The essential questions you need to ask before you select ... - FuntoRun

The essential questions you need to ask before you select your school’s ICT supplier How to save money, safeguard your systems and make the most of your ICT

Mike McSharry

The essential questions you need to ask before you select your school’s ICT supplier How to save money, safeguard your systems and make the most of your ICT

Mike McSharry

THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS YOU NEED TO ASK...

Copyright ©2011 Mike McSharry All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author(s). Edited by Tom Stevenson. Cover design and page layout by Member of NABO To join visit: www.nabo.biz

...BEFORE YOU SELECT YOUR SCHOOL’S ICT SUPPLIER

Introduction We have supported ICT in local primary schools since 1998. In those long-ago days, “the wireless not working” meant that you had to listen to a cassette or a CD instead. ICT in primary schools has changed beyond recognition in that period. Schools have benefited from numerous government initiatives (such as National Grid for Learning and E-Learning Credits), suppliers have come and gone and technology has moved on at a dramatic rate. The uptake of ICT in primary schools has been astounding. In many villages and small towns the largest IT network and the most robust internet connections can now be found in the primary schools. Greater independence for school budgets has been mirrored with a reduction in Local Authority facilities and influence. The Education ICT related sections of many Local Authorities have dwindled away to nearly nothing. Those 3


that are left are now trading in different ways and many face further cuts. Central Government funded initiatives are coming to an end – examples of this include the removal of the Harnessing Technology Grant and the closure of Becta. This means that control and responsibility are now more in the hands of the individual schools than ever before. Because of this, schools need reliable, robust networks, supported by dedicated, specialist organisations. But when there are so many different suppliers currently available, how do you know which one is right for your school? That’s why I wrote this booklet – to provide you with the crucial pointers and tips to help you choose your ideal supplier, and also make the most of your current resources. Mike McSharry Systems and Education

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#1 Make sure your supplier is fully aware of your environment ICT is an ever changing world. ICT in education seems to change at twice the speed of ICT outside education. It’s essential that your supplier is committed to and experienced in your particular environment. The way equipment is used in a school is so different to most offices and businesses – where, in many cases, each user has ‘their’ PC and ‘their’ laptop. The need to share equipment within classes and across the whole school introduces new challenges. These challenges include rapid log-in features for all users, robust wireless networks and the integration of devices from many different suppliers. How experienced is your supplier in dealing with environments like this?

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Quick tip Turn PCs and laptops off when not in use. The University of Pennsylvania published figures on a range of equipment. Their figures* suggest 70W is an average for a PC and monitor simply turned on. You wouldn’t deliberately leave a 1KW heater on all night, every night, would you? It’s easy to miss 15 PCs in a large school, but make this a daily routine. *Links to all related websites can be found on www.systemed.co.uk/tips

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#2) Is your supplier cleared to work in your school? Child safety and data protection legislation are now vitally important. Make sure that your suppliers are helping you to adhere to these rules. The supplier’s senior managers should be able to provide you with a signed list of enhanced CRB registrations for all their staff. Please remember that the CRBs themselves are personal to the staff members so should not be specifically requested. Your supplier may be holding information on their systems regarding your school and your school ICT equipment. In order to be fully compliant they need to be registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office. This registration information should be freely available for you to inspect. Your local authority will have stipulated a minimum insurance cover which suppliers working on your site must hold. Your supplier should be able to provide you with this information. Note that a supplier has a legal 7


obligation to have this information displayed at their place of business – so they should be able to provide you with a copy and NOT the original.

Quick tip In a typical classroom you may have a PC plus monitor, keyboard and mouse – along with a screen splitter, extra power and cables for that splitter, whiteboard connection cables and power and links to an amplifier. Add a visualiser and its cables and you very soon have 1kg of cables behind your PC! If all these cables are resting on a USB cable then the USB cable AND the fitting inside the PC can easily be ripped clean out – shorting the motherboard on the PC. This can be avoided by tidying the cables – putting the larger, heavy cables in place first with the lighter weight ones on top. (See www.systemed. co.uk/tips for examples).

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#3) Can you easily speak with the ultimate decision maker? In an ideal world, everything works right the first time and every time. The complexities of ICT in schools (network infrastructure, individual PCs, cabling, power, software and updates) mean that the stack doesn’t always stay in place. Sometimes when these things don’t work you really do need to sit down with the company owner and ensure you can work together to resolve the problems and get the relationship back on even keel. If your supplier is a large international organisation there may be procedures in place to allow you to contact senior managers. Be sure to ask about these, as it could prove vital later on.

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Quick tip Are your devices really turned off? One of the ways that computer (and related) manufacturers have reduced costs is by making use of power adaptors. This means that one device can work almost anywhere in the world with the correct power adaptor. What’s not so obvious is that these power adaptors are using power simply by being plugged in! If you don’t need the laptop to be on charge, or you don’t need the small printer to be on, turn the adaptor device off at the wall switch. (Examples of these power adaptors are shown at www.systemed.co.uk/ tips)

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#4) Can you decide on the equipment? Your school may be offered equipment at prices way below what your established supplier can offer. In such cases will they be happy to work with you to integrate these solutions into the rest of your school network? It may help your school to provide the technical details of the equipment being purchased. This will give your supplier the chance to prepare for the introduction of the new items. As an example, you may have the chance to purchase multiple laptops for fantastic prices – this may require the introduction, or upgrade, of your wireless coverage. Not something you should expect of a partner with no notice! As a school you may decide to completely change the technological approaches you use. Can your supplier work with you and help you through this transition?

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Quick tip Many key applications that you use in school may have ‘quick keys’ ways of working. These quick keys may even be common across the programs. As a teacher, you may find that you’re using the desktop at the front of a class, then your laptop, followed by a PC in the IT Suite then a school netbook with built in mouse pad. You’ll find that in each case the mouse behaves just differently enough to make life difficult! Quick keys can save you a lot of time and frustration.

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#5) Make sure your supplier is dedicated to your marketplace. ICT in primary schools is very different from ICT in offices, factories, hospitals and secondary schools. With the recent downturn in the economy, many ICT suppliers are claiming to be educational specialists. Ask them where they will be when the economy picks up again. Does primary school ICT make up a significant proportion of their business? Is ICT the supplier’s core business? Many secondary schools market themselves as ICT specialist suppliers to primary schools – even schools outside their own family. With changes in personnel, budgets and priorities, primary schools could find themselves out in the cold. What is your potential supplier’s core business?

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Quick tip Often, the font you are about to use could be very inefficient and could waste a vast amount of ink. We produced a web page which gives a simple example of how you could save 20% of your ink costs – just by changing fonts. The link can be found on our quicklink page at www.systemed.co.uk/tips Ink can also be saved by answering the question “Do all these documents need to be printed at full resolution in full colour?” Effective network and user set ups can easily restrict access to expensive printers and facilities.

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#6) Can they provide you with references? If you are considering a new supplier, can they provide you with references from schools that are similar to yours? In addition, is it easy for you to speak directly with the other schools without the supplier’s involvement? Can you speak to their ex-customers? For many reasons suppliers and customers stop working with each other. Changes of personnel, school federations and complete changes in requirements mean that the two parties just won’t be working together any time soon. Is the potential new supplier willing to discuss their lost customers – why they parted company and how they’ve addressed any related issues for the future? Obviously you need to be sensitive to commercial confidentiality and pure personnel issues here.

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Quick tip Before running a program on a PC in front of your class, the following tip may help you. • S tart the PC from ‘cold’ – either turning on or shutdown/restart. • W hen the PC has finished ‘booting up’ start the program you’ll be using with the class. • Close the program. • N ext time you start the program it will load up significantly faster. Here’s a real life example. On the PC I’m using to make this draft, Serif MoviePlus took 14 seconds to reach the first screen. By closing the program and starting it again it re-loaded in less than three seconds. In addition, if your PC is low-powered or has insufficient memory, avoid loading other programs before you work in front of the class.

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#7) How effectively can they work with all members of your school? It’s essential that the head and the senior management team feel comfortable with the senior members of the company. Both ‘teams’ must feel that it’s easy to stay in touch with each other. To make life easy for the school, the supplier should be willing to provide administrative paperwork in the formats and the schedules acceptable to your office staff. Can the supplier and their staff work comfortably with your ICT co-ordinator to understand the current and future requirements of your school? Classroom assistants and the school admin staff often need to help the class teachers produce documentation and labels for the pupils. Can your supplier sit down with these staff and help them save lots of time?

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Many teachers are not technology experts. Can your supplier work with teachers at all levels and explain technology in simple terms that allow them to effectively implement it in their lessons?

Quick tip Recently, I’ve been working with staff groups and explaining that if they log in to EMBC as an adult then they’ll get filter level 1 (I understand that similar facilities are in play across other RBCs). However, if they leave their PC for any reason, then a child could use the PC with the adult filtering level. But if you log off then next time you use your PC you’ve got to set it all up again, so just lock your PC by pressing the Windows key and the letter L. Your applications are left running and are available straight away when you press alt-ctrl-del and log on. If one or more of your applications involve terminal services or remote/secure access, then it’s advisable to log out of those before pressing Windows-L (otherwise you may be locked out of that application).

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#8) Which other specialists do they work with? Can they work with other specialist providers? Only the very largest organisations can truly have expertise in all areas. Can your supplier work with other organisations – small and local – to help provide you a complete service? This may mean that an ICT support company will work in partnership with cabling or audio visual specialists. It may be that they need to work closely with your premises team and any outside company who would be carrying out repair or extension work in the school.

Quick tip Identify the 80:20 aspects of key packages (what 20% do you need for 80% of benefits). Many packages have a huge amount of features. It’s sometimes worth mastering one or two of those features to provide tremendous time savers. As an example, in workshops with school office staff they’ve found that by understanding how tables can be used in Word they can produce easier to understand documents much faster.

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#9) Can they help you with your website? Schools, like any other businesses, need highquality websites nowadays. Doing this in-house can be complicated and time-consuming if you don’t have the specialist knowledge needed to build a really effective website. Will your ICT suppliers be able to help you with this? Can they demonstrate school blogs and websites they are already working with?

Quick tip Attend or arrange training and sharing sessions to help you get the best of ideas being used in schools like yours. Since the reductions in LA subsidised seminars, free ‘TeachMeets’ have taken place across the country. Find out about TeachMeets or try to arrange your own. Many suppliers are now providing short, free training sessions to schools. Try at least one of these.

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#10) Can they help you find free solutions? Are they willing to help you find some of the brilliant free solutions that are out there? There are many fantastic free packages which provide many of the functions of expensive professional products. In a school you could introduce new ideas with free software – as these ideas pick up in the school you can then use that experience to fully understand your ‘shopping list’ for the paid for versions, if you need them at all.

Quick tip Avoid losing data by making sure you remove USB sticks correctly. USB sticks are often written to as a ‘background process’ – this means that the writing process continues after the screen suggests it has finished. We have produced an easy-to-follow document – free to download at www.systemed. co.uk/tips

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#11) Do they have a community aspect to what they do – and does that benefit local schools? Suppliers who are dedicated to one sector (for example, ICT in primary schools) clearly develop their business in that area. Does your supplier ‘put something back’ which can impact on your school? This could involve providing sponsorship for sports events, volunteering to help out and providing raffle prizes for school fairs.

Quick tip When displaying websites with text on the whiteboard, use ctrl and = to zoom in on text (press and hold the ctrl key and press = at the same time). The larger fonts now make it easier to read. With some experimentation you can show just the article and remove advertisements – this helps the pupils to focus on the message. To get back to standard size, use ctrl - .

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When showing websites in class you may want the information to be used as a ‘primer’ and not necessarily want the pupils going to the website themselves. In this case press the F11 key on the keyboard to remove the menu and navigation bars. To restore the bars simply press the F11 key again.

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#12) What standard of on-going support do they provide? Can they provide coverage, support and first call response in reasonable time? Is it purely based on call centres, or online? Do they have a guarantee as to how quickly they can arrive at your premises whenever necessary? Major ICT errors can prove disastrous for schools if they are not dealt with quickly, so you should be able to have someone available at short notice to deal with major errors should they occur. If they can monitor your systems to catch any potential errors before they occur, then so much the better.

Quick tip Have you got your server plugged into a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply)? If you should experience a power failure, a UPS will automatically kick in and provide power to your server for a set period of time, before safely shutting it down, preventing expensive damage, loss of your data or massive interruptions across the school

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#13) Can they help you work with other schools to buy used equipment from each other? There’s no doubt that ICT equipment is expensive for schools. What if your ICT supplier could help your school cut down on the costs by putting you in touch with other schools in the area who would be willing to sell you their used equipment? The supplier has nothing to lose – if your budgets don’t stretch to new equipment, then you’re not in the market anyway.

Quick tip Digital cameras are producing higher and higher quality images. The only down side to this is that these image files are becoming larger and larger. Storing all the images you take on your computer will quickly fill up memory, and slow the performance of your PC. Image Resizer is a great tool – by resizing your images you’ll greatly reduce the memory taken on your PC, as well as making images much more upload-friendly. For more information and instructions, see www.systemed.co.uk/tips

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#15) What advice and guidance can they offer in the massively expanding world of digital photography in primary schools? Many schools are recognising that ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ and relevant images can support many areas of the curriculum. Can your supplier help you to integrate digital images into your school network easily and effectively? Can they help you understand the overheads on disc space, back-up times and file transfers of large collections of images? Can they help you find approved, child-safe, image banks and also show you how to find images which you are legally allowed to copy from the internet?

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Quick tip Be aware of the massive range of free, safe resources provided by the National Education Network. These resources have been created and verified by local learning grids and are specifically targeted at the education sector. We’ve produced a website providing overviews and links to their work at www. systemed.co.uk/tips

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Conclusion The upkeep and well-being of a school network are crucial if a school is to make the best of a very expensive resource. Hopefully this booklet has given you some ideas on how to work in partnership with your supplier to make your ICT systems an invaluable asset to your school rather than a constant chore. In addition, the tips and ideas could quickly help you to realise some quick and powerful benefits with solutions you already have in place. Remember, take the time to investigate your options and make your decision carefully when selecting your ICT supplier. When you see the positive effect a first-class ICT system, maintained by a team of experts, has on your school you will be glad you did. To make your life easier and help you implement all the information in this book, we’ve produced one single web page with all the links which we’ve described in this booklet. That web page is at www. systemed.co.uk/tips. Good luck! 28


About Systems and Education At Systems and Education, we specialise in providing first-rate ICT services for schools and other organisations. With more than a decade’s experience, we offer a huge range of services that will take all the stress out of your ICT’s installation as well as providing on-going support. This includes… • Regular visits from our expert staff, to prevent problems before they even occur • Teacher training, so your staff are always 100% up to speed on the latest ICT developments • Classroom support, so your lessons always run smoothly • Server installations. If you’re implementing a totally new ICT system, we can make the process easy. • Trouble-shooting. Any problems will be dealt with quickly and effectively, whether it’s over the phone or in person. Please visit our website to find out more about our services and how we can help you develop an exceptional ICT system.

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Our special offers and events At Systems and Education we almost always have a special offer or event planned to help our clients get even more out of their ICT. To find out more about our range of workshops and training days, just visit our website. We look forward to seeing you at future events!

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Testimonials “Mike was booked for a training session… with 36 hours notice after our original provider of INSET fell ill. He willingly did this in the knowledge that the turnaround to produce a morning of training was very tight. “What transpired was one of the most inspirational presentations I have experienced in 20 years of teaching. Mike spoke with clarity (not easy for a Yorkshireman!), wit and passion for his subject. He left the assembled audience from the 3 schools represented with a hatful of ideas of how to develop the technologies of today in their own classrooms. “Mike has a way of wading through the complexities of technology and making it meaningful for his audience. His ability to pitch the presentation to his audience is commendable. “I have already spoken to Mike about getting him back to follow up his presentation with another session. My staff and I can’t wait to be enthused once more!” Phil Allman, Headteacher Olney Middle School

“Throughout our long association you have always pulled out the stops when it really mattered and that is valued and appreciated by us all. Thank you!” Liz Hammond. Deputy Headteacher Catherine Infant School

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“Southfields School started to work with Systems and Education 3 years ago. Although our infrastructure was in place we were keen to keep at the cutting edge and more importantly keep all of our machines and systems running and readily available to all staff and pupils. We have found their technical support to be excellent and very reliable. The assurance of knowing that someone will respond instantly to a problem has made the delivery of ICT so much easier. “I’d happily recommend them to any primary school, and please feel free to contact me directly if you’d like more of my views.” Paul Tuffin, Headteacher Southfields Primary School, Coventry

“Their professional approach has meant that IT has become a powerful tool for our company instead of a burden.” Darren Sawbridge Building and Maintenance Services Limited

“I can happily give Systems and Education my highest recommendation – the knowledge and expertise they offer is second to none. They work very closely with my school providing a cutting edge website which has significantly enhanced learning and teaching.” Graham Cullen, Headteacher Halam Primary School, Nottinghamshire

“We have found that the advice and service they give us can always be relied upon.” Andrew Shields, ICT co-ordinator Gilmorton Chandler CE Primary School 32

THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS YOU NEED TO ASK BEFORE YOU SELECT YOUR SCHOOL’S ICT SUPPLIER ICT is more important than ever in schools. It provides a wealth of learning opportunities for the students and can make the teachers’ lives much easier…but only when it works. ICT errors are a sure-fire way to derail a lesson plan, so your systems need to be 100% reliable. Choosing the right ICT supplier is therefore a top priority for schools, but with so many available, how do you know you’re choosing the right one? This booklet from Mike McSharry of Systems and Education will break down everything you need to know to identify your school’s perfect ICT supplier and get the most out of their services. Amongst the topics covered are… u What your supplier’s legal requirements are u How to evaluate whether they’re suitable for working in schools u The different ways a great ICT supplier can benefit your school u H ow to help your ICT suppliers work most effectively with the rest of your staff What’s more, Mike has provided a variety of expert ICT tips that you can apply immediately in your lessons and administration. If you’re serious about your school’s ICT systems, you cannot afford to ignore this information. So start implementing it today and get ready to take your systems to the next level. “Southfields School started to work with Systems and Education 3 years ago. Although our infrastructure was in place we were keen to keep at the cutting edge and more importantly keep all of our machines and systems running and readily available to all staff and pupils. We have found their technical support to be excellent and very reliable. The assurance of knowing that someone will respond instantly to a problem has made the delivery of ICT so much easier. I’d happily recommend them to any primary school, and please feel free to contact me directly if you’d like more of my views.” Paul Tuffin, Headteacher, Southfields Primary School, Coventry

www.systemed.co.uk