Each teacher in each school has a particular way they like to teach. Technology is an enabler that helps us do this better. Aside from hardware, there are so many free services out there that teachers can use, why would we pay for something that may not be quite right.

How can teachers use free media sharing sites such as YouTube (and the less blocked derivatives TeacherTube and SchoolTube). What about blogging, wikis and social networking alongside mapping software such as Google Earth?

Shouldn’t we work with the teaching community to build capacity to use free services that young people are using anyway (and enjoy using)?

The one piece of software that does need making is a PC equivalent to iMovie. Adobe Premiere Elements is a little complex and Windows Movie Maker too basic.

In terms of virtual learning environments – moodle is free and Microsoft’s version often comes with the school bundle.

Heads of Department and not Headteachers are in charge of spending their learning budget on what they think makes sense.

Of course there are exceptions to this view, but I think it’s one worth considering.

We have been plugging away, slowly but surely and gradually building up a client base among schools for our nifty budget planning software, clickPlanner. As bursars/advisors to schools we decided to roll our own solution to simplify employee costings, produce better reports and assist with monitoring. Gradually it dawned on us that schools liked the software and that’s how we got our start.

It is tough getting awareness going in the education market but from my experience so far it’s about being in it for the long haul and building a presence. We try to sell to schools but also to the LEAs who do make key decisions and recommendations about financial management software.

If anyone wants some more information our website is a good starting point, http://www.efrgroup.net.

Agreed , anyone can have a go at selling software to schools but they may find your advice wide of the mark: the majority of customer recommendations on your website are from local authorities. Anyone interested in this market shouldn’t listen to David or I, they should do their own research, it’s a very specialist market, headteachers are not mavericks in my experince and time spent on government sites like teachernet will prove invaluable in the early planning stage.

Sorry but we disagree on several things.

For the vast majority of software and PCs/handheld purchases in UK schools it is the Head who makes the decision – though obviously local authority advisors make recommendations – and sometimes central purchases. Heads are pretty independent creatures who very often go their own way.

Anybody can pitch to schools for software. There are no government departments or quangos with approvals processes for curriculum software. ELearning Credits, which set a very low level requirement, are now dead. The BBC (BBC Jam referred to earlier) have withdrawn from providing English language curriculum software.

In short, if you have good software then get on and start marketing it to schools. You do not need anybody’s permission, and there are 20,000+ of them. It is highly competitive and difficult nevertheless, for all of the reasons others have cited above.

David

david@sums.co.uk
http://www.sums.co.uk
01454 853539

Each school has an independent budget. Schools buy their own hardware and software. The national curriculum dictates that they must have a certain number of computers per head, and they must provide software with certain functions – word processor, spreadsheets, databases etc. In general, schools are discouraged from purchasing Microsoft products.

This would suggest to me that there will be massive variations from school to school, providing additional opportunities, and complexity.

Investment in IT at my secondary school led to a significant purchase of Apple’s Mac mini machines, yet these have been crippled by poor implementation. Don’t get me wrong, I believe purchasing these machines was a great decision and allow for great flexibility, with the option of running OS X, and Windows on the same machine.

Now I fully expected the Macs to be running perfectly – as the school spent at least 6 months investigating this option, as well as seeing if finance was available – yet this was not the case. From my viewpoint, the school only invested in the Mac minis at the till, and failed to consider what would happen when they were installed.

When the 20 or so machines were set-up for student use, I discovered that while the Windows partition connected perfectly to the network, the majority of the machines on the OS X partition would not connect, and within a month, none of the machines could connect to the network on the OS X side. Even after I reported this problem, it was never fixed during the few months I remained at the school.

When I was able to log on to the OS X partition at the beginning I discovered another alarming issue. It was just the standard, out of the box install. Therefore, just trials of iWork and Office, making OS X useless to students, unless they wanted to make a movie in iMovie or a music track in GarageBand. But I guess this was irrelevant, as soon no one could log onto the OS X side!

Even though I do not know how other schools implement changes in their IT infrastructure, at my school however, it seems they have the money, yet waste it on poor decisions.

Teachers have also tested some Samsung UMPCs, but I’m sure an eeePC would be more suited for that environment.

Elliot
http://www.wiznotes.com

My understanding is that, in part, the technical architect leading the US dev team had worked with senior project managers from the OU on previous projects.

The SocialLearn concept originally grew up from a brainstorming session that included external-from-the-OU consultants from both the US and UK that included several well known web consultants, social media gurus and at least one futurist…

Just before the summer break we had a couple of residential sessions where we invited a couple of dozen per session interested parties from the UK for a preliminary sounding, and there’s at least one more residential session being booked (more for potential developer partners, I think?) sometime in September.

If anyone wants to know more/request an invite, keep an eye on the SocialLearn blog – http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/socialearn/

The OU currently has 150,000+ students, and the plan is to build something that can scale far bigger, so it could be quite an interesting ride…!

An interesting and timely article.

I’ve created, built and sold a number of enterprises during my career mainly in the digital media space from early multimedia through early Internet and so on raising many £ millions along the way.

Something I have discovered in this time is that raising investment for propositions in the education sector is significantly different from those in the B2C or B2B sectors and there is a relatively small group of investment firms that truly understand the sector. This leaves much of the first stage investment to angel investors or high net worth individuals who either “feel good” about a proposition or can spare the time to fully understand it.

We all know the education market is huge, the UK alone is having more money invested in it than at any point in our lives. But the money, although coming from a single source, is like water being poured through a colander, i.e. it comes out of lots of different holes. You have to be a pretty effective organisation to catch enough. Many investors, quite rightly, find the education market, it’s arcane procurement practices, framework supply chains, trade associations and fiefdoms perplexing. Ensuring that the potential investor understands the mechanics of the sector alone is a major challenge for a candidate even before they get to the pitch by which time the investor is already yawning!

Then, of course, investors want to see some kind of guarantee that if the business does X and Y then this government department guarantees to buy this much of Z. Well, anyone who works in the business of education (particularly at the innovation end) knows the problem with this picture.

That’s not to say that VC firms don’t invest in education propositions it’s just that they traditionally like to see something that is already pulling revenues rather than the more speculative Web 2.0 style ventures arriving on their desks right now.

In the uncertain financial times of the moment, money from either VC houses or angels is more difficult to find particularly at sensible valuations plus there’s also the option for those with money to “wait it out” until they can get a valuation that suits them more. I think the non-technical term is “bottom-feeding”. Here’s a clue for anyone in this situation, go for a ratchet based on your propositions achievable performance.

These investor strategies are myopic for investments in the education sector particularly now because whilst many investment sectors are looking dicey – property anyone? – the education sector is probably one of the most resilient sectors of all. Regardless of whether the US or Europe slides into a “media-fuelled” recession; governments, businesses and people will continue to invest in education.

VC houses and other investors would do well to keep an eye on and begin really understanding the education sector because without a doubt this is where the smart money is going to be over the next few years. There will also be a lot of M + A activity also amongst some of the big boys and especially in the mobile/ubiquitous space.

Thanks also for mentioning our Handheld Learning event which I feel I must point out has never been a technology lead event. Unlike trade shows that are explicitly about technology you will find from our current roster of speakers and nearly 1,000 participants that the event is clearly grounded in new learning and teaching practice. Neither is the event geared towards schools only as “life-long learning” is a key theme.

Technology, after all, is something that happens after you’re born and this years event has an emphasis on how the “technologies” that form a part of most learners every day life, e.g. phones, game consoles, media players, web 2.0 technologies, social networks, etc., can be embraced within learning and teaching practice to enable powerful, deep, learning experiences.

Interestingly, last year we had over 30 representatives from the investment community in attendance!

All the best

Graham
http://www.handheldlearning.org

I wonder whether your reasons for using US resources to help on this project might help shed some light on this whole subject!

Unfortunately, after a couple of years in operation it still hasn’t taken off. I’m not sure why: it’s well designed, cheap for parents and largely free of competition. But I guess it’s just a difficult thing to market.

I’m part of a strategic project team at The Open University working on a platform for learning called SocialLearn – http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/socialearn/about/

SocialLearn is being developed in part as a potentially disruptive play that will straddle the boundary between formal and informal learning, providing services to informal (self-directed) learners as well as learners undertaking formal academic education or professional training.

As well as providing personal learning profiles for individuals, it is anticipated that SocialLearn will also offer a range of education and training related social networking tools and services for educational institutions and corporates.

Development of the core service platform is currently underway using the services of development team in the US, with an early release of the API to developers slated for later in the Autumn.

The governance model for SocialLearn is still underway as the details of the commercial side of the platform are being clarified, as are funding models for scaling the platform as and when we start to roll it out.

Content will also play a role in the SocialLearn offering, in part drawing on open educational content such as the OU’s own OpenLearn course units ( http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn ), and also building on from lessons learned from current explorations of what I guess we could call “OU2.0″ ( http://www.open.ac.uk/use/ )?!

Tall statement indeed – but don’t lets get diverted onto the BBC Jam issue. The key thing is that the number of pupil devices going into schools are growing fast. Call them handhelds if you will, but included are all Windows Mobile devices, the ASUS eeePCs, Sony PSPs etc.

We have recently supplied our SUMS Maths and/or SUMS Phonics onto 1,000 plus installations (in multiple schools) of one or other of these devices in more than one local authority. That is a market and other software suppliers and start-ups will follow. We just got there early and waited, building up a reputation.

David

david@sums.co.uk
http://www.sums.co.uk

Great post and interesting discussion.

We’re not exactly a startup as you know, but from my experience a lot of the money in education technology (if there really is that much) tends to be spent on ‘kit’. I was very frustrated last year when the MOLEnet funding initiative was announced to kickstart handheld education projects, but the money was mostly ringfenced for hardware acquisition, not for software production.

When you walk around places like the BETT show, you see plenty of technological advances in hardware, but much less innovation and quality in software – whereas the non-educational Web 2.0 startups are all about applications, services and communities.

I don’t know whether that’s to do with pandering to the IT departments’ interest in gadgets, or the lack of understanding amongst the purse string holders that you need great applications and content to make your kit work hard for the learners. Just my observation of course…

@Ted, the BBC is funded by the licence fee, not taxes (a not insignificant difference). I’m admittedly biased, but I don’t completely agree with the often quoted assumption that innovation at the BBC stifles innovation in startups. BBC Jam was a hugely ambitious project, which sadly was very badly planned and mismanaged. Eventually it was also shot down by members of an industry body, who felt threatened because on the whole they aren’t anywhere near as creative and innovative as all the (BBC and non-BBC) creatives, technologists and educationalists which contributed to Jam. Tall statement, but I do believe that’s what happened.