Author: Gary Henderson

Gary Henderson is currently the Director of IT in an Independent school in the UK.Prior to this he worked as the Head of Learning Technologies working with public and private schools across the Middle East.This includes leading the planning and development of IT within a number of new schools opening in the UAE.As a trained teacher with over 15 years working in education his experience includes UK state secondary schools, further education and higher education, as well as experience of various international schools teaching various curricula. This has led him to present at a number of educational conferences in the UK and Middle East.

JISC DigiFest: Thoughts from Day 1

I thought I would share some initial thoughts following day one of JISC DigiFest.  The event was launched with a very polished and professional pre-prepared video displayed on screens scattered around the events main hall, focussing on the rate of change in relation to technology and some of the technological implications of technology on the world we live in.   The launch session also included a room height “virtual” event guide introducing the sessions and pointing you in the direction of the appropriate hall.    In terms of the launch of a conference this was the most polished and inspiring launch I have seen albeit on reflection there wasn’t much particularly innovative or technically complex about it.

The keynote speaker addressed the changing viewpoints of different generations of people focussing particularly on Generation Z, the generation which currently are in our sixth forms, colleges and universities.   I took away two key points from the presentation.   The first was how each generations views were shaped by their experiences particularly between the ages of 12 and 20 year old.   Jonah Stillman used thoughts on space as an example showing how Generation X might have positive views focussing on the successes of the moon landing whereas Millennials may have a more cynical view following the Challenger disaster.   Additionally, Jonah mentioned movies as a social influencer and how those in the Harry Potter generation may view cooperation and trying hard, even where unsuccessful, in a positive manner.  Those born later than this may draw on another series of films, in the hunger games, resulting in a greater tendency towards competition and the need to succeed in line with the movies storyline of everyone for themselves and failure results in death.     The second take away point from the session resulted from the questioning at the end of the session around what some saw as the absoluteness of the boundaries between generations.    I think Jonah’s use of the word “tendency” addressed this concern in that the purpose of the labels was for simplicity and to indicate a general trend and tendency rather than to suggest that all people born on certain dates exhibited a certain trait.  It increasing concerns me that this argument keeps coming up when surely it is clear that there is a need to use simplistic models to help clarity of explanation and that no model, not matter how complex will ever truly capture the real complexity of the world we live in.

My 2nd session was actually the delivery of my own session.   I will be sharing some thoughts in relation to my presentation along with my resources in the near future.   For now I will simply say that the session was not one of my best.   I do however hope that my main message, in the need for greater and broader discussion in relation to citizenship within the now digital world we find ourselves living in was clear.

The third session of the day focussed on  digital literacy programme one particular university had developed.   I found it interesting in this and a later presentation, how digital literacy or digital citizenship appeared to often fall to the library in universities in terms of developing and delivering a programme.    In schools I feel the same topics tend to fall on the IT teaching department rather than libraries however it is interesting that something which should be permissive would find itself localised in educational institutions in a single department rather than being supported across the institution.   It was interesting how the programme the university developed had evolved over time, which seems to me to be the correct approach given how quick technology is changing.  I also found it interesting in that student voice suggested needs which then later students indicated they did not find useful.  In other words students themselves were not an accurate judge of their own wants and needs.     Session five followed a similar topic again looking at digital literacy however the presenters made use of a fairy tales as a vehicle to deliver their message of the pros and cons of the digital world we live in.   I must admit I enjoyed this presentation in its novel approach to delivering the concept in hand.

Session four focussed on partnerships between a university, a local council and a number of corporate organisations focusing in particular on data analysis and business intelligence.  I think schools have some way to go in this area as they regularly gather huge amounts of data however little is actually done with it beyond reporting it to school leaders, parents, etc.   I think the challenge is that schools often lack the resources which a college or university may have at their disposal, such as having data scientists as part of the staff body.   That said, the sessions seemed to indicate the potential for schools to leverage partnerships to fill this gap with minimal to no outlay on their own resources.

My final session of day one focussed on digital transformation, and like the key notes was insightful and inspiring.    Lindsay Herbert discussed the bear in the room, which is similar to the elephant in the room but more dangerous.     I particularly like the way Lindsay stated early on that the world was a “terrible place” citing issues such as the corona virus, fires in Australia, storms across the UK and ongoing technological change.   She then quickly moved on to the fact that we are inherently brave in our attempt to not only exist but to strive to flourish in this world, before then going on to identify various success stories where the bear in the room was tackled.    She left us with 3 main tips, all of which struck a cord with me, in that transformation starts with a worthy cause, requires lots of people and needs to be learned and earned rather than purchased.   The third tip in particular strikes a cord for me as I have encountered change where it has not gone as smoothly as I would have liked, and where significantly more effort was expended than had originally been attended;  In retrospect this may have been the change being earned, plus certainly involved a lot of learning.

Day 1 was useful with the keynote and closing session of the day being my highlights.    Have plenty of notes to digest when I get back home.  Roll on day 2.

 

 

 

EdTech: Supporting schools in a crisis

The current outbreak of the Corona virus has highlighted a particular educational need which I believe EdTech is well placed to fill;  the need for learning to continue when staff and/or students are unable to actually attend school either due to forced closures or individual illness or through forced isolation such as is required in relation to containing the Corona virus.

There are a wide variety of platforms in use in schools which can support remote learning plus platforms which can easily be put into place and even some companies offering their platforms free during this current crisis such as Centurys offer to Asian schools.    Sadly, as the list of options is very long plus I don’t personally have experience of all possible solutions and configurations, for the purposes of this post I am going to focus on the solutions I do have experience of.

I am going to start with Microsoft Teams as it is the one which immediately jumps to mind, in particular its “Meet Now” functionality.     The reason this functionality is first to my thoughts is my belief in learning as a social experience and therefore the need for interaction beyond simple file sharing, ideally in a video format complete with all the non-verbal cues present in our normal day to day interactions with others.   Via Meet Now lesson content can be shared as a live video stream including the ability to share desktop content such as presentations or worked examples, etc.   This is very useful for conducting a lesson remotely or allowing students to access a lesson remotely however it also includes the ability for the video stream to be automatically recorded so that students can also view it after the event, in an “on demand” basis.    Microsoft will also automatically transcribe the video making it easily searchable however I note that this very much depends on the quality of the audio within the video and the pace of speech, the accents of individuals speaking, etc so it isn’t full proof.

As well as in a class or group context Teams can also be used on a 1:1 basis to allow teachers to conduct video calls with students independent of the device they are using and their location.   Using the Chat facility, a video call can easily be started and again both student and teacher have the ability to share their desktop and/or share files as needed.    Where bandwidth is an issue, rather than using video, teachers and students can fall back to a text-based discussion albeit I believe video is generally preferable.  A student with a mobile phone and a cellular contract could therefore interact with their teacher from a quiet room at home or even while on a bus or train.

In relation to using Teams Microsoft have already shared some advice for where schools want to enable and use of Teams.  You can view this info here.     If seeking to setup Teams quickly, assuming an Office 365 tenancy is in place complete with student accounts, my suggestion would be to enable teachers to create teams for their classes and support them to use Team Codes to allow students to join the relevant class.  This means everything can quickly be put in place to allow for use of Teams.

In terms of more static content such as learning resources, worksheets, etc, which you might want students to access, this ideally could be delivered through whichever learning platform is in use within a school.   Teams can also provide this facility or a SharePoint site, another component of office 365, could be quickly created to host the relevant learning content files.    OneNote could also provide such static content however additionally OneNote can allow teachers to provide written and even verbal feedback to students on their work allowing a more realistic two-way communication and learning experience to be developed.    I suspect I could actually write a piece on OneNote on its own however for now the above will need to suffice.

Personally, I also think Flipgrid is worthy of mention as another possible video related solution which can be put in place quickly allowing teachers to share video content with students and students to reply again with video.  I think this could be useful for creating the feeling of group discussion where the students are in diverse locations and may not be able to access the video stream at a specified time.     Another app worthy of mention would be Wakelet in its potential use by teachers to collate resources quickly and easily ready for students to access as, when and where needed.

The options are many and I have barely scratched the surface.   I have focussed on the Microsoft solutions however Google offer similar functionality for those schools using G-suite rather than Office 365.    The reality is that there isn’t one correct solution, there are many possibilities and a schools chosen approach needs to fit the individual school.   I also think we need to share ideas and thoughts on this as situations like this may become more common either related to illnesses like currently, due to natural disasters or environmental conditions or due to other events, hence this post.   Mark Steeds comments are particularly useful as they come from actual experience of this rather than simply theory which I need to admit my views above are.    I also think we need to acknowledge that outside of dramatic events, the ability for remote learning to be possible and even encouraged is something we need to give more consideration to.   Using technology to enable and support remote learning is another tool in the teachers toolbox;  A tool which is particularly powerful in reaching individual students with individual needs.  Why, therefore, should it be restricted to use during special circumstances such as viral outbreak?

[Updated 06/03/2020]

A couple of additional Microsoft resources have been brought to my attention and are listed below (thanks to Ian Stuart, @IanStuart66 for highlighting):

Moving to the cloud

The cloud?

In what is my third post looking at aspects of IT Strategy I thought I would write a little about moving to the cloud.   I note that the ISC Digital group recommends schools move to using Office 365 or G-Suite, both of which are cloud based services, as part of their bursars 6 pack advice.

There has a long been worries about security and control over cloud-based solutions.   My feeling is that largely these concerns have decreased with time and as cloud services have matured.  Additionally, understanding of cloud services has developed however I note recently a conversation in relation to a school which hosted its data locally and was building its own solutions for reasons of data security, so the concerns haven’t gone away.    In discussing cloud services, I love the idea of the cloud simply equating to “someone else’s computer”.   This description works for me.  In using cloud services for your solutions you are simply replacing your on-site servers with servers someone else owns, located somewhere out on the internet.   The question though in using cloud services is one of asking whether the someone else you are using can offer something you cannot and whether or not you trust them.

Looking at G-Suite and Office 365 as cloud hosted productivity suites I can see a number of things which are being offered which aren’t available in a locally hosted solution.    Both Microsoft and Google have significant technical support teams plus resiliency and redundancy capabilities way beyond what is possible with a schools IT support staff and on-prem solutions.   They are able to collate threat intelligence from vast numbers of systems and users to help protect all those using their services.      They offer a consistent revenue based costing model rather than the capital heavy costing model associated with on-premise data centres and servers, plus they offer easy scalability in terms of adding users, storage, services, etc.

As with most things this isn’t however a one-sided argument and there are other considerations which need to be taken into account.   The need for internet access is one of the key considerations as if your internet connectivity is unreliable or if your bandwidth is limited then deciding on cloud hosting is likely to be a bad idea.    Access to data may be another concern, as with locally hosted solutions you will have full unfettered access to the databases containing your data whereas in the cloud you may have limited access, through APIs for example, or may have no access other than that provided by a solutions user interface.    Sharing of data may be a concern as your third party, such as Google or Microsoft in the above case, will have access to your data so we must consider how much we trust them to not misuse this access.    Another consideration might be in relation to solutions which don’t need internet access, only requiring local network access, which therefore may be safer kept locally hosted.   It isn’t simply a case of just jumping to the cloud, there are considerations and concerns which need to be weighed up.

One of the main concerns in relation to cloud services is the terms and conditions and understanding your rights and responsibilities under these terms.   The terms and conditions should identify the overall approach to security which a vendor takes including how they may or may not share data, what happens should you cease using the vendor, their approach to breach and vulnerability notification, and any provision allowing for you to audit a vendors activities. Now I am not going to write much on this here as I will share some thoughts on this specific issue in a future post where I can explore it in more detail.  What is key however is the need to carefully check the terms and conditions especially in relation to complying with your data protection/GDPR obligations and also in relation to business continuity and disaster recovery.    It is important to take a risk based approach and weigh up the benefits and potential risks and assure yourself and your organisation that risks are acceptable and that benefits are worth any risk.

I continue to view the use of cloud based solutions or the use of the cloud to host an organisations own solutions positively.   I can see lots of advantages and benefits.  I also so more and more of our systems, data and services moving to the cloud in the coming years however I am also conscious that the cloud is not a silver bullet and is not necessarily appropriate for all situations.   We need to consider moving to the cloud or cloud based solutions carefully.   That said, I am not sure how that is different from normal behaviour as any change or introduction of new solutions should be considered carefully with a view to advantages, drawbacks and risk management.

Planning for Resiliency

This is my second post related to IT Strategy, following up on the previous post regarding “Seeking Value” but this time looking at the resiliency of systems and infrastructure particularly around when things inevitably do go wrong.

Resiliency: Keeping it all working

I recently heard Mark Steed speaking at the EdTech Conversations event in London where he referred to his approach to the use of Educational Technology at JESS in Dubai.

In his speech, he talked about a “no excuses” approach to systems and the infrastructure on which educational technology solutions rely. His view was that if the foundations on which EdTech use are built are not solid, and if things such as Wi-Fi or the wider network don’t work or are intermittent then users of educational technology, be it the students or teachers, will simply turn off and seek non-technology solutions. Winning them back in the event of reliability issues being extremely difficult or near impossible. As such building strong technology foundations, a resilient infrastructure, is therefore key. Planning for when things might go wrong is a must.

As with most things building resiliency isn’t simple. In a world of infinite resources we would simply double up (N x 2), or even double up plus add spares;  So in the case of our Internet provider we would require two separate diversely routed fibres so that, in the event one fibre was damaged, we would be able to run off the 2nd fibre. We might then have a third redundant backup solution, possibly with lower capacity, and again diversely routed. All of this sounds good and minimises potential downtime from fibre damage within the incoming internet services however this all comes with a cost, first in terms of financial costs of additional lines and also in terms of additional hardware and support costs. We don’t live in a world of infinite resources and therefore decisions need to be taken as to how much resiliency we build in. This is where the usual risk assessment and management processes must kick in.

Let’s consider the key pieces of infrastructure which may exist and issues around each:

  • Internet Service Provision, Firewalls and Core Switches

As we use more and more cloud services, internet access and school internet provision becomes critically important. Due to the critical nature of internet access, when looking at Internet service provision, firewalls and core switches, the two main focal areas I would consider are doubling up where finances allow or carefully examining the service level agreement along with any penalties proposed for where service levels are not met. In the case of firewalls and core switches, cold spares with a lower specification may also be an option to minimize cost but allow for quick recovery in the event of any issue. When looking at the SLAs of providers in terms of their support offering for when things go wrong consider, is it next business day on-site support or return to base for example and how long their anticipated recovery period is.

  • Edge Switches and Wi-Fi

In the case of edge switches and Wi-Fi Access Points we are likely to have large numbers especially for larger sites. I would suggest that heat mapping for Wi-Fi is key at the outset of a Wi-Fi deployment, in making sure Wi-Fi will work across the site. In looking at resiliency for when things go wrong my view is an N+1 approach. This involves establishing a spare or quantity of spares based on the total number of units in use and the level of risk which is deemed acceptable. High levels of risk acceptance mean fewer spares, whereas a low level of risk acceptance may lead to a greater number of spares.

  • Cabling / Routing

Cables break plus various small animals love to chew on cables given half a chance.

As a result, it is important to examine your overall network layout with a view to any weak points where a single failure might impact on large areas or large numbers of users within the school.  Where possible plan for redundant routes such that any single failure can be quickly resolved by using an alternative route thereby minimising downtime while you wait for repairs.

  • School Management Solutions (SMS) /Management Information Systems (MIS)

I include the schools MIS system given its criticality in relation to parental contact info, student registration, etc. It is a critical system within a school. As such it is important to consider how it is backed up and how recovery would be undertaken. It is also important to test the processes. I have conducted tests in the past which have shown the recovery process did not perform as expected; Had I not tested, the first I would have known about difficulties would have been when I needed to recover the MIS for real, which is a time when the last thing you want is for things to not go as planned.

 

I note that the above is not an extensive or comprehensive list and I might have included classroom display technology, Mobile Device Management (MDM), Network Access Control (NAC), CCTV, access control and a whole manner of other solutions which may exist, however in the interest of keeping this post brief and to the point I have left these off.

For me, the key in relation to resiliency is a risk-based assessment of your systems and infrastructure.

We need to know the risks and their impact on the school. Armed with this information we can prioritise our available resources towards the aspects of our infrastructure where the greatest level of resiliency is required. The other key consideration is transparency and ensuring school leaders are aware of the risks which exist, where the available resources have been prioritised and where decisions have been taken not to deploy resources, plus the reasons why.

My concern with resiliency is that it is often something which people don’t worry about until things go wrong. Then come the difficult discussions as to why preventative measures or recovery plans hadn’t been put in place. Better to consider resiliency regularly and ensure that the state of play, including the risks, are all made clear to all. At my school, we approach this as part of an annual IT risk assessment process including risks related to resiliency. If you don’t have a risk assessment which includes a discussion of resiliency, it would be my strong advice to create one.

 

Did you know?

Following on from the #DigiLearnSector twitter chat last night I thought I would share some of the Did you know tips which we have been sharing within our school.

We currently share Did you know tips weekly in an IT Services section within the whole school bulletin.   Each tip is designed to a be simple idea, tool or piece of functionality which is easy to use and easy to explain, leading to what we hope are simple bite sized tips.   We have now been doing this for a couple months, since shortly after the bulletin document was introduced and as a result there are around 9 tips in the document currently.

You can access the consolidated Did you know tips here.    I will hopefully update this periodically given we will continue to add a new tip to our list each week.

I hope you find this useful.

 

IT Strategy: Seeking value

I have been planning to post on IT strategy in relation to some of the areas which I believe need to be considered.  Initially my thought was for a single post covering a number of different points, some being obvious and some less so obvious, however as soon as I started writing it became clear that each point could be a post in itself or would result in a really long single post.   As such I decided to undertake a number of separate posts of which this is the first:

Seeking Value

I remember someone telling me that IT is the 3rd most expensive thing in a school after staffing costs and the cost of the building and school estate.  With such a large part of a schools finances invested in technology it is important to make sure that we are getting value.   Now I note my use of the word “value” as opposed to impact; This is due to impact being often associated with examination outcomes.   In my view this is a narrow view on technologies potential within education.  Exam results, for example, don’t provide a measure of the positive effect which technology can have to a student with Asperger’s who previously found it difficult to interact with the classroom discussion but now can do so easily via an online chat facility.    For me value suggests a broader classification which might include using technology to engage a particular student who previously wouldn’t or couldn’t access learning, like in the above example, it might include introducing new experiences to students which were either difficult, dangerous or costly without tech or it might be using technology to bring about new more efficient processes for teachers such as dictation of feedback, etc.   Value is much more diverse and also context specific than exam results.  Seeking value in our technology should be a key objective in all technology decision making but mustn’t be confused with cost cutting.

I have often heard about how technology should be led by teaching and learning needs.   I agree with this to an extent in that technology shouldn’t dictate what is done in the classroom, however we must be careful that whatever technology we are considering using brings about value.   It is all too easy to fall for the salesman’s spiel regarding the potential or to focus on a particularly nice feature and not appreciate the wider implications of a technologies use.  I remember VLEs being heralded for the potential they had to change learning giving students access to resources and allowing teachers to set homework and provide feedback, etc.  Sadly, in my view, they never really provided value as first there was the cost of the software, then the resource cost of training and of creating, posting and updating content, then the limited ways that content could be organised and presented which stifled the creativity inherent in good teaching.  The cost versus the benefits never added up for me, and with this I didn’t see the value.    I can name a couple of other technologies which have been rolled out due to their potential to impact teaching and learning, but where the costs and resultant value is doubtful at best.

A discussion of value in relation to an educational technology project is never an easy one given the concept of value is potentially so broad and all encompassing.  Important things, such as a detailed consideration of value, are seldom easy.   Judgements on value are also often subject to the different perspectives of the people involved in the project.   To that my answer is to look to the schools values and what it stands for and to see if the proposed technology fits with the schools wider aims.   If it doesn’t then the project should be dropped.  If, however it does then a trial or pilot study may help surface the value or lack of in the technology being examined.   Discussions with other schools may also help to establish value.    Assuming value can be established from such a trial a wider roll-out, either to a bigger pilot group, to a specific group or even whole school can be considered and planned.

I have now added “Seeking value” as one of the value statements for my IT Services team, as a reminder and key focus in supporting IT across the school.   It is my belief that it is important that we all have a similar reminder as we explore the many different and emerging technologies and technology solutions which might be considered for use in our schools.   Before proceeding we need to ask ourselves: Does this add value?

 

 

 

 

7 years of blogging!

It was 7 years ago to the day that I started writing this blog.  It is amazing how time has flown.   2013 now seems like a distant memory and an age away.     In terms of distance my location in 2013 is around 7000 km away.   I remember being sat in our villa in Al Ain in the UAE, sat on the bed in the bedroom watching TV but with my laptop to hand when I suddenly decided to start a blog and to share thoughts and ideas with the world.   I think part of the driving force behind my decision to start a blog was wanting to share some of the content I had used, or was intending to use, in presentations.   I also wanted to try and give back to the education community having previously been happy to make use of others’ blogs, and of social media, to get ideas and resources from.

2013
Late 2019

Since then I have shared a variety of content and have found myself revisiting why I was sharing.   This marks my 273rd post.   My focus continues to be to share ideas with the hope that someone will find it useful or maybe even insightful, but also to share things for myself to help me better reflect on my thinking processes and outlook when looking back from some point in the future.   I suspect it is in providing insight to my future self where my blog has been most successful.

2013
Late 2019

I look a bit older (and am a little heavier and greyer in hair) now however I continue to enjoy discussing and sharing ideas in relation to education and EdTech in particular.   I therefore look forward to continuing to find time and to share ideas and I hope that for some at least it proves to have some value.

 

 

 

Reflections on hosting a TweetMeet

On the 21st Jan I did my first Microsoft TweetMeet as one of the hosts.  I have been involved in previous TweetMeets as a participant and have also hosted a couple of non-Microsoft TweetMeet, however as I posted previously (read here) a Microsoft TweetMeet is slightly different.

The first thing I will say is that I couldn’t believe how quickly the hour disappeared.   One minute I was sat waiting for everything to begin and the next minute the final summary tweet highlighting the topic and date of the next tweet was being sent out.

During the hour the discussion was thick and fast with several people to reply to or retweet all with a video chat running in the background as a back channel for hosts.  This back channel ensured that we were all kept to the correct timings for each question even although we had been encouraged to make use of buffer to schedule the main questions so we could focus on our replies and retweets.

I picked up a number of good points from participants to the event plus enjoyed the online interaction which was fast paced and to the point.   It was also interesting seeing differing viewpoints being put forward from different school contexts and different countries.    In addition, the preparation ahead of the TweetMeet itself was carefully managed through a OneNote of support materials and timelines plus occasional messages from the organizing members sent via Microsoft Teams.  This all made for an interesting process including reintroducing me the functionality of both Wakelet and Flipgrid.

Overall it was an excellent experience in preparing, with the other hosts, for the event followed by the TweetMeet itself.  It was a fun experience, albeit the time disappeared quickly.   It is certainly something I would be interested in being involved with in the future.   I would also heartily recommend it to anyone who is thinking about getting involved as a host but is unsure.  And to those hosting the Microsoft TweetMeet on the 18th Feb, focusing on AI in education, I wish good luck!

 

 

MS Forms: File Upload Questions

Microsoft recently introduced the ability to upload files as part of MS Forms, or at least it only just started appearing in UK tenants.   This is functionality I had been waiting for as it makes MS Forms so much more flexible and useful especially for situations where you might want users to upload a document or image as part of a form return.  I therefore thought it might be useful to blog a little about this new functionality in use.

Adding a form upload to a form is almost as easy as adding any other question type.   Simply click the Add new option then use the arrow to the right of the question types to then allow you to select the File Upload question type.

You can now enter the question which will be associated with the file upload.   This might be as simple as “Upload your file(s) here” or might state the type of files you want people to upload such as “Upload your images”, etc.    Each file upload question also comes complete with the ability to adjust the number of files that can be uploaded up to a maximum of 10 or you can also add more than one file upload question to a single form.   This provides flexibility in how you want users to upload their files, either uploading all relevant files in a single upload question or uploading each required file to a different question.

You can also set the limitations in terms of file size with options for 10Mb, 100Mb and 1Gb.     My advice here would be to limit to smaller file sizes just to avoid potential upload issues where users have limited bandwidth however I haven’t personally tested uploading 1Gb files so it may work perfectly well.

Once you have setup the above and shared your form the next bit is being able to review submitted files.   For my example I setup a form from my own user account meaning that Forms automatically created a folder in my OneDrive to store the files.  I assume if a form was setup in Teams it would equally create a file store in teams and store the uploaded files there.  The files are basically stored in the Microsoft Forms subfolder within the Apps folder which will appear in your OneDrive.   Inside this folder a new folder titled to match the forms title will appear.  This allows you to easily identify which files relate to which of your forms.

Files uploaded retain their original file name based on the file being uploaded by users however this has the name of the user appended to it.  This highlights one limitation of MS Forms in that you need to be a user within the Office 365 tenant to upload files, so you can’t create a publicly accessible form which allows unauthenticated users to upload files.  Although a limitation, I see this as only a minor issue as I can see potentially significant risk if unauthenticated uploads were supported.

If a user uploads the same file more than once Forms simply enumerates the filename appending 1, 2, 3, etc to it to identify each separate upload of the file.

One feature I particularly like is when you export the responses from your Form to excel.     For each file upload the URL link is provided in the resultant spreadsheet with this link taking you to the relevant file in OneDrive with multiple file uploads listed in a cell but separated by a semi-colon.   This will mean that for multiple file upload questions you may need to do a little processing on individual cells if you want to separate each link into a different cell however this is relatively simple to do.

Overall, I love this additional functionality in Microsoft Teams and look forward to making increasing use of it going forward.

EdTech Conversations and BETT 2020: Reflections

Another year another BETT and guess what?  Once again, I failed to learn from experience and decided to make my way down via train and once again it went wrong.  This time it was simply my first train being late leading to me missing my connecting train.  This had the same concertina impact as I experienced last year leading to me rushing around.  Maybe next year I will learn?   Third time lucky?

On top of this, as I was visiting the EdTech Conversations event at the London Design and Engineering UTC first, I found that the google location for the venue actually took me the wrong way.  Thankfully some helpful students were on hand to assist and point me in the correct direction plus we had a good chat regarding the architecture course the two lads were studying.   One consolation was that at least I decided to take the DLR to the event rather than choosing to do what Ty Goddard had suggested was a 10min walk from BETT to the UTC;   Clearly according to a few audience members who had accepted Ty’s guidance, the walk was significantly more than 10mins.

Now my reason for being at the EdTech Conversations event was to present on School Tech Strategy.   On reflection I think my session was a little bit of a rambling so I must admit to being disappointed with myself.   In addition, I had technical issues with my wireless pointer, something which I should have checked before setting out.    That said, I hope those in attendance understood what I believe to have been my main point in the need for all schools, educators, support staff, etc to work together more, share their experiences, ideas and thoughts and take a more collective approach to education in general.   We all have different views, ideas, experiences, contexts, etc and together we are infinitely stronger than trying to go it alone and often re-invent the wheel.

In terms of the other speakers, who presented in a more professional and polished manner than myself, I found Emma Darcy and her discussion with Ty very interesting discussing. I particularly liked her mention of preparing students for “jobs of the future” which fits with my views in the needs to do more in relation to digital citizenship.

I think my highlight from the event would be Laura Knight who despite expressing she didn’t quite agree with my “journey” idiom, went on to say so many things I agreed with.    I loved her focus on the human aspect of strategy in presenting her EdTech leader superpowers and the need to be ambitious, fearless, to find simplicity and to be relentless.    I think the human aspect of EdTech and of strategy in general is often overlooked but given it is people who generally enact strategy we should in fact have people at the forefront of thinking.

Also, another highlight was Mark Steed.  Now I have heard mark speak on a number of occasions, but his 6 lessons were particularly interesting.   Like Laura Knight he mentioned the need to focus on people, adding to this regarding a focus on training.   He also highlighted that although his strategy appears to have been very successful it wasn’t without errors.  I think this is an important message in that in reviewing others strategies and approaches it almost always looks like a straight line; they were here then did X and Y and got to there.   The reality thought is that there would likely have been lots of wrong turns, mistakes, problems so its more like they did A, B, C, D, E and A and B didn’t work, C had to be adjusted and became F, and eventually they got to X and Y and success.   I think this is what I was trying to get across with my journey idiom however I don’t think I was successful in this.

Overall the EdTech Conversations event was fun and useful, and I look forward to more discussion-based events like this in the future.

As to BETT, after all my rushing around I only ended up with a couple of hours in BETT so can only offer a rather superficial view.   Sadly, this view is that the event generally seemed very much the same as it has in every year I have attended since returning to the UK.   If you had a specific stand or vendor to see, then it would be useful but if you are seeking to browse or to find innovative ideas then I think you would have been disappointed.   This at least was my initial view on reflecting having returned home.     A few days have passed this then I have reflected a bit more and I can see how BETT can be seen as very worthwhile now.   It isn’t in the EdTech conference which the event is, or in the stands of technology vendors.    The strength in BETT lies in the fact the event draws educators and EdTech leaders from across the country and across the world together for 4 days and in the networking this brings.    On hindsight, even in my brief visit, I ended up at one stand where I had conversations with a number of EdTech leaders and as a result came away with plans to connect further and explore ideas and also issues and problems.   But from this comes a question: Can we stimulate the same networking opportunities without the massive cost to vendors to be present at an event like BETT?  A cost they ultimately pass on to their customers; schools.