Moving to the clouds: Safe, Simple & Free.

Welcome screen for various stakeholder groups: each user has an account.

I'm a Governor and occasional ICT teacher to Years 2-6 in a small rural primary in Suffolk. Like thousands of other schools, ours has no real ICT skills and very limited budgets, but paradoxically this means that I've been incredibly fortunate: for the last five years I have been able to design and implement an ICT strategy which suits our school and could well suit yours. In a nutshell, over that period we've moved from a dedicated ICT Suite to a more mobile approach using netbooks, iPods and iPads; from MS Office through OpenOffice to now entirely cloud-based tools, from programmes installed on desktop PCs through the LA-supplied VLE, to our own, hand-built, Google Apps-based ‘VLEcosystem’. I hope that a quick look at these screenshots will be enough to give you a flavour of the sort of approach I favour: icon-based, intuitive, functionality-based, good-looking, simple. This front end is entirely built in Google Sites: collaborative, hosted, intuitive and free.

For me, the proof of a platform is whether it gets used, and in our case that is without question the case: it’s being used day-in, day-out, by non-technical people to perform real-world tasks. Shared calendars, shared documents and email, of course, but also the school newspaper (edited daily in school and from home by students), the school blogs (every class and every student has a blog), the school radio station (mp3s posted to a specific blog and then available as podcasts in iTunes) and the public web site (edited by a number of completely non-technical people and automatically including all the above.

Teacher area - all the things your staff need to get at in one place.

Our VLEcosystem now houses a mix of core Google functionality (the stuff that comes for free with a GApps for Education account), additional Google and 3rd-party tools from the Google Apps Marketplace, other web resources and Web 2.0 services. It could just as easily be built using Microsoft’s Live@Edu, the ZoHo suite of cloud-based apps or a number of other tools. It’s not the tools so much as the culture that matters: we’re not training students to use MS Word, we’re training them to know how to connect, communicate and collaborate in the online world that is their territory.

Our mantra is 'Safe. Simple. Free.', and we stick as close to that as we can, only paying for tools if they really show some benefits, like the cloud-based assessment, tracking and reporting tool we use. All the tools except one offer Single Sign-On, so users only have to remember one login/password, and we're using this approach down to Reception. An unexpected benefit of this approach is that it represents a flexible yet coherent strategy: we don't have to think too hard to see how a new piece of kit or a new service slots right in. The iPad? Not a problem: a lot of iPad apps have email built into them, so the kids email their work to their blog and it instantly updates their e-portfolio - without them knowing anything about how that happens.

Student area: create, communicate, collaborate in lots of different ways.

Maintenance is extremely lightweight, at least as far as the network side of things is concerned - Google and the other services we use do that for us. I haven't had to answer a single 'it's broken' call in a year except when our broadband goes down - our ADSL connection is truly appalling but that doesn’t matter: the bandwidth usage of Google Docs is surprisingly low.

So if you’ve ever despaired at how difficult it is to do things with the your VLE, or at the cost of it, or wondered how it prepares your students for life in the online world, I can help. Whatever the state of the budget or the ICT expertise in your school, I am confident that some or all of the following services will be of interest to you.

● An inspiration session to get staff and other stakeholders fired up about the possibilities;● A starter pack of guidelines, templates, crib-sheets, tips and tricks to help schools

get through the process with as little hassle as possible. (Not just the setting up, but the day-in, day-out use of the system for non technical staff, some of whom only feel comfortable with a laminated 'How To...' sheet somewhere close by);

● A set of policies and other document templates to protect the school;● The creation and maintenance of usernames and passwords for all thestakeholder

groups who need access to the VLEcosystem ● Design and construction of the web front end - how it looks and how it works; ● Remote assistance and maintenance of the site;● On-site or remote training for one or more staff.● A 'trusted friend' service , offering advice, recommendations and reviews of new tools,

technologies and techniques as they become available (and they do, constantly.) Perhaps you just need leg-up in one area, or perhaps you’d be grateful if somebody just took care of it all for you. Either way, contact me on the addresses below and I’d be happy to discuss your school’s situation with you. The commercial VLE is simply the wrong answer to a question that's been overtaken by events. Could do better, and I think this is how... Mark Allen email: mark.allen@edintheclouds.comtwitter: @edinthecloudstext: 07798 745332 August 2010