On Fri, 2002-11-01 at 07:58, Chris Puttick wrote:

Thought some of you might find this of interest:

http://www.seul.org/edu/MS-Schoolnet.html

I think this also highlights the lack of consistency of government policy in this country too. We have been told that social inclusion is a key government policy yet in ICT in schools there is very little leadership in doing anything for the sustainable bridging of the technological divide. One off grants are no good as they affect few poor children and the effects are short-lived. AAL and E-foundations are likely to make matters worse not better. Giving middle class families tax breaks to buy laptops is not my idea of bridging the technological divide. Encouraging schools to believe that the future is every child carrying a PC laptop around is a mindset that does not understand networks and is locked in a briefcase culture.By the time that the technology is low cost enough and secure enough the chances are that portable internet access will be done using mobile phones as thin clients. Toshiba already have roll up LCD monitors in design. Then there is the government pilot of electronic registration. £11.25m into it with a monopoly supplier with an allegedly dodge patent currently being challenged in the courts. Why don't they wait until after the patent ruling, put a network cabling point in every secondary school classroom put a second user thin client on the end and I'll provide them with an open source application to take registers. Give the balance of the £11.25m to Namibia and revolutionise their IT teaching. Finally, there is Government environment policy. A million perfectly good thin clients in landfill each year! No incentives to preserve them in use in schools - in fact BECTa encouraging schools to refresh their machines every 3 years and LEAs telling schools that every computer must have full multimedia capability will do exactly the opposite. I suppose that is why knowledge of anything technical is alien to National Curriculum Technology and its all about presentation of information to audiences. That way the clueless civil servants will have the appropriate skills to communicate with their equally clueless political masters. Regards, -- Ian