In this post I am going to try to understand why so many schools chose so many different web 2 products to enable teaching and learning.
What is a Web 2 educational product?
A web2 educational product is an on-line service or product that a school uses to increase teaching and learning and/or improve the teacher, pupil, parent or other third party experience. See Wikipedia for more info.
Is this blog post really just about Web 2?
Naw, but teachers (especially in the US) love the term so I stick with it. If I was going to be pedantic which I may indulge in slightly.. This blog post is focused on all applications a school will use, but focusing on online applications. I guess I’d call them “Hosted Web Services”, but that’s just me…
How many Web 2 products are there for schools?
Specifically Educational, 500+ but that doesn’t include any flash games or web sites that include content. The 500 is purely sites that provide an educational tool, such as School Email, Edu20.org. Here is a semi-comprehensive, semi-biased (as all things are) list.
Who advises schools on which Web 2 products to use?
Authorities, friends, colleagues, third parties, pesky sales folks. The list of influence on a schools purchasing decision is endless. I often get asked “But surely all schools use the same stuff?”. After a slow, inane chuckle, I find myself trying to explain the fragmentation of ICT and how under no circumstances school A will be a carbon copy of school B (Much to the dismay of politicians). You get used to it after a while..
Anyway… What matters is the motives of the person advising the school. In the past profit has played a huge part in the UK with millions getting pumped into schools to purchase services but this has (for the most part(excluding Harnessing Technology Grant)) dried up. I have argued before this is a good thing for schools but a bad thing for business. My main concern now is that schools will be naive to the calling of an open service and buy whatever seems right at that time, putting complete faith in the service provider.
Oooh Ooooh, an example! Yay.. So imagine you buy an email service, use it for 2 years then start getting a lot of spam. You don’t want spam, you also want it to look different but you are told it’s not possible. So you decide to change your email service. Sounds straight forward right? Unfortunately your previous provider can’t export contacts or calendar appointments or anything, you feel hopeless and instead of changing provider you stick with the service you are not happy with.. This is not cool.
My Call to you, if you are advising schools is to explain to them the long term impacts of purchasing legacy or “non open” software solutions that will not be transferable to another platform in the case of a loss or lack of service. Please.
Is it better to have more or less product options?
More is always better, surely? Imagine if everyone used a different file type for Documents instead of the familiar Google Docs and Microsoft Office. Imagine a world where where there is 200 different word processors. The important thing with all Web2 services it that they work to some sort of open standard, that way schools can easily trade data between organizations. Microsoft and Google have been criticised in the past for being slow to respond to this demand but have recently become leaders in many aspects. Other software companies are following suit and this is making for happier systems engineers.
Why is the Web 2 world in education so divided?
Because education changes from teacher to teacher, city to city, state to state, country to country. I understand non educators may not be able to understand this. Get over it, ultimately you have to put faith in the teachers to know what is best for their pupils.
When Web 3 comes along, how will it look in respect to the market place and the product options available?
Open, Transparent. I think truly in a Web 3 world we will be able to pass information from one service provider to another with one click. It is evident with the mass roll out of SAML Authentication systems across education that we will soon be “One person” on all services so (your School email will know you as the same person Google Apps does). Tying information at an organizational level and an individual level allows for a framework of information transparency.
There will be a lot more options available, but you will be able to try them for free, very easily, if you don’t like it, you can move on. Change will be much easier to manage and schools will move from being tied into one service to be able to swim a mass sea of categorized services tailored specifically to meet their educational needs.
Happy days!
