Sunday, February 20, 2011

A question of control

The issue is seemingly minor, yet opens up a major question. We use Google Apps for our communication and collaboration needs. One of the features is Google Groups - this allows for mailing lists, web forums, and access control. Now, anybody in the school can create a group. I could turn this feature off, but don't really see any reason why. At the same time, I create (via some scripts and magic sauce), the entire range of class, house, and staff groups. In the long term, these will be automagically synchronised to the Single Authoritative Data Source, though for now it's a hodge-podge of scripting and manual intervention. In preparing for the deletion of last year's groups, I asked staff if there are any groups that need to be saved or archived. This showed me that a number of staff had created their own groups for various purposes - staff, class, etc. Here lies the question: how much control over this do I want? It is certainly less work for me if the staff create their own groups as needed - this is simple enough for them to do, disperses control, and empowers the staff in the ICT realm. On the other hand, if everything is automated, that should be less work for the teachers and would make life easier for less techy teachers. Such a system would need to be quickly responsive to changes in group memberships, which it hasn't always been.

And having both systems side-by-side could get messy - I'm happy for ad-hoc groups to be created as needed, but having two groups for the same purpose is messy, and will get confusing in the long term.

Giving this to the teachers cedes control. Which I shouldn't have any issues with, but strangely find creeping into my thoughts increasingly.

The other point this issue raises is the lack of a forum to discuss this sort of thing. I'm happy to make certain decisions, but some things (like this) should be open to discussion by the user base, but there is no real place for this discussion to occur. Not enough of the staff seem to be on twitter or facebook to be representative, the staff@ group I prefer to keep as announcement only, and staff meetings are already overloaded as it is. Perhaps I'll set up an opt-in staff-discuss@ group for this purpose.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Tablet rollout and distribution

Manic. As usual. Well, perhaps not quite as usual. Things are quietening down a little now, though as soon as I look at the work I've been pushing aside things will no doubt pick up again. This rant will try to cover the tablet rollout process, and the good and the bad.

Timing. Hmmm, not to sure about this. I suppose things went on time to some degree - at least much more on time than last year. Though the delay in shipment last year meant that we could chase up students who hadn't paid, and get them all out just about at the same time. The timeline was much tighter this year.

Communication and Coordination. We really could have better communicated with staff what to expect with the tablet rollout. After the initial handout, there were perhaps 30-40 students still without tablets. Classes, however, went on (as far as I can gather) as though every student had a tablet, hence some students were missing out/falling behind. Staff should have been forewarned about this, to plan lessons accordingly. Additionally, I should have better co-ordinated the handout day with the other staff to prevent collisions and students being in the wrong place etc.


Monash network and tech stuff. This needs to be majorly fixed for next time. The imaging process needs to happen on the Monash net. Ideally, using WDS, the machine is plugged into the network, PXE booted, then everything else is automatic. The major bit that didn't work (I really should have done an end-to-end test) was the AD accounts. User accounts created in MDS don't shift across to AD until the user has changed their initial password. This creates a chicken-egg situation, since they need to have a computer in order to change their password. Hopefully we can change the process for next year so the AD account is created straight up. Additionally, we really need domain logons to work via the wireless. Hopefully this is forthcoming. We will be moving on these things in the coming weeks on the way to re-imaging the 2010 tablets - this will be a good test for future years. (Of course, in future years we'll probably have moved away from PC tablet devices)


Distribution. The distribution model this year was one house at a time. This disrupts classes pretty badly. Though it was a very disrupted day anyway. It is also a lot of students, at the same time, not that many students. Some aspects (e.g. email, compass, basic overview) would be better done with the whole year at once, other aspects (initial login) needed to happen in smaller groups. Problem solving on the fly was tricky - mostly the students had to wait till the session was over. If the initial network login problems can be fixed for next time, the distribution would be a lot less painful, but that's completely dependent on Monash. Additionally, the account slips could have had some info clearer, and more instructions/URLs. A model some other school uses involves making an evening out of it, with parents involved. The logistics would be tricky, but would also put some more pride and excitement into the affair.