September 2010

By Ray Beaumont

Almost 1/3rd of teenagers now own a smart phone and so are continuously connected to the internet. Apple have sold over 250,000 iPads since launch, and the continuing development of these types of devices is set to transform education – already some leading US schools and universities have developed “Apps” to support their teaching. Add to this the fact that almost 90% of 6th form pupils in Independent Schools now own a laptop and a serious rethink of how technology is used and controlled in schools is required. Despite this most Independent Schools are still stuck in an old “supply and control” mentality, frustrating pupils, wasting money and failing to deliver.

The challenge for School IT managers is simple: How to harness the drive and power of this revolution, to use it to improve the learning experience for pupils, to increase parent satisfaction and to reduce IT expenditure? 
Their are two choices for meeting pupils’ individual computing needs within a school, either:

• Provide pupils with a centrally managed facility. This could take the form of fixed PC’s in IT suites and classrooms, a “thin client” infrastructure or a “managed laptop” scheme whereby pupils are loaned or forced to purchase specific approved items which are “locked down” to prevent the installation of non-approved software and to control access rights.

Or;

2. Create an infrastructure that allows pupils to use their own wireless devices.
At present most schools have pursued option 1 but all of these solutions are costly:  Fixed PC’s and their associated networks and domain controllers are expensive to purchase, operate and maintain; providing loan laptops is more expensive still and whilst thin client infrastructures have lower cost of ownership they are still expensive and are considered a “failed experiment” in the commercial sector. Managed laptops are rejected by pupils who then need to purchase a second machine to run their music, Facebook etc, leading to additional cost and frustration.

The long-term solution is clearly option 2 –to allow pupils to use their own devices.  Just as Schools are not expected to provide writing instruments to pupils, soon the same will be true for computers.   But the use of privately owned devices has been rejected in the past due to well-founded concerns over network security, the need to support a vast variety of machines, and data security. However, solutions do exist and the challenge is to break-down the problems and solve them. 
Once a School has recognised the advantages of allowing pupils to use their own wireless devices both at school and at home, the critical challenges are

The Network Problem

• To build a network which can cope with the sudden changes in usage from location to location and allows rapid access to the School’s virtual learning environment simply and securely.
• To ensure that the broadband connection to the School can cope with the significant increase in traffic
• To ensure that the access points can cope with the extraordinary changes in usage, as 100 pupils all want to log-on in one location at once during break, then leave
• To ensure that the log-in procedure for pupils is secure, but simple. Manually inputting MAC addresses for each device may work for teachers, but is impractical for the whole school, pupils are used to logging into a network in Starbucks and expect the same type of simple interface.

The Security Problem

• How to protect the School’s systems from any security threats on the pupil’s devices and prevent cross-infection between pupils?
• How to provide pupils with access to the School’s VLE and other pupil-facing systems without compromising security?

The know-how needed to build WiFi networks to meet the demands of the school environment is not commonplace, but it does exist.  Companies who specialise in designing, installing and managing large WiFi networks in places such as hospitals, hotels and conference centres have been overcoming almost identical problems for many years, and have technologies, developed for exactly these situations. 

Using private laptops also requires a different approach to security: in loan laptop and laptop purchase schemes the machine is usually "locked-down", with admin rights removed and network access managed by domain controllers.  With private laptops you cannot realistically do this.  Fortunately this problem was solved long ago and by the same organisations described above.  Publicly accessible WiFi networks in places such as hospitals, hotels and conference centres have exactly the same problem: how to allow access to the necessary network resources when you have no idea of the state of the connecting device.  The approach is to create a separate network, to isolate the laptop from the school network and from all other pupils. With this separation in place you no longer have to worry about the state of any individual laptop.

Once pupils have been separated onto their own network, access to pupil-facing school systems can be provided through those systems' web interfaces.  Web interfaces are rapidly becoming the de-facto means of interacting with applications, not only in VLE’s, but across IT in general.  The Pupil Network can be configured to route VLE interaction directly to the School’s firewall, without leaving the building.  This provides pupils with high speed access, but leaves the School’s firewall and IT Security Manager in complete control of everything the pupils can see and do. 

The Support Problem
Once the network is available a second series of questions arise:

• How to ensure that the pupil’s work is backed-up?  Even if the school’s VLE provides pupils with document storage, experience shows that important documents and work in progress will find their way onto the pupil’s laptop, and these will not be backed up regularly (if at all)
• How to provide the (often trivial) support questions that will inevitably arise (typically around synchronisation of mobile phones with outlook)?

Once again no new technology is required here, just the application of existing solutions to the school environment.

There are many backup solutions available, but probably the simplest and most effective for use by children are the remotely backed up, Continuous Data Protection products.  These are installed on a computer and constantly monitor for new and modified files.  Any such files are quickly encrypted and sent across the Internet to be stored in a secure data centre. 

Support for hundreds of pupils, many of whom will be using more than one device (maybe a laptop and an iPhone) is perhaps the most difficult nut to crack.  Of course the School’s IT team could take this task on in-house, but this is very unlikely to be a cost effective use of their time.  As well as managing the School’s systems they will increasingly need to focus on strategic issues relating to the use of ICT for the delivery of curriculum materials and mobile-learning, as these educational developments reach the mainstream.  In essence they will need to focus more and more on the real “educational value add” and less on the low-value and routine.  There are of course plenty of IT Support companies in the market place, many of whom specialise in providing IT management for schools, but given the child protection issues involved it is perhaps no surprise that very few provide direct support for children.  But there is at least one firm who offer IT support, direct to children and it is very likely that more will enter this space.

Conclusion
Given all the factors above the challenge for School IT managers is clear: To move away from a position of supply and control towards a new model which embraces the routine use of technology by today’s pupils;  adopts and adapts technologies that allow personal laptops and other devices to be used safely in schools; and seek to outsource low value-add IT functions so that they can concentrate on the strategic developments in educational IT that are approaching.