My Dad used to manage a factory that made aluminium windows.
Each month an old fellow, named Cec, would drop by in his ute to buy any windows that had been deemed to be “seconds” – windows that had been damaged in production, made to the wrong size or colour, etc.
As a youngster, this intrigued me – what was he doing with this stuff?
After some further investigation I discovered that Cec had a similar arrangement with the local timber yard, the local brickworks, local roofing suppliers – in fact with all the local building material suppliers.
In the small town where he lived on the south coast, he was building houses, shops, even a motel (!) with the bits and pieces that he had scrounged from the various suppliers. On land that he had “picked up” at the right price!
So what has this got to do with ICT planning in our schools?
Cec was planning and designing his buildings in the same way that many schools design their ICT infrastructure. Rather than assessing our learning goals, then investigating and assessing the options that are available to achieve those goals, we are building an ICT culture based on hardware that we can “pick-up cheap”, using software that is used for no other reason than that it is made available to schools “at the right price”. And then shoehorning our curriculum into the resulting ill-fitting and often restrictive straight-jacket. (To be fair to Cec, his planning was probably exactly right – his goal was to make as much money as possible, with as little outlay as possible, rather than aiming to create buildings that met the needs of the tenants!)
Why not put our school planning horse in front of the cart for a change?
1. Assess what it is we are trying to achieve (Are we simply trying to put a computer on every desk to “tick the ICT box”, or are we really trying to enhance our learning environment?);
2. Create a matrix of our curriculum & learning requirements;
3. Assess the existing related knowledge, skills, and access to ICT resources at home, of both our staff and students;
4. Investigate and assess all the ICT options that are available to meet our learning and curriculum needs.
5. Develop a plan to choose and implement the most appropriate options, and support them accordingly.
And the chosen option is unlikely to be that same in each school environment.
