CRN Summit: The classroom of 2020

CRN's summit on the future of education technology drew together a headmaster and IT managers from leading private schools in Sydney, resellers in the education industry and sponsoring vendor D-Link.  

CRN: Today I wanted to look at why schools are investing in technology and what types of technology they're intending to buy, and the challenges they face in rolling out these technologies. Ray, your school has started building its wireless infrastructure to move to mobile computing for your students. What hurdles must be overcome?

Ray Paxton (headmaster, Waverley College): A key issue is that often the development and implementation of technology outstrips the teachers' understanding of what learning is. Schools tend to have a problem with that nexus between teacher development in terms of what learning should look like and can look like. We're always playing catch-up with the human dimension because technology is moving faster than it. At the moment we are trying to develop a new learning statement for the school which sits with the technology that's available.

Ray Paxton, headmaster, Waverley College

Simon Potter (IT manager, Waverley College): One of the biggest challenges we face is having that technology adopted into the classroom. The funding that's been made available by federal government policies has not meant that we are implementing stuff that we weren't going to, it's meant we've brought forward five-year plans. But then there's quite a big step to then having that technology adopted by the teachers.

CRN: What are the first steps for setting up a wireless network?

Potter: Our first step was to go through the process of finding a company that we felt confident could help us do that. Waverley had never had a wireless network. We knew that we would need to have a robust network in place to support additional devices. The first stage was to find a vendor and a reseller we felt confident could help us in that process. We looked at three key manufacturers and discussed it with each of the resellers. We wanted to make sure they were comfortable working in and understood the nature of the education space and that we felt happy they could deliver the product that we required.