More on iPod/iPhone for school

Just a quick post today - when updating my iPod software the other day I got offered a free tool for enterprise deployment of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now the iPhone has often been criticised as an alternative to a "proper" business smartphone or PDA, but even Paul Ockendedn in PC Pro magazine has now changed his mind and declared it "Fit for business". The reasons it got knocked initially have been slowly removed. First there were the applications (admittedly third party) which gave access to MS Office documents; next came OS3, which gave us copy and paste and Search (amongst other things); now there is decent integration with Exchange and the ability to manage profiles centrally (ensure passwords are used, manage apps, wipe data...). More information is available here. It seems to me that £149 for the new 8GB Touch is cheaper than a PDA with similar capabilies and offers much more besides.

Living with OS3 on the Ipod Touch

It's time to come clean and admit I was wrong: I'm pretty disappointed with the improvements in Apple's recent revision of the operating system on the iPod Touch and iPhone. I was pleased to see various features, like search and cut & paste, but for me the killer app was bluetooth: I wanted a BT keyboard and headset so I could really use the Touch a bit like a mini PC for proper typing and get more from it as an audio device. I'd also hoped it would open the door to other 3rd party hardware like GPS modules, or even sensors for science experiments (at school the science team are currently testing some bluetooth sensors for a local firm that makes them).

Sadly, I've used search once, and copy and paste not at all: it's just too fiddly.

The crucial factor, though, is that bluetooth is completely crippled. It only supports audio out, not even allowing use of the microphone on a headset let alone other peripherals.

Looks like I might have to bite the bullet and go for an iPhone, or perhaps Apple have done enough with this (and potentially with their possible refusal to sanction Spotify in the App Store) to drive me to another solution. Anyone for Android?

Successful Intervention with the Edexcel Project

Like a fool, I volunteered myself to spend the last 2 weeks of term working with a small group of year ten students who hadn't managed to sort out work experience placements. Most had a track record of poor attendance or behaviour at school. In the past, we have used an external organisation to provide ASDAN Wider Key Skills to this cohort but it wasn't going to work for this little group (or be cost effective).

I decided it would be interesting to have a go at the Edexcel Level 1 (or for some of them, Level 2) Project. In addition to the students developing their subject knowledge in a particular area and earning a half GCSE I had a few other objectives which should help them do better in all their other subjects:

1. Improve their research skills
2. Improve their ICT skills
3. Improve their communication skills
4. Improve their literacy and numeracy
   

I met the group individually about 6 weeks ago to explain what we'd be doing and find out about their interests, so we could establish a topic. I then asked our school librarian to get some books together and she put me in touch with the staff at the Millennium Library in Norwich, who kindly agreed to help us find books, newspaper articles and use the computers.

The week before we started, the group met for an hour to establish rules and clarify what we'd be doing. Everyone created a mind map of the area they wanted to research, and I allowed students to have a totally personal choice here, as long as they could come up with a question which allowed for a range of responses:

• Should boxing be banned?
• Is gambling dangerously addictive?
• Should smoking be completely banned?

When the fortnight began, we followed a similar routine each day: arrive by 9 and get a drink; work on the project for the first hour; learn a new skill for the second; further work on the project after break; literacy/numeracy (leading to the ALAN qualification) period 4; write up the day's diary and have a chat over a few games on the Nintendo Wii after lunch (assuming the other work was complete). We went into Norwich on the first Wednesday to visit the library (which was a new experience for many, and they signed up so they could take out DVDs and games in future). While we were there the students carried out a survey on the general public (scary!) about their chosen topic, which we then analysed and made into charts back at school.

So, how did it go?

Well, there was some poor punctuality, and one student dropped out entirely after the first couple of days, but the vast majority of the group attended regularly (more so than normal!), achieved the part or even full ALAN qualification (some at Level 2) and put together a project that both I and they are really proud of. Many of them dramatically improved their ICT skills in Word, PowerPoint and Excel, they can now structure a discursive essay and support their ideas with evidence, they can use references and produce a bibliography. When we looked at what they'd put together as a whole document (Introduction, Research, For, Against, Conclusion, Bibliography) it was a really impressive piece of work. On the last day, they were clearly nervous about presenting their findings to the group and one boy disappeared (ill!). The others stuck it out and delivered their presentations really well.

Conclusion

The projects haven't yet been moderated, but I'm hopeful we've got a range of responses from a B grade equivalent down to an F. Although it was tough going at times, I did enjoy the fortnight and I feel more comfortable with the Project as a form of intervention than some other qualifications, since I think the students genuinely learned a lot of transferable skills. I'm thinking about how we can use it next year as part of the overall arsenal of intervention techniques at our disposal. Anyone interested in the resources I put together to support the course is very welcome.

More on contacts

Following on from my earlier post about managing contacts and business links as a school, I had a meeting last week with our "Work Related Learning Coordinator" who manages (amongst other things) work placements for students. We had a good discussion about both our requirements for a perfect system and the non-technical work flow problems involved in getting such a system to be widely and effectively used in school, since we felt that the key to it was getting staff to record when people come in and work with us so when we ring up we can say "I know you helped us out last Autumn with...." rather than a completely cold call. The best answer we came up with was for this to be managed at the reception desk, since all visitors pass through there and we couldn't really expect teaching staff to remember to update the details in Outlook.

We had a look at Sugar CRM, KeepM and Outlook, and the consensus was that a public folder in Outlook would be ideal. Since my last post, I'd found a great little article on customising Outlook contact forms (in this case, for estate agents, but it's applicable to any area). It looks as though I'll be able to set up exactly the fields we need (industry sector, for example). The only fly in the ointment at present is that I can't make the custom fields searchable. More playing required...

As an addendum, we both agreed that we needed some business cards for when we're out and about, so I'm going to get something made up and printed over at moo.com (which looks fabulous!).

Managing contacts

We're a big school, with over 100 teaching staff and 1750 students. We're a specialist school, with the outreach work that goes with that, and we're heavily involved in the delivery of the new Diploma qualifications. Around 30% of our students in KS4 now follow an alternative to the traditional GCSE options curriculum. All this means that for a number of years now we've been forging links with other schools, colleges, businesses and other organisations.

We're not very good at it.

There are huge issues about schools working in partnership (and enormous benefits, of course) but today's post isn't going to look at those; we'll save that for a future edition. I've been doing quite a lot of work lately on building up our industry links and what I've noticed so far is:

• there is a willingness on the part of companies to engage (especially small businesses) but they're not sure how;
• it's difficult to build a genuinely 2-way ("win-win") relationship since the school actually has little to offer that the firms are interested in, short of a warm, fuzzy glow and a bit of positive PR;
• I personally (and I suspect most teachers) find networking quite difficult - we're not used to it and don't understand the ground rules. (Should I have business cards or is that naff?);
• This is an area you either do "right" and invest significant time and resources in building long term relationships, or not at all;
  
• There's nothing that frustrates a company more that being contacted 4 times by 4 different people about the same thing. We have situations where something is promoted via our Work-Related Learning Coordinator, me, our Extended Schools Coordinator, through our newsletter to parents and any other staff who might know someone interested.
  

It's this last point I really want to focus on: surely there must be an IT solution to the problem of managing our contacts?

Use a shared Word file on the network

Dead simple. Easy for staff to use. Shared. Gets backed up. Searchable. Not exactly high profile...

Use a public folder in Outlook

We run Exchange 2003 so this is easy to set up (in fact we did it last week in 5 minutes to see how it would work). This is clearly better than Word in that contacts are stored in a proper database format where you can group them into folders, add category tags and search on any field you like. You can manage permissions easily so it doesn't get messed up and people can send email directly. My concerns at this stage are how easy most staff would find this (and whether they'd remember it) and the poor "Notes" feature. I'd really like to be able to maintain a record of the people who get in touch with each contact (including when, and about what) and a list of the events they've helped out with. It can be done, but it would soon become unwieldy.

Use a blog

I'm coming to the conclusion that we need to be publicising the contribution of our partners much more extensively on our website (maybe through a "Community Blog") - it would definitely drive traffic their way. I'm not saying we'd keep actual phone numbers on there (although we could) but it would seem a good way of keeping track of events that our contacts help us with. I could imagine the tags list on the side acting as a quick menu for finding a company.

Build a custom application

Not that hard, but we come back to all the maintenance and support issues I've gone on about in the past...

Use a web app

There are quite a few contact management solutions out there. Some are free, some not. Here's a quick list:

• Highrise is a paid for app by the well known 37 Signals brand. It looks really good, but is business-focused (unsurprisingly) and probably overkill.
• KeepM is free and simple. I like it a lot actually, especially the "History" feature, but the problem here is the fact it requires another username and password for everyone and who knows how long it will last (or remain free).
• Google Mail has a contacts feature. It's a bit like Outlook really (though the search is better) and I can only imagine using it if we didn't have Exchange. We'd probably create a new account and share it, but I guess there could be problems there with security.

For now, I'm road testing the public folder approach. I'm going to meet some of the main people who would be using whatever system we end up choosing next week to see what they think, so that should be interesting. If any readers have suggestions for other solutions I'd be keen to hear them!

Use an Ipod as a PDA

Having bought an Ipod Touch to keep me occupied on the long haul flight to Cuba at Easter, when I got back I decided to see if it could replace my PDA (a Dell Axim X50v) for diary functions. The answer is a resounding YES.

The pros:

• Wifi on the Touch is way better than using Windows Mobile. It was always a pain on the Axim to even get connected, but the Touch just finds the network and logs in, no bother. It recognises whether I'm at home or at school, remembers the settings and just works.


• The on screen keyboard is better than handwriting recognition, if not perfect.


• Itunes is happy to sync with Outlook on my school PC whilst syncing music, podcasts, movies etc at home.


• It's smaller, lighter, sexier and the battery lasts a lot longer.


• I can do basic editing of documents with a free App.

The cons

• I can't use my IR keyboard that worked really well with my Axim. This meant that I could have a device in each jacket pocket whcih, when unfoilded and combined, gave me a mini laptop. Come on Apple - give us Bluetooth!


• Document editing isn't as capable (though it might be with the paid for version of the App I got - I don't know and don't need it).

And that's it. The Axim is off to Ebay.

If you're not sure how to go about synching an Ipod with two PCs, the key is to select "Manually manage music and videos" on the "Summary" tab for the device in Itunes on the work PC, then enable Outlook synchronisation on the "Info" tab. More detail on manual syncing here: Manually manage...

On Learning Platforms

I've been involved with the procurement, installation, training and ongoing development of 2 learning platforms now. Several years ago we felt the need to unify our existing systems (intranet, email, shared learning resource folders) and provide 24/7 external access to them (along with "My Documents"). At the time, we were slightly ahead of the curve and we struggled to get a solution that was really tailored to the education market. In the end, we went with MS SharePoint Server 2003, customised by a local firm. This was not without problems (like synchronising Class Server and Active Directory via CSV files!), but served us well until recently, when MS began to withdraw support for the old version of SharePoint and totally phased out Class Server (the "VLE" bit of the solution, which allows teachers to allocate work to students, mark it and give it back).

There is a new version of MS Learning Gateway which includes the free SharePoint Learning Kit to replace Class Server. However, the old issue of the whole thing looking like it was designed for business then rebranded remains. We decided to look around and found that things had moved on significantly in the marketplace. At BETT 2008 we tried out systems from the major manufacturers and decided that although there were many more systems and they were much prettier than our current offering, they didn't add significant functionality (and many reduced it). The only system we were interested in was Frog.

Although I've been less involved in the Frog implementation I'd say the key things we've tried to do differently this time are:

• transfer files over for teachers, rather than asking them to do it themselves (the downside to this is that junk isn't cleared out)
• involve the tech support team and admin staff (who will need to update content) much more from the beginning - with SharePoint we had a teacher who set the whole thing up and maintained it and when he left we were in trouble: I think this "sustainability" issue is the big one for many small or medium sized organisations and it ties into my comments on other systems we use or have created.

I'm still not convinced about the concept of Learning Platforms: I think 24/7 access to email, My Documents and learning resources is excellent (and the hit stats bear me out), and as a school we could make more of some of features like surveys and forums. I also think that the line between website and Learning Platform is blurring and we need to be smart about this process ensure there are simple ways for staff to update content so parents and students always have up to date information. However, it's the VLE bit I worry about. I really can't see the day (yet) when all work is set, completed and marked electronically. There are many obstacles to such a situation: individual access to computers all day at school, training, link to the school MIS, workload... let alone tasks which are just better done "by hand" (like making a papier maché volcano!).

Frog are working on a number of new projects, one of which is the Parental Engagement Portal. This looks interesting in the context of Online Reporting. 14-19 collaboration is another of their projects, and this is certainly an area which could benefit from joined up solutions to sharing data. I suspect that whatever is developed now will be OK, but stymied until SIF (Schools' Interoperability Framework) is properly in place across the UK. This standard should allow different systems in different schools to share data properly at last. We'll see!

I'm interested to hear how others are getting on with Learning Platforms, especially the VLE element.