Windows 10 in schools.

‘One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them’  Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkein

An article in CWuk by Charlotte Gee ‘Government seeks suppliers for £300 million education ICT tender’ awoke me from my deep educational  Smaug-like sleep. This framework replaces the defunct 2010 BECTA framework: yes BECTA!, how I miss them. But what stirs? Where has all this treasure come from and who will get the gold from the mountain?

First a bit of background. School ICT has been moribund for many years, over 60% of schools have officially deprecated XP PCs and battery-less laptops. No one is spending on ICT and even if you wanted to upgrade (as they used to charmingly call it..it’s actually code for ‘buy a slower computer’) you will find that Microsoft will not now sell you Windows 7 or 8..that’s really true.

Meanwhile every kid and granny has a tablet computer, a Facebook account and a smart phone. Schools are left with grandad trousers and threadbare corduroy jackets. Not the image a £200,000 a year Academy principal wants to go with his/her Beemer.

If they buy a tablet, which tablet? Is it ‘compatible’ say the ICT technicians who cannot really believe that they still have jobs tending the olde networke. The problem actually was solved ages ago: sign up to Google’s education cloud, buy Android tablets/phones and Chrome OS...dah dah all done. Low maintenance, cheap and cheerful. I worked in a college that has done just that, so I know it works.

Now back in the real world. ICT is supplied to schools largely by outsourced mega service companies such as Capita, RM and Northgate.  They are by historical necessity purveyors of all things Microsoft and it would be a surprise if they were not amongst the suppliers for the new £300 million framework.  What will they flog to the unfortunate be-suited saps responsible for ICT procurement? Will they make wiser decisions this time?

Yes, Windows 10 is about to arrive. It will ‘work’ on everything:  a smart watch ( think PE department); a phone (think no-one at all) a tablet ( aka make-up mirrors); laptops and desktops PCs ( Think network technicians). We need a Cloud to store all the kids work. Oh yes and Azure G-Cloud.

What a bundle, what a spending spree, what a lock in!. It makes me so nostalgic. Bring back BECTA

Beating the System..The Rise of the Robot.

'O brave new world, That has such people in't! ' 

'You can't beat the system' was one of the first things I was told on joining a vast multinational company forty years ago. In the intervening years systems and processes have become intrinsic to all manifestations of organised labour. The very notion of beating systems is now a ludicrous self-indulgence for all who live within society.

I left the multinational company for the freedom that teaching offered. It was a good move and teaching provided a rich and rewarding environment for this independent minded scientist. All good things come to an end and 'systems' came to education: now unbeatable, intricately elaborate and all-pervasive they have ground and dumbed education down into atomised processes.

It seems if you speak to anyone, in whatever walk of life, you will hear this same story over and over.
The 'processification' of work, the algorithm of life seems to be simply a setting of the stage for the rise of the robot. You don't need to 'Google' for long to find that the world, including Google of course,  is robot-crazy... or to find a trillion pundits predicting a Terminator style rise of the robot. At present though we must be content with the fleshy  'white-collar-droids' we have ourselves have become.

In my profession, I observe teachers giving over and over again stereotyped state-approved lessons using masses of technology such as computers, VLEs, Interactive White Boards, PowerPoint and so on. They are mostly young intelligent decent people but are completely conditioned to accept constant assessment, observation and review from their handlers. It looks to me like the notion of beating the system has been bred out...it's not even challenged, not even by way of a 1984 'thought-crime'.

I'm not mixing the Brave New World of Huxley's and Orwell's dystopia but am struck by the realisation of their fables which are linked by the unbeatable system. With this often at the forefront of my mind I was really taken aback by a series of 'last episodes' of television dramas. These were no ordinary dramas but mega-watched big hitter crime thrillers. In order: 'The Killing' with knitwear hero Sarah Lund; 'Poirot' starring the ageing eponymous Hercule Poirot and finally 'Sherlock' with of course Sherlock.

All three have fictional heroes who are widely regarded as being highly intelligent, emotionally cold and, well, being a bit of a way along the socio-path path. Finally they come up against  individuals who have  manipulated their way to power and were 'system-wise' unbeatable.

What did Poirot, Lund and Holmes do? They murdered them. No pretence was made that they could be beaten through the system, no self serving escape of the consequence of their criminality. They just shot them.

The point I would like to make to anyone who is busy devising, elaborating, supervising or enforcing systems is that they (the systems) despite appearances are desperately fragile and that the odd looking naked-ape you see going about your business is a very dangerous primate.

If even our fictional super-brains can't beat the system and resort to murder what will become of us?

...well it's obvious we had better replace them with robots.. sharpish.