a 3D projector have the same lifespan of the equally matched 2D projector?

In theory yes, although 3D bulbs will be way more expensive to replace.

Will the quality actually be as good from a DLP unit?

No, you are way better off with an LCD unit.

Does 3D matter in a classroom?

You decide.

What applications will be useful in 3D?

Interactive gaming, 3D story time.  Nasa released an immersive 3D game so content is coming, but it is all full of it’s own barriers IE registration, installation, bla bla.

Do these projector require glasses?

Yep.

How many bulbs are there?

2 bulbs would mean twice the cost.  3D projectors on the market at the moment have one bulb and it is likely to stay that way.

What about kids that only have one eye that works(monocular)?   Will we be excluding them?

Yes from any/all 3D content.  It will simply look awful.

What about kids that aren’t sat directly in front of the IWB?

3D viewing angles aren’t great.  That is why when you go to watch a 3D film at the cinema nearly everyone wants the top-centre seats.  On one of the videos below the teacher is literally stood 1ft to the side of the board and pretending to still be able to make out 3D content, this simply isn’t realistic as the below image illustrates:

How will the signal look if its passed over VGA not HDMI?

I would recommend using a HDMI cable to transfer the signal, that will probably mean running new cables and installing a new break out box.

I stumbled upon this blog post which included the below video, kudos to the author.  Sorry if I covered some items you already covered!

3D projectors have been at BETT for years and not caught on.

Should you buy a 3D DLP projector and hope to get a better experience or value than a 2D LED projector?

No.  Don’t do it.  Wait another year or two.  We need manufacturers to reduce the price of projectors, not try to sell us a technology we don’t really need/want.

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An unpopular blog post – 7 ways to cut ICT costs

Posted on by John McLear

It is never popular talking about how schools can save money on ICT or areas where spending is just too high.  Sorry if you fall out with me on this one..  These are all suggestions, I don’t endorse any in any way, shape or form (this is mostly for political reasons…).

For the most part you get what you pay for, so any savings may mean a drop in quality and a negative impact on teaching and learning.  The conservative education policy is (we assume) run by people with more knowledge than myself so when they say schools need to spend less on ICT all I do is figure out how..

It is up to you to decide how they will impact your teaching and learning.


1. Printing

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

Yep, the ugly ink spewing beast is still costing even the smallest of primary school thousands of pounds every year mostly in toners and ink.  So how can a school save money?

a) Use a managed printing solution to reduce the cost per sheet and to restrict the amount certain users can print.

b) Use on-line collaboration such as email more effectively

c) Encourage parents to get on-line and use an e-newsletter / social networking

2. MIS support

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £2000

Why is it that one application costs nearly as much to support as the entire network full of applications used on the curriculum side?

a) Change your support provider to a more cost effective option

b) Use e-registration and remove the need to replace that nasty OMR

3. Internet connectivity

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £2000

Internet provision from Becta approved providers usually costs 2 to 4 times that from a local internet provider, this is because they usually bundle educational services into the package and/or tools to collaborative with other schools in your area.

a) Change to a local internet provider offering less bandwidth at reduced rates

4. Backups

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £250

Tape backups are horribly inefficient, unreliable and costly.

a) Use remote backup services

5. AV

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

Most schools have now spent up on purchasing interactive classroom stuff, replacement bulbs can cost up to £500 each

a) Maintain your projects by pro actively cleaning filters and performing regular maintenance

6. Software Licensing

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

Microsoft have now released their Office web apps so when you come to purchase new devices you can almost ignore the cost of Microsoft Office licensing.

a) Get familiar with Live @ Edu & Office Web Apps or Google Web Apps

b) Become familiar with the vast array of free web 2 tools for schools

7. Technical support

Potential savings in average 2 form entry school: £500

From personal experience I know a major cost of technical support is the time spent visiting a specific machine.  There are obvious advantages to having an on-site engineer.  Face to face support is still by far the best we have right now but that is because we haven’t really explored the realm of good remote desktop support for our curriculum networks as of yet.

a) Encourage your technical support provider to explore on-demand live remote desktop support and monitoring

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