Loop the loop
In Derek’s recent post about the launch of the Nelson Loop he wonders about the danger of under-estimating the ongoing costs of sustaining such networks. The problems he outlines don’t just apply to the introduction of high speed loops, but to the sustainability of IT infrastructure in schools in general, particularly at the primary school level.
I was talking to a principal from one of our local schools recently about this, who had three very profitable years in an ICT cluster and now has some decent network infrastructure in place, good ratio of laptops to teachers/pupils, etc. but is struggling to employ technical support in order to maintain it, both due to a lack of funds and a lack of availability of technical staff - who at present are in high demand in the commercial sector.
There would be no point adding a connection to a high speed loop on top of this without building in the ongoing technical support.
I think there are some solutions, and the cluster concept is one of them, with pooled technical resources serving a number of schools in a district. I know some schools already do this, but perhaps it is time for some sort of centrally planned/funded model. I think the introduction of high speed loops also needs to be seen as an opportunity to rationalise some of the basic application infrastructure. There is so much duplication of effort around such simple things as setting up and maintaining school websites. This sort of thing could be easily pulled back into a single central server.
As always though money is the big question - but perhaps if the Ministry drops MS Office licenses for PCs like they have done for Macs already they might at least have a bit of a seed fund to get things going 