It’s a wonderful day today here in Boston. Wonderfully sunny sky, high 80s and dry….and oh ya, there was a certain Cup from Lord Stanley of Preston that was awarded for the first time in 39 years to the mighty Boston Bruins. Congratulations to the Bruins for the great win and also a hearty congratulations to the Vancouver Canucks. You had an incredible season, but to quote The Highlander, “there can be only one.”
The city was delirious last night with people running out from bars to celebrate. There was an interesting point made on the news last night. An important segment of the people celebrating all across the state weren’t even born when the Bruins had one their last championship. They were just kids!
Speaking of kids (ok, not the most elegant segue I have ever made, but bear with me), I came across a very interesting article from Yankee Group Distinguished Research Fellow Zeus (pronounced Zee-us) Kerravala. In the article he talks about how his local school system is proposing a mandate that all students coming into Kindergarten next year must have an iPad and bring it to school daily.
Wow! Isn’t that phenomenal? Bringing mobile technologies into the “workplace” to educate people as soon as they enter the educational system? That’s incredible! This is game changing! Starting next year, kids are going to grow up with mobile technologies as a very integral part of the learning process. Mobility will be in their DNA to such a point that they won’t know what life was like before there were mobile devices!
Not quite. To quote Zeus:
- The school district couldn’t actually tell the parents what activities the iPad would be used for. The only thing the district could share is that it would be used for about 20 minutes per day.
- Who pays for the apps that run on them? The district indicated there were many free educational applications but will those be the only ones used?
- Will there be a way for checking for inappropriate content? Many of the students have older siblings. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that a jealous older brother or sister wouldn’t go to YouTube and have an offensive video queued up as a joke.
Hmmm. This sounds to me once again like people being attracted to technology for technology’s sake as opposed to understanding how technology can help solve a “business” problem….in this case helping improve student learning.
So in business terms:
- They don’t know what they’re going to use the devices for (Angry Birds for lessons in Physics?);
- They don’t know how they are going to measure the value of the deployment;
- They don’t have a solution to mobile application management;
- Can the parents use the tablets? Is there an impact on application white lists and/or black lists;
- The security model hasn’t been defined, nor has a risk mitigation plan been put in place;
- The device procurement plan (page 1 of the article) suggests a model where the devices could be individually or “corporate” liable, but that’s not clear;
- They haven’t mentioned (or at least in fairness, Zeus didn’t mention it) how the devices will be supported;
- What if they are lost or stolen or broken? What’s the security model for wipe and lock?
I could go on, but I think you get the point. At face value, it seems as if this school district doesn’t at ALL have a mobility strategy in place, but are caught up in the excitement of mobility lick a moth to a flame. We all know how that usually ends. Today’s PSA is all about planning! You need to have an enterprise mobility plan in place that you constantly monitor and revisit.
Why Enterprise Mobility Planning Matters
The city was delirious last night with people running out from bars to celebrate. There was an interesting point made on the news last night. An important segment of the people celebrating all across the state weren’t even born when the Bruins had one their last championship. They were just kids!
Speaking of kids (ok, not the most elegant segue I have ever made, but bear with me), I came across a very interesting article from Yankee Group Distinguished Research Fellow Zeus (pronounced Zee-us) Kerravala. In the article he talks about how his local school system is proposing a mandate that all students coming into Kindergarten next year must have an iPad and bring it to school daily.
Wow! Isn’t that phenomenal? Bringing mobile technologies into the “workplace” to educate people as soon as they enter the educational system? That’s incredible! This is game changing! Starting next year, kids are going to grow up with mobile technologies as a very integral part of the learning process. Mobility will be in their DNA to such a point that they won’t know what life was like before there were mobile devices!
Not quite. To quote Zeus:
Hmmm. This sounds to me once again like people being attracted to technology for technology’s sake as opposed to understanding how technology can help solve a “business” problem….in this case helping improve student learning.
So in business terms:
I could go on, but I think you get the point. At face value, it seems as if this school district doesn’t at ALL have a mobility strategy in place, but are caught up in the excitement of mobility lick a moth to a flame. We all know how that usually ends. Today’s PSA is all about planning! You need to have an enterprise mobility plan in place that you constantly monitor and revisit.