Localzuk

Last week I posted a question on Edugeek.net about a situation I have at work with regards to our network switchgear. All of our equipment was bought under the name of the old managed service provider as part of the BSF contract when the building was constructed. This means that now they have pulled out, the switches are out of warranty effectively, as we are the ‘second owners’.

As I view network infrastructure as being at the top of the list in terms of importance, this situation bothers me, so I was trying to gauge what the general consensus is about replacement cycles.

The response has surprised me - the vast majority of respondents have said ‘when it breaks’! Ok, for those with lifetime warranties, that’s fine, as they can get next day replacements of any broken gear, and they only really need to change the infrastructure when they need new capabilities, but those who have older, or out of warranty gear saying it? Somewhat shocking to me.

As Network Managers, we are charged with ensuring the uptime of our network - its basically our raison d’être. We plan replacement cycles for servers, desktops, projectors, printers etc… yet we’re willing to let the technology that holds it all together fail before we replace it.

I 100% understand those saying they have a lack of budget, however at the same time it makes me contemplate whether the importance of the switches has been put across to the senior management at those schools. Has the fact that without their core switch, they would have no network, no SIMS, no printers, no internet etc… been put across?

At our school, I’ve figured out that in capital expenditure alone, replacing all our switches would cost us around £35k at current market rates. Not a tiny amount of money, but an amount of money that I will be ensuring gets put into a 3 - 5 year plan, to replace all the gear.

I’d love to hear some responses to why network infrastructure is sidelined when looking at replacing equipment, so feel free to message me somehow.

In its purist form, I subscribe to the idea that technology can and will eventually solve all of the world’s problems. Many of these problems are things like lack of resources or poor distribution of resources. It doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to think that we’ll eventually be able to resolve those through technologies such as those in Star Trek.

However, at the same time, I disagree with the constant shoe-horning of technology into schools, and into places it need not be. Basically, I am constantly seeing technological solutions to non-technological problems in education.

Questions such as ‘can we ban Jim from the internet, as he was messing around in his IT class?’ or ‘how can the teacher monitor what every child is doing in their IT class?’ are a distraction from the real problem here - lack of consistent policies and lack of planning.

In the first case, if a student was misbehaving in their maths lessons by entering numbers that spell out words on his calculator instead of working, would we ban them from using a calculator? Or would it be dealt with via standard behaviour policy with detentions etc…?

Would we design a woodwork room with a dark corner where the teacher couldn’t see what the students were doing with their saws? Or would we design the room to be open and have it so a teacher can see what every child is doing by merely lifting their head up?

Why are these principles ignored when it comes to ICT? Why do ICT rooms get designed in rows, or in bizarre shapes, so that a teacher cannot see what is going on with all the computers without using a specialist piece of software, which takes them away from teaching and turns them into prison classroom guards?

This thinking extends further too, and it goes right to the top of the education tree in the UK. The introduction of VLEs, interactive whiteboards and electronic classroom voting systems have, in my experience, been universally handled badly. Instead of seeing a need and working to fill that need, a shiny new technology has been spotted and a teacher has waxed lyrical about it, leading to others demanding that tech in their room, only for it to end up as a bulletin board for homework (which they also get in their lessons), a painted surface to project onto or a way of wasting 10 minutes of a lesson setting up a kit when ‘raising hands’ would do the same job.

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology - that’s why I work in IT, but I also hate waste. Without proper planning, and end to end thinking, we’re destined for year after year of misdirected spending and poor performance in IT and education in general.

One of the current ‘buzzwords’ in schools ICT is ‘BYOD’ or ‘bring your own device’. Basically, this is a shift to allow pupils and staff to come into your school with their own devices (be they laptops, phones, ipods etc…) and connect them to your network and use your resources.

I’ve seen many arguments against it, and indeed I have presented some myself. Issues such as liability should these devices be lost, damaged or stolen whilst in school, network security, accountability and cost to implement.

However, since moving into a school with a ‘guest’ wireless system in place, utilising cloud based email and a well designed VLE, it is pretty clear to me that this need not be an issue.

Network security need not be an issue at all - this can be controlled by segmenting the wireless away from your network using a managed wireless system and a router. So, any traffic they generate is limited to that subnet. Some managed wireless systems allow you to even go one step further and provide device isolation, so they can’t even affect each other on that vlan.

Access to network resources need not be complicated. A Moodle installation with a windows share module install means they can access their files and save things back, or you could implement a home access solution such as HomeAccess+.

Printing can be achieved simply through any number of ‘web print’ products, or print management software with that functionality built in.

Another issue that a friend and colleague highlighted was one of support - who supports the devices? Rather than focus on whether support is provided, this should be a question of what level of support is provided. There’s no way the system could work with a blanket ‘no support’ but there’s also no way that a school could provide detailed end user support for each device - the cost would simply be too high. Instead, a level of support should be determined and stuck to. We provide basic ‘get it turned on and connected’ support. If we can’t get that far, any device owner is advised to contact their own supplier etc…

So, the key issues no longer seem to be technological, but organisational and educational. How do you implement these devices in your school without it disrupting your lessons, or without disadvantaging those without access?

I’ve yet to see any form of ‘definitive’ answer to this, and there likely never will be one for a simple reason - every school is different, with a different culture and a different way of interacting with its students.

My advice would be that this should never be approached from a technological POV. It should be a management driven concept, with technology merely being a facilitator.

But then again, that advice goes with pretty much all ‘game changing’ ICT in schools.