Michael Gove has made the decision that the Harnessing Technology Grant for 2010/11 will be cut by £100 million to contribute to the development of “Free Schools” nationally. This translates as an in year cut to local authorities and schools of at least 50%.
This suggests essential ICT systems will be unable to be maintained and improved – unless schools can find smarter ICT solutions, or use technology to achieve efficiency savings elsewhere in the value chain.  Here are some ideas worth exploring.

1. Switch your email exchange servers for cloud-based services
There’s a viable alternative to maintaining your own email exchange servers – services like Google Apps or Microsoft Live are free and both provide fully secure, branded virtual space for email, document sharing and storage. You can even retain your existing school-specific email address.  London Grid for Learning estimates that London schools have saved approximately £11m since transferring to Microsoft’s service last year.
2. Forget software licences – go Open Source!
Open Source software for learning platforms and e-learning content enable development and ongoing upgrade costs to be minimised.
3. Upgrade to the latest OS and save on power management
If you upgrade to the latest operating systems you will be able to take advantage of enhanced power-saving features, saving costs of between £23 and £46 per computer per year.
4. Switch to remote access
Microsoft’s latest operating platform (Windows 7) makes setting up remote access much more straightforward. Additionally some VPNs make use of free software packages that need no special hardware or software on the network to enable remote access.
5. Allow pupils to use their own laptops
Recent British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) research revealed that secondary schools spend 48% per of their ICT budget on new computers. Schools may consider asking parents to contribute by providing their children with their own computers for school and home use.
6. Change the way you communicate
Like encouraging parents to provide computers, this requires a significant cultural shift. The way in which student relationships at school are formed and nurtured are being reshaped as hallways of classrooms switches to social networks on digital learning platforms. There are inherent dangers in students using social networking that need to be managed – however, safe messaging tools for use in the classroom and at home can be provided, enabling students to access multimedia resources in a controlled environment.

Teachers are becoming open to the possibilities for social media tools in the classroom. In the hands of the right educators, they can be used to engage in creative ways and inspire discussion among even the softest-spoken students. However popular social networking and content sharing sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are often blocked by schools because its content can’t be moderated – even though they can be a good source of high-quality teaching resources.
Student Jotter is a system for e-portfolios and secure social networking that enables teachers to incorporate safe, secure social media into their lesson plans. Teachers can share their lesson plans, quizzes, videos, podcasts and other resources in a shared library. A community section allows teachers and students to network and collaborate with other members who share the same educational interests.  Class discussions are no longer intimidating for some students to participate in.

Everything is hosted in the cloud for free. Some great tools are included:  An online gradebook, customised quizzes, secure messaging, classroom blogs, the ability to track assessment and a customised profile page.  Student Jotter also enables students to easily share their work projects with classmates.
The interface is easy to navigate and teachers can monitor and edit any of their students’ messages and blogs posts. They can also control how private they want the e-portfolio to be; student-and-teacher only,  allow parents to log in with a password, or make them publically available.
In summary, School Jotter is a better way for teachers and students to organise themselves, and a place to put their work.
Is your school using social media for teaching and learning? What resources do you use? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

As school managers will be aware, the Department of Education has been asked to prepare plans for cuts of between 10% and 20%. This would come to between £5.71bn and £11.42bn.
While it is now widely expected that front-line schools budgets (those received from local authorities via the Dedicated Schools grant,or DSG) will be protected from the worst of the cuts, the full impact on school spending will require very careful reading of the detail.

Of particular interest is the impact on ICT investments within schools. The cuts inevitably carry some threats to the modernisation of the teaching and learning profession – some projects have already been scrapped, including education facilitator BECTA.
On the other hand, there may be opportunities for schools to save costs and increase efficiencies – particularly in areas such as cloud computing, open source and even the prospect of local authority collaboration to achieve savings through sharing resources and/or technology expertise.
Whatever the outcome of Wednesday’s announcement, many schools will be looking very hard at the small print before making planning decisions for their next budget year.

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