[LINK] Re: Rant: NSW School e-mails?

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

All,

I strongly suspect that the inhibitor in NSW is that the department has 
constructed a painfully rule-bound process for schools to actually take 
any action regarding their IT. Which is why I think the OS is a little 
moot; the processes would be painful no matter what the price of the system.

However, the mindset also gave rise to the use of big-and-expensive as 
the foundation of the failure. It's a circular mindset: you have to give 
the contract to a big vendor, you have to protect the interests of the 
bidder, therefore the system is not entrusted to anyone's hands but the 
big vendor. And if it flops, it can't be the big vendor's fault so it 
must be the users.

There's also the CV effect. When you're looking at a project which can't 
possibly go wrong anyway (ha!), which is more attractive:
- a $150,000 project which doesn't even hit the newspapers? or
- a multimillion-dollar headline project?

Using a steam-hammer to crack a walnut always looks like the best idea 
before time, because you can stick a "managed the successful 
implementation of a $32 million IT project" in the CV. It's only when 
the walnut remains uncracked that the steam-hammer looks out of place.

> I've found mail lists between four classes studying the same novel 
> engenders
> brilliance in thought and expression. But it's quite difficult to 
> convince teacher
> colleagues that email has any place in the curriculum, either as a 
> resource or a
> field of study, and for many teachers student mail may be just too 
> problematic.

Possibly, because of course there's also the tendency of e-mail to 
become nothing more than a headline for the Telegraph ... "Students in 
Racist E-mail Row!" or some such. Oh, except when the government is 
re-announcing the e-mail initiative :-).

I would think, by the way, that the volumes would be far smaller than 
either Danny or Con think. Just how large a volume of e-mail can you 
generate on a lowish user-to-PC ratio? There's only limited numbers of 
boxes in the average public school, some in the classrooms and some in 
the library. And I would imagine that the students themslves would far 
prefer to use something non-school for their personal e-mails. Who wants 
their school e-mail address for arranging a party? Daggy!

RC

>
> Cheers all
> Stephen Loosley
> Melbourne, Australia
>
>
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