ICT lessons 'not challenging enough

ICT lessons are 'inadequate' in almost one-fifth of secondary schools in the UK, according to Ofsted.

The education watchdog has published a new report, which found that pupils' overall attainment was adversely affected from poor coverage of key aspects of the ICT curriculum.

It revealed that lessons are not challenging enough for more able students and has called for teaching to be improved, most notably more demanding topics such as databases and programming.

However, more than two-thirds of primary schools were found to have either 'good' or 'outstanding' ICT provision, but this dropped to just one-third of secondary schools.

"In a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, young people need to be given the opportunity to learn ICT skills in an interesting, challenging and relevant way," stressed chief inspector Miriam Rosen.

She said that schools should offer a range of ICT courses that match students' needs, preparing them for higher education and for skilled work.

Evidence of the report is also found in GCSE and A-level intake figures, with the number of pupils studying GCSE ICT falling 64 per cent since 2007, with fewer girls also choosing to take up the subject.
"www.womenintechnology.co.uk"

U.S. Industry Affirms Commitment to India in ICT Sector: USIBC

NEW DELHI, Dec 15, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) today concluded a 5-day mission to New Delhi to participate in the U.S.-India Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Dialogue, holding bilateral discussions with key Government of India officials.

Chaired by Ambassador Phillip Verveer of the U.S. Department of State and Secretary R. Chandrashekar of the Indian Ministry for Information Technology, the ICT Dialogue is a crucial industry-government vehicle for addressing a range of issues regarding information technology, media and broadcasting, and telecommunications.

USIBC led one of its largest delegations ever, representing 20 of the top IT and telecom companies operating in India, to participate in the Dialogue. The meetings provided a unique opportunity to identify barriers to doing business in these sectors and develop specific recommendations and action items for both governments to address obstacles to trade and investment.

One of the top priorities of the Government of India currently is to increase ICT manufacturing and drive high-tech innovation. In meetings with Government of India officials, USIBC reaffirmed its commitment to help India to develop non-discriminatory policies based on global standards and best practices that will encourage the in-flow of investment to India and incentivize companies to develop local manufacturing.

"The robust participation from U.S. industry in the ICT Dialogue year after year demonstrates our unwavering commitment to work with the Indian Government to further growth in the ICT sector and bring the latest technologies to the country," Robert Pepper, Vice President of Global Technology Policy at Cisco, said. "U.S. industry looks forward to deeper collaboration with the Government of India to ensure that growth in the ICT sector continues to be one of India's true success stories."

In partnership with the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), USIBC members held four days of consultations with key Government of India officials to discuss a range of issues including local manufacturing, innovation, standards and testing certification, telecommunications infrastructure security, e-waste and environmental protection, tax policy, and incentives for technology companies to invest and grow in India. All of these issues are crucial to the strength and competitiveness of India in the global economy and to the long-term health of U.S. companies.

The U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC) was formed in 1975 at the request of the United States and Indian governments to advance two-way trade and deepen commercial ties. Today, USIBC is the premier business advocacy association comprised of nearly 400 of America's and India's top companies dedicated to greater two-way trade and investment. Harold "Terry" McGraw III, Chairman, President, and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies serves as USIBC's Chairman.

www.usibc.com

SOURCE: U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC)

"U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), 
        Kimberly Byrnes, 202-463-3148, 
        kbyrnes@uschamber.com"
        

Fourth Issue of ICT World Today Now Available Online

ICT World Today is a journal on Information and Communication Technology for Development developed by the Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI) with support from APCICT. This fourth issue of ICT World Today entitled, "ICT and Innovation: Facing the Emerging Global Issues," focuses on ways to encourage ICT innovation and enhance efficiency to overcome the global financial crisis; and tackle climate change, natural disasters, price hikes in resources and food, and the spread of contagious diseases.

Cover of ICT World Today - Spring 2010 (Fourth) Issue

This issue of ICT World Today covers articles contributed by experts from various sectors to promote a comprehensive understanding of policy response and international cooperation with regard to the aforementioned issues, through which it discusses ICT and innovations that address global challenges from various perspectives. Articles examine the role ICTs play in: sustainable development; poverty reduction; agriculture; low-carbon cities; security; ageing society; disaster response; empowering women entrepreneurs; capacity building; and more.
"UNIESCAP"
The issue ends with some news briefings on the latest ICT tools and projects, and a calendar of events.
Contributors to this issue include experts from international and UN agencies such as InfoDev, International Telecommunication Union, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific; government agencies such as the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications; research and educational institutions such as the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and National University of Singapore; and private companies such as Korea Telecom.
ICT World Today aims to contribute to developing economies, enhancing the quality of life in developing countries, and boosting ICT human capacity. Topics in the journal include: ICT access and the digital divide, digital convergence, cybersecurity, disability, gender, legal and regulatory issues; and the role ICT plays in agriculture, climate change, commerce, cultural development, disaster management, education, energy, environmental management, governance, health, small and medium enterprises, and trade. The journal welcomes pluralism in its approach, methods, and disciplines and includes the following type of articles: academic research articles, case studies, interviews, article digests and reviews.
Past issues of ICT World Today focused on the socio-economic impact of ICTs and the digital divide; ICTs and environment; and broadband and mobile communications for development.

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES ARE UP FOR 2012?

2011 is a year of significant IT innovation, with major advances in both consumer and business sectors. It is also the year of cloud computing. But as we say goodbye to this year, what does 2012 have in store for us?
There's BYOD (or Bring Your Own Device) that will change IT procurement. The company PC is becoming a thing of the past as businesses increasingly allow, and even encourage, employees to bring their domestic, consumer devices into the workplace and access corporate applications.
This will allow application availability at anytime, from anywhere, and will help business slash procurement costs. The smartphone/Tablet phenomenon will fuel this trend, and will drive uptake of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), wireless networking and end-point security solutions in the corporate arena.
However, it will create many problems for IT departments as they attempt to mitigate risk, and signals a tough future for PC and laptop manufacturers. Next year, I believe we will see at least one high-profile security disaster as a result of this trend, and that will be a wake-up call for companies to get proper security processes in place before unlocking their networks to all and sundry.
Campus LAN gets smart
With BYOD, the growth of smartphone/Tablet usage among consumers and the unified communications market set to triple by 2015, the Campus LAN will have to step up to the plate to meet demand. 2012 will be the year the campus gets smart.
Legacy environments will not be able to cope with the huge pressures being placed on them; high-performance applications (such as video streaming, IPTV, real-time image transfer and distance learning) will suffer as a result and productivity/revenue/brand reputation will fall.
I predict that by the summer of 2012, we'll see enterprise-class characteristics introduced into campus LAN solutions at a more affordable price point. This level of innovation will, for the first time, give companies the simplicity and performance required to meet modern business demands and transform the way campus-wide networks are engineered.
Rise of 'cloud service revenue'
2011 saw organisations slowly moving towards the Cloud and this pragmatic adoption will continue in 2012, but will also see the rise of a new form of revenue generation as enterprises from outside the technology sector move towards "cloud service provision."
In the current economy, businesses look to sweat every asset at their disposal and more and more will look to leverage their datacentre environments to offer cloud services as an additional revenue stream.
Those companies wishing to address this burgeoning market will need to have the right datacentre architecture in place - a highly virtualised, fabric-based network topology, delivering reliability and performance to meet strict SLAs - to respond to customer demands, and I predict that we will see some high profile casualties as a result of providers trying to make a fast buck.
Greater commoditisation
IT commoditisation will continue through 2012. The maturity of server virtualisation means that hardware is less important; as real estate/energy costs spiral and companies look to reduce capital outlay (CapEx), virtualisation strategies will permeate all companies and the CXO will become more vocal in whether or not their organisation has a plan in place.
Traditional, enterprise-owned, clients will become obsolete and businesses will turn to virtualised or even hosted, environments to reduce TCO through procurement of lower cost hardware.
Companies that get this right will reap the benefits, but they will need to make sure that the network foundation upon which all virtual environments operate is fit for purpose; get this wrong and soldier on regardless and there will be many, many problems.
Data consumption sky-rockets
2011 was the year in which "big data" stole headlines, and this trend will continue unabated through 2012. The last five years have been awash with new ways to generate, consume and store data.
This year, the average smartphone user consumed 15Mb of data each day, but this will grow to 1Gb by 2020; as consumers, we will place huge demand on networking and storage resources because of this.
Businesses will need to look at innovative solutions to increase network stability and performance while driving down costs to remain competitive. Those who ignore this trend will face major problems, and we may see one or two more examples.
Year of the Fabric
Holistic datacentre fabrics - from the storage environment through to the Ethernet network - are going to be the big trend in 2012. All my previous predictions will rely on this. Fabric-based architectures will become mainstream, building on the success of early adopter businesses that have reaped the benefits of flat, reliable, high performance networks that can offer simplified management and increased business agility.
This trend will see a fundamental attitude-shift to datacentre design, and will underpin many of the aforementioned predictions. After all, the network is the heart and lungs of modern business and without it simple actions like sending an e-mail or accessing a document, taken for granted by all of us, would be impossible.
Fabrics will revolutionise network design and change the networking landscape … forever.
GINA TAN is South-East Asia regional director at Brocade Communications Systems Inc, a US multinational specialising in data and storage networking products.
++++
www.brocade.com

GREEN TECHNOLOGY: HOW SCHOOL CAN CUT ICT SPENDING

Simple efficiency measures in schools' use of technology are often all that's needed to save energy, resources and the environment.

Sixth-formers at Sawtry community college, Cambridgeshire, where the school is trialling a paperless science department. Photograph: David Rose
In an effort to save up to 20% of its whole school budget over the next year, Sawtry community college has focused on technology to provide some cost-cutting solutions. As existing hardware wears out, the Huntingdon school is planning to replace its desktop computers with thin client PCs, which function without hard drives with processing done by servers. They use less energy and consequently emit less heat, which, in a room of 30 machines, has the knock-on effect of diminishing air-conditioning costs. But the school has scored a truly "quick win" in one department by all but dispensing with paper resources. "In the science department, we are now scanning resources on to the VLE rather than laser printing and photocopying," says associate principal Alan Stevens. "It has saved £1,000 a quarter on paper, laser cartridges and general running costs, and is environmentally friendly." Less paper and energy used means money saved. The dovetailing of sustainability and efficiency is exactly what children's secretary Ed Balls called for at the end of 2009 when he urged schools in England to make £2bn worth of savings in part by thinking green. School leaders have been sceptical but, according to the Carbon Trust, a government-funded, not-for-profit company, ICT is one area where UK schools could definitely cut costs. It calculates that around £70m could be saved each year by reducing energy use, which would simultaneously reduce carbon emissions by up to 300,000 tonnes. And ICT equipment is one of the chief culprits when it comes to using electricity in many schools. This year's national eWell-Being Awards, which celebrate the social, economic and environmental benefits of ICT, are featuring a prize for sustainable use of ICT in schools for the first time this year. Sponsored by Becta, it will reward ICT-based initiatives that raise awareness, improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact. Professor Peter James, an associate of the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (UK Ceed) and author of the SusteIT (Sustainable IT in Tertiary Education) report on greening ICT in further and higher education, says while ICT obviously has many benefits in education it comes with a "heavy environmental footprint". "IT accounts for around 2% of global carbon emissions, uses large amounts of materials, and creates toxicity risks in both production and disposal," he says. Alongside more switching off and powering down, he points to better use of ICT applications, such as videoconferencing, as a greener way forward.   Sawtry community college, Cambridgeshire. Photograph: David Rose Sawtry had the help of managed services specialist Innovit and its IT healthcheck – a "green" audit of technology that pinpoints where money and energy can be saved and helps schools to plan their long-term ICT procurement with sustainability in mind. Managing director Andrew Dent says there are many small measures schools could take that could instantly cut their carbon footprint. "For example, a lot of schools are still using the default settings on Windows software. But if you change the settings to turn off screens after a few minutes when not in use, it saves on screen wear and tear and on energy." The chief energy-gobblers are projectors, which are frequently left on because the ceiling-mounted switches are difficult to get at to turn power off – "difficult, but not impossible," Dent points out. One of the more strategic stumbling blocks is that network managers or others responsible for day-to-day IT use and performance do not have decision-making powers over budgets. In other words, no one is making the strategic link between cost savings, IT and environmental awareness. Dent adds: "If you look at the amount of ICT in schools, even compared with five to 10 years ago, the amount of energy consumed has grown and a lot of it is down to technology. But changing this is less about technology and more about people and making sure they do things like turn off projectors." Industry is also playing its part. Asus, for instance, a leading international brand in personal computing, has a dedicated "green team". It aims to use innovation and smarter technology to reduce the environmental impact of all aspects of its business, according to chairman Jonney Shih. Its portable Eee PC and spin-offs Eee Top and Eee Box, designed with specs and a price to suit educational users, offer low-energy consumption and long battery life along with all essential computing functions. "We have lowered power consumption without affecting performance and reduced material wastage," says Shih. "Longer battery life, for example, means fewer re-charges each week and so a longer battery lifecycle." Later this year, Asus plans to unveil products to tap the potential of cloud computing (provision of services and applications accessed via the web - rather than being stored on school hard drives). It also "enables schools to reduce their electricity bills without affecting the usability of devices in the classroom," says Shih. Educational supplier RM is now well known for its ecoquiet technology. It consumes around a third of the energy, and is now used by a conventional computer, is now used in over half its product range, says a company spokeswoman. This includes the ecoquiet serv that uses around 57 per cent of the power needed by a standard pedestal server, and RM UtilEyes, a new monitoring product showing electricity, gas, water and oil use and designed to help schools make energy savings. The government has unveiled its own plans for a 'G-cloud' to make software applications and services available online for access by all its departments – and hopefully cheaper. Estimates suggest it will take a significant chunk out of the £3.2bn efficiency savings earmarked across government – and reduce energy consumption. Local authorities are being urged to think along the same lines. The government's technology in education agency, Becta, calculates that up to £10 per pupil could be saved if local authorities switched to cloud-based services for email and basic office tools. However, Graham Cooper, head of marketing for information management specialist Capita Sims, says it is too early to size up the true advantages just yet. "Cloud computing is cheaper and easier to manage and there are no maintenance costs because someone else handles that," he says. "But the risk of things like data loss means we probably need a more complex analysis of the benefits, rather than seeing this as 'the solution'."   "Julie Nightingale,guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 May 2010 00.01 BST"