Education Technology in Schools

Success for Single Sign-on! ... and onwards for EIS guru!

Sometimes we need to take a leap into the unknown. After much deliberation, soft market testing, reading and studying it is possible to still end up being unsure. What was it Donald Rumsfeld said about Known Unknowns and Unkonwn Unknowns .... ?

What are we trying to achieve? We want any Kent Learning Zone user to be able to access the online resources their school provides without having to have a different login for each, and to stop companies insecurely extracting lots of personal data from school MIS systems. Each time they have to remember their password, the resources get used less and less. The answer we were told was Shibboleth. Problem was (we were also told) that Service Providers didn't really support Federated Access. The software  needed is Open Source and therefore community supported rather than something you buy.

Well, to coin a phrase, we ended up deciding to 'Just Do It', and the task was handed to EIS as a Plan-Do project. EIS has delivered the project in a couple of weeks (can't tell you what we'd been quoted externally!). The specialist technical expertise within EIS is impressive.

It works ... and works well! With a focus on primary resources, we started testing with a couple of Service providers, including J2e who offered access to their brilliant primary applications. With EIS, we are going to offer KLZ schools and users access to the best free and subscription 'single sign-on online' resources. Following testing with a group of pilot schools (should be completed by December), we plan to start promoting the service from January.

Sadly though we are saying goodbye to Marc Turner this week. Marc led the technical implementation of this service, and now heads of to even greater things outside of KCC. I would like to say a personal thanks for his help and expertise over the years and for doing an excellent job with such enthusiasm.

RM ... Primary ICT Seminar in Maidstone

RM will be at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel Hollingbourne just outside of Maidstone on Monday 22nd November with their Primary ICT Seminar.

The predominant theme is ' Achieving more with less'

Full details can be found by clicking HERE:

It's rumoured you may catch a glimpse of their excellent new RM Slate

Also, check out UtilEyes, an energy monitor to save on utility bills and connect your learners to real data.

Vital CPD 4 ICT - adding value to teaching

This is a shameless plug for Vital, professional development ICT development aimed at teachers. Vital is delivered by the Open University and funded by the DfE (at least for now!). Vital offers flexible courses and case studies, with guides to new technologies and ideas on how to use them.

In my opinion, School leaders should insist their teachers register to gain access to the course materials, discussion forums and interactive learning tools. A good feature is The Market Place which includes firms and organisations who offer professional CPD.One of the proposals from the last government was to replace LA advisory services with a register of advisors. It would be interesting to know if this is how this will be developed for ICT, by virtue of the fact that its actually in place. One of the issues for LA's is ensuring specialist school improvement advice continues to be available against a backdrop of austerity in public sector funding. Vital is supported by a regional infrastructure, with each responsible for planning and arranging courses and developing networks in their area.

I do have a concern. Vital is funded by DfE, so the obvious question is ... for how long will this continue? Is its survival dependent on support? What are the key performance indicators or criteria for success? I plan to contact Vital and find out!

As a postscript, could the excellent Teacher's TV (TTV) content be moved to Vital rather than lost with TTV's demise? ... it would be a shame if it were to disappear or end up on YouTube. I'm all for putting all of the ICT eggs for teachers in the same basket.

Home Access - the numbers for Kent!

We have been keeping track of the number of approved applications for Home Access laptop and Internet packages in Kent. We have figures associated with each school, and have used them to produce a summary report. The report highlights the numbers by District, and can be found by clicking on the image below. We also have totals for each school, and you can find out how to obtain these for your school through the next e-bulletin. District teams will be sent the totals for schools in their area in the next week or so.

Low income families with children in years 6 through 9 were eligible.

Kent families did well in comparison to neighbouring LA's, with 5,754 packages being distributed.This was 2,077 more than Hampshire and 4,111 more than Oxfordshire.

The 5 secondary Schools / Academies with the highest uptake were: Folkestone Academy, Pent Valley Tech. Coll., The Abbey School, Isle of Sheppey Academy and Hartsdown Technology College.

The 5 primary schools with the highest uptake were:Cliftonville Primary; Dame Janet Community Junior; Folkestone Christchurch CE Primary; Newington Community Primary; Temple Hill Community Primary.

ICT Provision in schools - BESA summary report findings

According to a recent BESA report!

Desktop Computers -  58% of primary schools report being well equipped and 64% of secondary schools report being in the same position as last year.

Digital Content - 52% of primary school ICT leaders do not consider themselves well resourced.

Learning Platforms - 12% of primary schools consider them irrelevant. 30% consider themselves deficient, 47% report being well resourced.

Teacher computers - 71% primary, 70% secondary provide good teacher access to computers for curriculum purposes.

Decreased demand for desktops in favour of laptops.

Average primary school has 7.3 desktops over 5 years old.

Average primary school has 7 inneffective computers (likely to be the same as above?)

Budgets for ICT likely to be 6% less (that's not so bad).

What is Federated Access Management (FAM)? In a nutshell!

Who? A national body called the UK Access Management Federation looks after things, and requires you sign up to a strict contract that assures you are trustworthy, have your organisations approval at a high level and are a recognised educational institution. You can sign up as either an Identity Provider or a Service Provider ... or both. Identity Providers (IdP's) have a directory of users who want access to resources, Service Providers (SP's) have a catalogue of resources and services they want to sell or protect from copyright or intellectual property theft. Trust between the Identity Provider and Service Provider is key and Kent LA is a fully signed up member as an Identity Provider!

Why? Federated Access Management (FAM) allows an organisation managing a directory of users (called an Identity Provider or IdP) to access any copyright protected resources from another organisation (called a Service Provider or SP) without having to remember lots of different logins and passwords. This requires a Service Provider to be able to trust the Identity of a user and their organisation, and that they will manage their users properly, ie deleting users when they leave. Importantly, the system does not pass personal data to the Service Provider because it doesn't need to know; it just needs to know that the user is from an organisation that has paid for a resource or is allowed to access it... although it can if needed!

What? - Its a collection of Open Source SAML compliant software (usually Shibboleth), so its free and very well supported by a UK educational community, BUT setting it up needs some expertise. Setting up an Identity Provider is easier than setting up as a Service Provider. The free software (Shibboleth) is available from Internet2 so play with it!. (SAML Security Assertion Mark-up Language is a secure way of securely moving data around).

How? User logs on to their school's VLE / portal - finds a resource link, e.g. Encyclopedia Britannica - clicks on it - goes to resource without entering another username and password. Without FAM, User logs on to their school's VLE / portal - finds a resource link, e.g. Encyclopedia Brittanica - clicks on it - goes to a login page and enters a different username and password - forgotten password - has to ask teacher for a new password - waits two weeks - gets bored - doesn't learn!

Where? Maintained schools are expected to use the Identity Provider of their Local Authority. Academies and Federations can do it themselves OR use the LA Identity Provider.Any educational institution or organisation in the UK.

When? Available now (free software), but you do have to sign up to some stringent trust requirements.

Links

Great animation explaining it all.
Shibboleth software (Internet2)
UK Access Management Federation

What is Services Interoperability Framework (SIF)? In a nutshell!

Following my last post on interoperability, I received an email asking for a plain english explanation of some of the key concepts, so here goes with the first - SIF.

Services Interoperability Framework (SIF) - used to be called School's Interoperability Framework.

Who? - Controlled by SIF Association (US) - SIF Association UK (UK). Designed for the US schools market - very different to the UK market! SIFAUK spends most of its time trying to tailor SIF for the UK which has much tighter data protection laws than the US.

Why? - "... schools will be enabled to better utilise technology in a manner that leverages the promise and capabilities of interoperability between disparate applications". More importantly, your school Management Information System  (MIS) is where school data is stored, SIF can control access to your data and prevent service providers from setting up all sorts of dodgy extractions to get their hands on it!

So! ... personalisation requires personal data - personal data comes from your school management information system (MIS) - you can't send personal data using CD's or USB storage - not all applications need all of the data anyway - SIF offers a means of transferring data between your MIS and a software application from a service provider (or between two points) via the web - SIF provides a specification for the data, and a specification for its transport  - (this doesn't exactly match the fields on your MIS, but its close).

What? - SIF provides a specification for schools data and a means of sharing it across the web.

How? - A Zone Integration Server acts as an encrypted exchange between a vendor's (service provider's) software application (eg library software) and your MIS (SIMS etc.) ensuring only relevant personal data is released from your MIS. A SIF Agent, a software program created by a service provider, connects their service to a Zone Integration Server. SIF therefore allows software to securely request data from your MIS and be provided with a response.

Where? The Zone Integration Server can act for a whole district, across a federation, or a single school.

When? - A good question! SIF was heavily supported by BECTA, (which is in a hospice awaiting imminent death). A recent DfE review says SIF doesn't cut the mustard. Numerous vendors are interested, but SIF has not gained much traction other than in some large scale pilots, notably Birmingham. Microsoft seem to like SIF, probably because its a global specification, and they've been working with trusted partners such as Visual SI to perfect it, although demand is poor and the market apathetic. 

Why is it important? - because BECTA promoted it as a means of "... rationalising technology in the education sector", and the Information Standards Board (ISB) agree, making it clear to suppliers and service providers that they should use it in their products.

Useful Links:

SIF - Wikipedia

Education, Skills and Children's Services - Interoperability? Ouch!

The Department for Education's predecessor, DCSF, commissioned a report (PDF) to review information and data sharing within education, skills and childrens services (ESCS), with the aim of suggesting a way forward. The report makes interesting reading, concluding that the current lack of interoperability wastes £300m per annum! The report also concludes that a national approach to interoperability would deliver financial benefits of around £250m, (payback within 3 years), and would join up services to learners, families and young people.

The report recommends a central infrastructure to support national and regional interoperability, and adoption and imposition of standards on Local Authorities and Schools.

All of the above sounds fine, but how do we get from where we are now? Currently we have a hotch-botch of standards, approaches and commercial influences. Schools (Services) Interoperability Framework (SIF) is a US approach that has been adapted to fit the UK market, and is designed to control access to schools managament information systems by third party systems and services, e.g. e-catering, library systems etc. This can be extended to Local Authority data collections, but most use Capita SIMS or similar products that already include school census collection features. The report dismisses SIF, which has prompted a response from SIFAUK.

I believe the approach identified in the report is the right one, but doesn't stand a chance of being supported. Why?, because it requires agreement on standards (something that convulses SIF), underestimates interference of public sector IT suppliers who prefer proprietary rather than open solutions, and wholly underestimates the scale of the task. Success would also require a hard line from a big central government, and that's not going to happen to support an approach commissioned by its predecessor.

Stuff that's caught my eye - 031010

Internet Maths Tutor & BBC News Item: Indian Call centrer teaches maths in the UK

Open Source Virtual Private Network (VPN) OpenVPN - with OpenVPNAS may be useful for schools who want a cheap solution for filtered home access for staff and students.

The Future of Education? Mostly American perspective, but some interesting nuggets.

Minimum wage for apprentices - should every school employ an ICT technical apprentice? I think so! I took on an apprentice last year and strongly recommend it.

Wonder what a TeachMeet is? The Whiteboard Blog highlights that BrainPopUK and TeachMeet Essex have a YouTube guide.

Tablets in, netbooks out (by Tablet we mean iPads of course!)

BESA (The ICT in schoolstrade body) ICT in UK State Schools report - Schools likely to spend £75m less on ICT in next academic year.Here's another interpretation of the same report.... and another!

Nutter repairmen climbing1,768 ft TV Mast ... cool video

Thanks to The Whiteboard Blog for pointing out BBC Dimensions.

By what age do children recognise that plagiarism is wrong?

Creating newspapers from your RSS feeds?

I must admit I was disappointed at the demise of Bloglines, the RSS feed reader I first cut my teeth on at an Alan November conference. It was something of a revelation and is fundamental to many of the Internets new tools. Rather reluctantly I've moved across to Google Reader, which does the job I guess.

I've also heard about online apps that turn feeds into a personalised newspaper. There is paper.li that creates news from Twitter, so the articles are a bit short! Thanks to Andy Hutt though, I've decided to try Tabbloid to create a personal magazine. I'll aim to publish weekly and see how things go!

Kent e-safety officer - mentioned in dispatches!

Broadcasting on Mon 4th October, Radio 4 @ 8pm is a documentary looking at S*x, P*rn and Teenagers. Guardian Online has a trailer article that quotes Rebecca Avery, e-safety officer in my team. Worth a look, and the broadcast sounds well worth listening to. Scary stuff!