What's the rush?

So, in a recent meeting of the College ICT Committee, the 1:1 plans were discussed, and critically, the budget for said plans has started to take shape.

The budget will be the biggest I've been responsible for putting together.  Although the idea is that we'd be asking parents to contribute to the cost of the program, it still represents a considerable dent in the College's cash-flow.  But I guess that's the price we need to pay to ge the program started.

Timeframes have also been discussed.  There was some talk of looking at kicking it off at the beginning of 2013.  I can't see how that's even possible.  There's only 1 term left in 2012 and for a normal sized rollout I'd already want to be looking at some candidate machines.  Then there's the question of our staff laptops, which are due to be replaced at the start of 2013.  I think a 2013 start is going to be pushing our luck.

Dell Roadshow

I've recently travelled to Slowbart to see what Dell have in store with their Windows 8 based machines.  I can't say I really feel any more enlightened though.

The Dell sales guys brought some pretty standard laptops and ultrabooks, and an old Windows 7 tablet, but not much else.  They had Powerpoint slides of the Dell XPS-12, which is certainly an interesting machine (although I wonder about the durablity of the hinge mecahnism), and a plastic mock-up of their Windows 8 slate (the Latitude 10, I think).

Anyway, it ws nice to be able to talk to the Dell people, and I certainly got some good information about availability.  That is, that it looks like we wont see anything until after the Windows 8 launch. I also learned that there will be a lot of Intel Atom based equipment coming out, due largely to Intels very aggressive pricing of this platform.  I'm told this is an improvement on the old Atom chips.  It would need to be.

I Like More Beer at My Parties!

So, today it's been suggested that we form a Working Party to work out how to implement this 1-device-per-student program.

The thought has been that we target Year 10 as a starting point for this program. If we figure that we've got 6 grades (7-12) then the computers we buy will be best run as two 3 year cycles (they can hardly last 6 years), the second will start in Year 10.  This means getting the students in Year 11 and 12 with machines in their hands sooner, there's a difinite need there.

So, it looks like our Working Party will be small.  Featuring myself, our e-Learning Coordinator, a member of the Board, and our English Faculty Head (a keen technology user, and teacher of year 10's).  That's fine by me, a smaller group should be much more nimble and decisive.

UPDATE - Our Working Party is now 5, we welcome our Librarian onboard.  This will be handy when we come to looking at e-texts.

A funny thing happened...

I've recently been asked to attend meetings of the College Building Committee / Master Planning Committee.  The idea is that the current building projects we're working toward need some guidance from I.T.  That's great, I couldn't be happier, as there have been a number of things that haven't exactly been ideal in previous construction projects (the comms racks that were too small for the servers, the expensive A/V systems that noone can use to name two examples).  So now hopefully we'll have less problems in our new buildings, or at least avoid repeating the same mistakes.

So anyway, what does this have to do with this blog?  Well my first one of these meetings took us off on a bit of a tangent.  We got very heavily into the future of I.T. at the College and how that affects new teaching spaces.  Take for example the four computer labs we currently maintain.  Should they be allowed for in a new construction project?  I couldn't imagine that would be a good idea, the use of desktops is going to receed in the coming years and these spaces with them.  But it's not simply good enough just to leave them out or remove the labs, you need a coherent plan for the future.  That's the road this meeting started to go down.

The meeting ended up with the Principal suggesting that the conversation is best continued at a Board level.  So apparently that means I'm about to see what happens at Board Meetings.  I hope I can remember the secret handshake! ;)

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.

All a-Board.

There's nothing I love more than a meeting, particularly one that happens hours after I finish work.  This one was particularly unusal, first because I barely knew anyone at the meeting, and second because I appeared to be an agenda item.

Just going back a little to the days before this meeting.  I had conversations with the principal to get a feeling for what we might be saying to the members of the board, and was asked to bring a little bit of content with me.  Just a nice video to show and some notes.  It was all quite last minute, but I got them together in time to get to the meeting.

So, after the meeting starts I'm annouced as being there to tell the board something about our plans for computing.  Frankly, that wasn't quite what I had in mind, after all, I wasn't even clear on why I was there in the first place, let alone aware of any plan.

Anyway, so I deftly deferred to the principal, who got things rolling.  We showed our video and chatted about the future of computing, 1:1, different approaches, and a false start turned into a very productive meeting.

We even got to the point of talking about Windows 8 and the changes I could see coming, about how this would be the basis for a 1:1 computing plan and the desire to start moving in that direction.

So, the principal and I came away from the meeting with the support of The Board to go ahead and start working out how to move to an environment where every student has a computer of their own.

I feel my hope for 2012 being an easier year slipping away very quickly.

First Post, w00t!

If nothing else this exercise will be an interesting return to running a blog.  Although I've blogged before (most recently, here), this will be the firs time I've had a subject matter that constantly provides so much to blog about.

Because of time constraints, some of these entries are going to be posted retrospectively, but most should be reasonably current.  Definitely the first bunch will be "the story so far", basically catching up on what's happened in the months since we started this project.  So please, if I mention Planking or Psy, please don't be all "that's so last month", because it very much is, and you're probably a tool anyway.

I'll try to keep it light and coversational, I seem to do a lot of formal writing in the form of reports, proposals and official communications, so I'll try not to sound like a suit.

L8r.