Today I had the opportunity to attended a breakfast seminar hosted by “AIPM & ACS” titled “Ultranet – The Journey So Far..”
The blurb for the session follows “
The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and the Australian Computer Society (ACS) invites you to attend our first joint Breakfast Event presented by Greg Barber, Project Director, Ultranet, Office for Government’s School of Education, Department of Education & Early Childhood Development.
The Ultranet is a $64 million dollar initiative of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to provide a student centred electronic learning environment that supports high quality learning and teaching. It connects students, teachers and parents, and enables efficient knowledge transfer.
To date, the Ultranet project has delivered on time and within budget, but this complex and ambitious project has not been without it’s challenges.
During his presentation, Greg will discuss some of the challenges faced and share lessons that can be applied to other large IT programs.”
I attended as an educator that works within the Victorian system and being acutely aware of the significance of the project, I am also a tax payer in this state and my tax payments from my business and personally are going towards the development of the $65 million dollar program. My children do not attend a government school, however they do attend a catholic school and I am aware that the catholic system is looking closely at the Ultranet development with keen interest. I also know personally a number of the coaches involved in the roll out of the program as well as a number of leaders and principals involved in the initial training. I attended the session not looking to really find anything interesting out that I was not already aware of – I attended the session to get an understanding of the message of the project deployment. I have to say that the message given was very basic and could have been applied to any other project that government works on, this is not to say that the presenter did a bad job but that the content was nothing significant in any way, shape or form.
I have recorded the audio from the presentation so you can have a listen for your self and this has its own story. See further down in this post.
What surprised today about the presentation was the lack of depth of discussion around the challenges of delivering on such a project in such a short period of time (please note that this was not an educational discussion of the merits of the project but on the project management and process – or at least that was what I was left with) that have been put forward by the project, in June 2009 the contracts were signed and it was expected that within 8 months a system would be up and running. Greg eluded to the challenges and the process but did not drill down into those challenges, and as we all know this is where the best learning will take place; rather than being provided with the generic project management structure 101 presentation. I wanted to hear about the challenges and issues, I wanted to hear how these were managed and dealt with I wanted to hear about what are ongoing issues and future issues the project will bring, but as I am reminded it is not our nature yet to feel comfortable about talking about our challenges and issues openly and in a politically charged environment and an election year. Side Note – I hope one day we can have these discussions openly as it will make government spending and decision making more consultative and transparent.
The idea of what the Ultranet wants to do is to be commended, we need these directions and developments to help drive our schools in using online tools, however I feel that the process behind the proposed solution as been lost between a governments need to track students and providing parents access to online student information AND schools having a solution to allow collaboration and communication AND teachers being provided with an environment to develop lesson materials and resources with students and teachers AND students being provided with a space to call their own and start to develop online skills (oops scratch that last one as the privacy commissioner is worried about what our kids do at school – maybe they should put some money into educating parents about what information Kids give out at home?!?!).
The issue with the Ultranet is that it is trying to be too many things to too many people and it is being pushed out way to fast without proper testing and establishment and with a very small number of coaches 70 to support 1600 schools with 50,000 teachers and 550,000 students. If things were taken a little slower focusing on one part at a time with proper testing and application then the end result would be a system that could grow into the education environment of today to hopefully suit the needs of the future. One of the biggest things I hear from teachers and schools is about the lack of understanding and ability to incorporate work and systems already in place in these schools and online and the ability to link and connect with the hundreds of thousands of hours of work, effort and time. I think this project will go through some rough stages in the next year or two before we see real developments and positives come out and I do hope there are positives.
Have a listen to the audio of the presentation and see what you think.
Capturing Audio from the Presentation
So today I used this presentation as an opportunity to test out a few technologies that I use or have started to use. I had with me my trusty Livescribe Smart Pen with me and my new iPad, using these two devices I have recorded the audio from the session on each to test out the quality and capacity. To put my location in context I was sitting about 3-4 metres away from the presenter on a 45 degree angle, there was a standard sound system in place.
- I used my Livescribe Smart Pen without the additional ear microphones (which in hindsight would have been more suitable however I wanted to test the basic recording quality)
- I used my iPad with just the inbuilt microphone – the app I used to record the session with was the Soundpaper (iTunes link) application which allows you to take notes and record audio at the same time.
I downloaded the audio from each device and converted it to an mp3 file using garage band on my MacBook Pro.
Audio Files
I have to say that I was surprised with the quality of the iPad recording and the clearer background noise, the Livescribe was clearly beaten in my books although the headset earphone/mics would have made a significant difference. From an education point of view the iPad microphone pick up is a great asset for students and teachers.
Note: You will have to forgive the construction whine towards the middle part of the presentation (this was annoying for the presenter as well as the participants)
