What’s after cloud?

Anyone following me on socials or working with me will know that my focus for the last few years has been moving schools to the cloud, and it’s something I passionately believe is the right move for many schools.

It brings many benefits to schools, particularly the ability to work anywhere, on any device that meets users needs, it takes users out of hybrid hell and allows them to fully embrace the developments that are happening within 365 or GW

But what’s next when you are in the cloud? How do you take advantage of it?

Secure

Knowing that your data is secure, and that the bulk of the risks of cyber security and data security is now fully managed by an external service, and not underfunded and overstretched systems and technicians allows you to confidently embrace the possibilities. All the time knowing that centralised policies and monitoring are protecting you. It doesn’t mean there are not risks, but they are hugely reduced and are fit for purpose

Innovation

When you’ve got a solid platform, now is the time to innovate and explore, the greatest users of technology are those who explore, try and fail. And then try again. Schools and trusts will be able to develop pockets of best practice they can share together and staff will be able to pick the technology that meets their styles and needs.

Not just staff, students can use new tools so they can present their work in ways that were not possible before and that suit their style of learning.

With AI here to stay, with deep integration on many platforms, innovation in this area hopefully means workload reductions as well.

Of course with any new technology we need to evaluate it’s use, reliability and safety.

Accessibility

There are two types of accessibility, that in enabling cloud we embrace.

The first is that we enable users to embrace and use technology in a way that suits them and meets their needs. The assistive technology available to users now is incredible, and puts the control firmly in their hands, more so, the technology can follow them wherever they are and enable so much that before may have hindered them.

The second, which really enables the assistive element, is the accessibility to technology itself. The ability for an increased investment on devices, to provide these opportunities and benefits to users.

With no need to invest in servers, power and cool them, back them up, license and indeed manage, secure and support them, investment in technology in terms of devices and infrastructure to enable those devices is the focus.

No more are devices tied to single sites, single schools or single users. Even with devices that could previously work offsite, these were still managed by servers centrally.

What really excites me is opening up to a world of 1-1 devices, and these not being iPads. Putting a win book or Chromebook into a users hand creates life chances for students and will enhance staff to creatively engage with each other as well as exciting developments. Allowing them to focus on the areas that matter by reducing workloads in key areas.

For example, cloud platforms in the MIS market allow for users to access previously hidden data with new context driven approaches, and to collect data in vastly improved ways. All, anywhere, anytime to suit – as well enabling viewing of that data by staff, students and parents in one go.

How do we embrace it?

After we have got there, we really need to give the most precious of resource to enable the transformation – and that’s time. Time to learn, time to explore.

After years of false starts and individual tech and schemes that over promised and under delivered – cloud offers a different approach of changing the very foundations, whilst not loosing all we have achieved along the way.

And these changes are already happening and are clear to see: https://concero.education/case-studies/

This isn’t an advert by the way, but I practice what I preach alongside a fantastic team – and I enjoy what I do so it fits in nicely 👍