Presentation to ISA Executive Council
Wednesday 7 June 2011
James Wilding
Chairman
ISA ICT committee
http://goo.gl/1oJ5P
supporting summaries of the
May 2011 ISA ICT survey
can be found here - http://goo.gl/Uzm2T
The ISANet project is into its third year, and from December 2010 to present has been exploring how to make
concrete the expressions of hope from our Chairman of 2009, John Gibson.
Shared resources, experiences and services lie at the heart of the project, but what John commended as that as an
Association working together we could leapfrog our competitors and be real innovators within education… and save
money! That’s the challenge I and your ICT committee have been coming terms with, and the purpose of this
presentation today is to summarise where we are.
Organisations, from research centres such as McKinsey are reporting the following major trends in terms of
digital/ICT developments:
1. Global services
2. Mobile services
3. Cloud services
Please do not get confused by the separate ‘worries’ about wireless microwaves, from mobile phones and masts.
Our recommendations do not set out to permeate anyone with microwaves!
We can report, thanks to our work with Cambridge University Press (December to April 2011) and wider research
within the education sector and in consultation with both Microsoft and Google, that the core applications we need
to make available across our schools are
1. Single Sign On
2. Mail, Calendar and Docs
3. Set-up services and support
Let me share with you a short video from a school such as ours who started this journey 2 years ago…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J5aCtfN-Wk - http://goo.gl/STtUw
…so such videos confirm our key conclusions:
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The ISANet social network has provided unique opportunities within our association to allow teachers to share,
collaborate and communicate.
The ICT Survey has given us unique information about our schools and the next steps we should take, to
create new membership services.
The ISAGrid for Learning project (Dec 2010-) has ensured that ISA, its executive and schools have been at the
cutting edge of innovation. Its findings have been
1. that we need to establish a community network of all teachers and support staff within our existing ISA
members – ISAG4T
2. that the substantial majority of ISA schools have a requirement for a low cost teaching and learning
platform
3. a requirement for future proof, independent of school systems architecture and not requiring technical
support at the school level
My proposals to Executive are
1. to provide for the Association, a Grid to connect Teachers across our schools – a completely new service for
teachers and learning professionals within ISA, based on the Google Apps for Education set of tools, free but
completely customisable and controllable for the Association. For this to work, the Association needs to
commend that all of its schools and teachers become members, and that communication to its members and
teaching staff uses the ISAG4T portal as the preferred route. Tagging of teachers allows us to know which
school and area they belong to, which interest groups they serve, which subjects they teach and what ISA
activities in which they are active participants.
2. To provide at a one-off-cost to schools (£500-£1500), a branded, domain-based cloud-learning service, which
any school can adapt, amend and develop using Single Sign On (SSO). We have designed a visual graphic to
explain what the dashboard of this service will look like, showing both Apps, services and bolt-ons. For 90% of
our schools that have no provision in this area, it provides an immediate, intelligent and flexible tool that bypasses the development costs and pains faced by schools choosing their own route to build such services
independently. The service provider of the design and implementation phase would be T-Learning, an existing
provider of not-for-profit community-based eLearning solutions for schools.
Here are some snap shots of what we can achieve ISAG4T – a replacement for the current ISANet
Ning network, in which we have 405 members
currently - http://goo.gl/3fQg5
ISAG4S (prep) – to serve the Prep and Junior
school community - http://goo.gl/0m08W
ISAG4S (senior) – to serve the 11+ to 18 community http://goo.gl/oEPpL
My proposals have received an extraordinary level of support from
Google’s William Florance, Head of EDU, Google Enterprise EMEA,
leading over a period of some months to the proposals below,
secured on Monday by our ICT Technical Officer, Ian Nairn who has
worked tirelessly with me on this project.
“With regards to supporting a Google Apps for Education Training
Programme, following is what we (at Google) propose at this stage:
Google Certified Training Programme
Google wishes to launch a new Training Programme in the UK in the 2011 Autumn Term with the explicit purpose
of building a self-sustaining community of trained Teachers. We wish to pilot this Programme with ISA and
subsequently launch to the UK State Schools Market at BETT in January. In the first year, we aim to Certify 500
Teachers through the Programme. We would hope to have ISA (and possibly NCSL as well as a few other
partners) on-board in time for a BETT announcement.
 Working with our preferred providers such as CUE and EdComms, Google will adapt our existing materials
from our Google Teacher Academy and Google Certified Training Programmes to create a hybrid course that is
suited to UK School teachers. The course will be designed to be delivered through a combination of instructorled and self-paced materials, and we will seek to reduce the number of hours required to complete certification.
 Google will source qualified Trainers from the UK Google Certified Trainer community (and beyond if
necessary).
 Google will fund the first 100 Teachers to sit the Certification Exams (administered via Pearson Vue).
 Google will survey the first 100 Teachers to sit the exam to ensure the course is meeting expectations and
market requirements.
 Based on survey feedback, we will adjust the Programme as necessary and so as to achieve the goals of both
ISA as well as Google.
This would leave ISA to pick up Programme Management and Trainer costs. This feels to me to be an equitable
proposition; especially when you take into consideration we are not funding this for any other 'District' or 'State'
anywhere else to my knowledge….
This is subject to changes and modification, but I believe is representative of what we aim to deliver and achieve in
the next 12 months.
For further information on the ISANet project
Contact jtw@clairescourt.com