Spannerman's Edublog
John Spencer
Subscribe to this blog
About Author
Dr John Spencer began his teaching career in 1981 armed with a Sinclair ZX81, thereby demonstrating two things at once: Firstly he was in at the very start of ICT in the classroom and secondly he is a sucker for duff technology. Thereafter he taught joining a start-up open source company as their Head of Education in 2002. Now John is bringing his iconoclastic disposition and tendency to throw a spanner in the works to blogging.
Contact Author
Email John
Twitter Profile
Linked-in ProfilePart 2: The big private sector sorts school ICT
Who says they don't care?
Published 09:26, 30 January 12
Contrary to popular opinion large IT corporations are not motivated solely by profit, stock options, share-holder demands or bonus structures. In fact they care deeply about clients and their families especially in far flung lands like Britain Europe.
The welfare of children particularly concerns them which is why they have put so much time and effort into both their health and educational IT systems.
So criticism from Britain’s government will be felt as a ‘slap in the face’ by many such philanthropic executives. For example declaring that IT in education and health was ‘pants’ was especially hurtful. However big business is not for wimps and so we find ourselves in the boardroom somewhere on a major land-mass.
“Hey Toni, bad news, those pinko Limeys don’t wanna pay their dues any more”
“Yeah, I heard ... I heard too that they’ve been screwin’ around with our old friend Flossie, you know what? ... that broad ‘s just givin’ it away now!”.
“Flossy-smloshie forget her they’ll come back to momma they always do ... the problem is, Toni, they say their kids ain’t got no understanding of how our merchandise works and now that Google punk is disrespecting them”.
“Yeah I heard that too, what are we gonna do boss? ... Waste him?”
“Nah, we’re gonna play ball, we’re gonna give ‘em what they want - ge’me a line to that UK guy with the girl’s name, the one who’s office is in a closet”
“Sure boss”
And so it came to pass that schools acquired (at excellent educational discount prices) the latest tablets fully compatible with their existing software and with unique apps pre-installed that allowed them to write C# code that worked well with the pre-installed libraries.
Better still the pre-installed e-reader software allowed instant secure downloads from the major text book publishing houses. Both apps are set to become de-facto standards for school computing.
“Pretty neat eh Toni, and people say we don’t care”
Coming soon. Part 3: SMEs sort school ICT
Print
Email
