Schools

Develop a vision for technology

Every school should have a vision for embedding technology across the school, and for schools that are either being newly built, or undergoing a major refurbishment, this is vital.

Creating a vision for a new school is far more complex than just designing a new building. There is a need to define the outcomes for learning and teaching, relationships and behaviours.

Using the whole school site and designing spaces that will promote new ways of working is only part of the process. Equally important is shaping a strategy for change to ensure that, by the time the new spaces are in place, all members of the community can take advantage of them in the ways they were intended.

An effective vision for technology supports and enhances the school’s aims in terms of learning, teaching, management and administration. Technology enables a school to support personalisation and offer flexible 'anytime anywhere' access. It allows for effective and secure data management. Educational outcomes, not specific technologies, must be the driver of the technology provision. The vision must be aspirational, helping the transformation of education to take place, but it must also be achievable.

Set the broad goals

The vision needs to consider how technology will contribute towards:

• personalising the learning experience - resulting in improved learner engagement and learning outcomes
• creating a flexible learning environment so that resources can be accessed whenever and wherever they are needed, including from home
• supporting all staff, through professional development, and providing tools for collaboration, management and administration
• enabling secure and reliable communications between the school and parents, other schools, the local authority and children's services.

Refine the goals

How will technology be used by the various groups in school - learners, teaching staff, support staff, administrators, technical support and maintenance? How will technology support their roles? What will be the role of parents, governors and the wider community and how will technology support this?

The vision is likely to contain statements about the use of technology to support learning, teaching and management such as:

Technology for learning should:

• promote social interaction and collaborative working
• support inclusive and innovative approaches to learning
• allow learners access so that they can study at any time and anywhere, e.g. using a range of devices and/or wireless technology
• provide access to high quality learning materials
• provide a safe environment, preventing access to unsuitable material and preventing inappropriate use of systems
• enable work to be produced, submitted and marked electronically
• enable learners to track their own progress and set their own goals
• enable parents to engage with their child's learning.

Technology for teaching should:

• ensure that all staff are motivated and skilled in the use of technology
• enable a culture of continuous development of technical skills
• enable teachers to access a wide range of multimedia and digital resources
• enable technology to be used in a wide range of learning spaces in the school and with variety of different group sizes
• enable teachers to create, use and adapt teaching resources created by themselves and others
• support work planning and monitoring, for groups and individuals.

Technology for management should:

• be secure and integrated with curriculum and student recording systems
• allow for efficient administrative and financial systems including electronic filing and cashless financial transactions within the school
• allow for integrated personnel, timetabling, cover and associated arrangements
• provide access to achievement and target-setting data for individuals (including data about lesson attendance and behaviour)
• enable the aggregation and analysis of data to provide information about course effectiveness, staff and learner performance
• enable the use of pupil performance data to inform decisions about staff development and deployment
• support communication with parents about students' attendance, behaviour and attainment
• enable secure transfer of data with other schools, local authorities, and children's services
• be accessible to all who need to use it - including school governors.

Other points to consider

When writing the vision, key education policy drivers must be addressed. These will help to make the vision transformational and help to ensure that technology can support the delivery of these. Some of the key policy drivers that might need to be considered are:

• personalised learning
• inclusion
• special educational needs
• e-safety.

Vision development and consultation

Consultation is the key to establishing the technical needs of all stakeholders. Recent government initiatives stress the importance of schools being a focus for the community, and being closely linked with a wide range of services for children and families.

The vision should be an integral part of the whole education vision. This means the two visions can be part of the same document or two inter-related documents. When presented as one document the two aspects should be easily distinguishable and when presented as two documents they should be easily cross-referenced with each other.

In the case of schools that are being rebuilt or undergoing major refurbishment the vision will be used to help create a functional or 'output specification' but the vision itself should not define specific hardware or software.

You should consult not only with school users (including parents) but also with the community around you, with other schools in other phases, and with further education and adult learning providers. This will help you to gain support from all stakeholders, and may also enable you to gain from other developments which may be going on at local authority or regional level.

Groups that have been consulted should be identified in the vision document. Stakeholder groups and organisations to be consulted could include:

• staff (teaching and non-teaching)
• parents
• students
• governors
• local authority
• sponsors
• local voluntary and community groups.

How we can help

Self-review framework 
Becta's self-review framework is an online tool to help schools review and develop their use of technology in every area of learning, teaching and management. The first section focuses on creating (and reviewing) a vision and developing a strategy to achieve the vision.

Framework for ICT Technical Support (FITS)
The FITS materials can help you to assess your current provision of technical support and give you a benchmark to plan further improvements and progress.

ICT investment planner
This tool will help you understand the annual operation and replacement costs of technology in your school. It highlights how the value and cost of changes over time and provides a sound basis for planning future investments.

Learning platforms functionality tool
The learning platforms functionality tool will help your school to focus on what need to be done to implement and use a learning platform effectively.

Key Expectations

Becta has developed a set of Key Expectations which are designed to challenge thinking and act as a catalyst to discussions.
They can help you develop your vision of 'what good looks like' and see where you can harness the power of technology now and in the future to support teaching and learning.

ICT ProVision

The interactive ICT ProVision tool will help you and your team through the process to develop a vision of your future use of technology. It enables you to:

• review and prioritise Key Expectations statements related to the use of technology in your setting;
• explore examples of how others have interpreted the meaning of the statements;
• discuss how this can be applied to your setting;
• schedule the implementation of the priorities that are identified during the process

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