Sowing the seed.

It's been an interesting year so far.

The uncertainty about the College's next principal (which I have my suspicions about) has allowed time to ponder some things.  Particularly about future directions and trends in I.T.  With a change in leadership possible, it's not been the right time to try making any big changes, so we've been doing something different with our ICT Committee this year.  We've been running what I call 'New Technology Sessions".  Instead of meeting and going through the usual administrivia of budgets, apllications and policies we've been delving into some concepts that I felt a committee of ICT decision makers should be aware of.  From simple things like Web 2.0 and Cloud, to some of the programs that are going on in other schools, and even more confusing concepts like BYOD.  So far it's been received well by the group, who actually seem far more interested in these sessions than the regular meetings which I know from experience that some loathe.

This year is intended to be the I.T. Department's "break" year, with the DER rollouts finished and less College PC's to be renewed than in years to come, we'd figured this to be a good time to consolidate, to look at getting caught up on some infrastructure upgrades and generally not have to push all year.  That fits in well with the idea of New Technology Sessions, the Committee is also out of the DER rollout phase so they should sit back and take stock too.  Work out what the priorities are for using what is certainly more technology than the school has ever had.  Those thoughts might even be able to guide our infrastructure upgrades somewhat.