And is the old stuff okay?
Image from flickr - yes, I did use one of these - A LOT
I’ve had a few related emails today from ICT specialist staff as they’re putting together development plans for the next few years.
Ratios
The newest information I can find confirms my initial thoughts.
The guidelines are 1 device per 8 pupils in primary and 1 per 5 in secondary.
Is this stuff any good? And what’s the recommended software?
As far as I can see, there are no specific equipment age / performance recommendations, but here’s some extracts from the ‘User Device’ section of the snappily titled 114 page Technical Specification Institutional Infrastructure (the full version can be accessed here).
All network-connected user devices shall have the ability to view office productivity documents.
Institutions shall ensure that user devices are subject to a maintenance policy that ensures sufficient availability for the needs of the institution’s users. This can be through the maintenance of a pool of replacement user device equipment or through service-level agreements that ensure that faulty devices are fixed in a timely manner.
Workstations shall exceed the recommended specifications for the operating system and applications that they are expected to use.
The rest of the document is equally snappy – according to this Gunning Fog Index the reading age is 11.5.
According to wikipedia – Texts that are designed for a wide audience generally require a fog index of less than 12 - easy made it.
