High school confidential

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PATEL: I think a lot of teachers are enthusiastic about new technology, it’s just a case of skilling them up to use it.

GEMS made headlines when it declared that it would invest $5.4 million in IT for schools. ACN talks exclusively to Mukund Patel, chief officer for educational infrastructure at the group, about the plans to allocate these funds.

What would you say was the main driver behind an IT investment of this magnitude?

As the biggest provider of education from independent schools in the world, we want to be at the cutting edge. We want to maintain our lead position and so we are investing in IT very heavily to ensure that our pupils and teachers get the most benefit from it.

In which areas will this investment be allocated?

We're giving laptops to all our teachers. We're putting hardware into schools in the form of projectors, interactive whiteboards and wireless networks. We are investing very heavily in software, as well as developing our own virtual learning environment (VLE), the Global Education Management Systems (GEMS) Learning Gateway.

A lot of the hardware systems were rolled out last year. All our schools have wireless now, most have projectors and screens and the laptop programme was implemented for teachers last year.

Will you provide notebook computers for your students?

Last year, we struck a very good deal with a local computer supplier, Acer, so that we were able to offer laptops to pupils and the parents who wanted them. The offer was only open for a six-week period. Over that period, 18,000 pupils took up the offer. There is no profit in it for us - whatever we charge went straight to Acer.

What functionality will your VLE provide to students?

Once the VLE is implemented, all our students, teachers and parents will have their own password and will be able to access it, as well as their own homepage. From that, they will be able to access lot of curriculum material, reference materials, they will be able to work on projects together. Our schools and pupils will be able to create web pages on any projects. The collaboration between GEMS schools worldwide will really grow exponentially. Eventually we hope to be doing podcasting and to build up a library of videos on it.

Does the VLE fall within the initial $5.4 million investment?

It is a part of it but I think we will need to inject more capital into it as we acquire more software and more curriculum material. That was the original figure but I see that the costs are going to grow.

Do you have a figure for the cost of the VLE development?

I don't have a figure offhand. You would also have to count in our time as well - we have put in a lot of time, including senior level time. The biggest cost is training the teachers. They have got to learn to work with it. Otherwise if they don't, it's not going to achieve its original aims. We are going to train up 15 teachers who will be the mentors in each school. They will then train other teachers - so it's far better than just bringing in somebody from outside.

How do you sell an investment of this scale to senior decision makers and stakeholders?

We sold it to the GEMS board on the basis that this is absolutely going to be the future of education , it is integral to teaching and learning and that in two or three years time, this is the way the world is going to be going. People can see it from where they are in the existing office environment
as well.

These days, most of us will Google things, look up websites. Children are very relaxed with technology - they are the digital natives, whereas it is people like me who struggle with technology. The sooner we make it available to them, the better. Come back in a year's time and see what the children are doing with the VLE.

For example, we want to have a book club. We'll ask one of the senior classes to manage it but everytime you read a book, you can put your reviews in - you can build a dialogue and we think the kids will love that sort of thing. There'll be a lot of things that will take off which we haven't thought of.

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