Digital lending libraries

When the iPad was launched in 2010, Apple also announced iBooks, an ebook reader with corresponding digital store. It made a lot of sense, especially as the iPad is about the size and weight of a large book.

Despite this great start, digital books in schools have never really taken off. I feel that part of this is the technical distribution challenge and the other is the cost. With 1:1 iPads and a decent MDM, we have sort of solved the first problem and have been able to give out digital texts at my school. However, book licenses are not re-assignable in Apple Books, which makes the whole thing only workable with free titles.

So I wondered: might a digital lending library be possible? And after a bit of searching, I discovered one…

Hello Sora!

Overdrive have created and app and digital service called Sora. Once it’s set up for your school, it offers an ebook reader that works on iPad and the web, including the facility to sync annotations and titles across devices and even play audiobooks.

The best thing though is a subscription they offer in the UK called Ebooks Now. Once paid up, you get access to large range of digital texts that can be ‘borrowed’ by students in school. They keep a close eye on which titles are being read or otherwise, swapping out unpopular titles and keeping the selection as fresh as possible.

Bubble Books

When we returned from the first COVID lockdown in September 2020, they there were all sorts of concerns about restricting the risk of viral transmission with shared resources or spaces. So things like a school lending library were out of the question!

Instead I proposed that we get Sora at school, making the most of our 1:1 iPad programme by offering a digital lending library to our students.

It was really easy to get set up, and Overdrive even allowed us to authenticate users with our on-premises Active Directory (and later swapping to Azure for cloudy credentials). Once logged in, children could browse our school’s digital collection, borrow or reserve books and then read to their hearts’ content!

Reading the results

There’s been lots of benefits. Here’s a few…

Lockdown library. When we had to switch again to remote learning in January 2021, children were still able to log into Sora to borrow and read books at home. With no other way to provide books to our students, this was a fantastic way to keep our children reading.
Lending leader. As an admin, I’m able to see the number of titles that have been loaned by kids in our school. And in the last year, that number was 47,111! Which I think is not too bad…
Idle moments. Because we are 1:1 iPad, teachers are able to make use of the ‘down’ time in the classroom to do reading on Sora. Obviously reading an ‘analogue’ book is just as good, but it does mean children can listen to audiobooks easily too, as well as change or renew books without having to leave their seat.

So Sora definitely comes with a thumbs up from me!

Back to School

Ah, September. The time of year when the school that everyone has so diligently and careful taken apart, sorted out and tidied away in July has to be put back together again in a matter of days because all of the children are starting school again.

The same applies with technology in schools. With our 1:1 iPad programme, September is when we have to setup new iPads for our students. Depending on the refresh cycle, this can be anything from three to six year groups that need doing. Thankfully, this year it was only Years 1-3, as we had just started a new lease with Key Stage 1 iPads and the Year 3s needed the iPads that Year 6 had finished with at the end of term.

This year, we (my technician and I) successful got all the iPads up and running by the end of day two of term…which I think was pretty good going! We managed the four classes in Year Three in one day, involving students setting up the iPads themselves, and got all eight Key Stage 1 classes ready, which we set up for the students in our bespoke Using Shared iPad Mode In The Wrong Way approach, in a day and a half.

Which I think is pretty good going! And much better than last year, which took three or four times as long.

So, what was different this year?

Having a technician again. For various reasons, the previous year I was left bereft of an IT technician, which makes a huge difference when it comes to deployment. Another pair of capable hands saves so much time.
Network upgrades. Our network has 802.11ac wireless access points and a 10gig fibre backbone but the actual cabling into some classrooms was shockingly old. In the last year we’ve rectified this with CAT 6a cabling upgrades. Which makes things much faster, or at least not noticeably slow!
Federated Managed Apple IDs. We’ve linked up our Microsoft accounts with the school Apple IDs, which means users have the same password that is used in other systems. Reducing complexity is always worth it.
Single sign on with Jamf Pro. We’ve turned on single sign on using Microsoft accounts with our MDM (Jamf Pro), which means that users are using the same account to authenticate with the MDM as they are with their Apple ID. One less thing to remember — “just type it all in again!”
Single sign on in other places too. We’ve also made use of student Microsoft accounts with logins for Showbie (our learning platform), Mathletics (for practising maths skills) and Sora (our digital lending library). It helps students become more familiar with their Microsoft account credentials and, I think, reduces complexity again.

When dealing with a school of iPads, making the effort to smooth out the speed bumps is always worth it in the long term. For technology to be an effective tool in the classroom, it’s got to ‘just work’ as much as possible, so it fades into the background and instead supports learning.

Books for kids

When the iPad first came out back in 2010, it also came with what was then called ‘iBooks’, Apple’s answer to the Amazon Kindle. You could buy and read digital books straight on your lovely new iPad…fantastic!

Some time after that, Apple brought out the Volume Purchase Programme, which allowed schools/businesses to buy copies of apps and books for their users. These came in the form of codes which would have to be redeemed against a user’s Apple ID. These codes could only be used once, which meant that if a user left your organisation you’d have to buy all their apps again, or recycle their Apple ID by changing the name and password.

Fast forward to 2013 and Apple brought out Managed Distribution, which allowed an institution (via MDM) to assign app and book licences directly to a user’s Apple ID. With apps, these licences could be recalled and distributed elsewhere if required, but with books the licence got ‘used up’ if assigned.

A few years later, Apple rolled out device-based app assignment, which allowed an app to be assigned to a specific iPad even if there wasn’t an Apple ID on the device.

Not so with books: these still needed to be assigned to an individual rather than a device.

In order to distribute copies of Apple’s coding or creativity resources to teachers, I was quite happy to assign those book licences to individuals because there were only so many teachers in the school. But when it came to our KS2 deployment, there wasn’t a way in Jamf Pro to easily make a list of all the 450 students and then assign them books.

However, in Jamf Pro 10.16, a new feature was released that allowed for the creation of smart user groups based on information imported from Apple School Manager. So this would allow me to make a smart group with just the students in a specific class or year group. Which I could then use to assign books. Added to this was the feature that allowed for the automatic registration of users with volume purchasing if they have a Managed Apple ID, which basically meant that the MDM could assign apps/books to the user without the user having to agree to the registration. Which is handy when working with a whole school 1:1 programme!

Jamf Teacher on Jamf Pro

When we first deployed Jamf Pro many years ago, when it was still called Casper Suite, there was a great little app called Casper Focus that allowed teachers to lock student iPads into apps, trigger AirPlay and — most importantly — reset passcodes on student devices.

Then along came Apple Classroom, plus a rebrand of Casper Suite to Jamf Pro, and Casper Focus was quietly retired. Don’t get me wrong, Apple Classroom is a GREAT product and gives teachers a powerful yet discrete way to keep tabs on what’s going on in the classroom. But it lacks the ability to reset student passcodes on devices. This meant that teachers had to contact IT to get iPads unlocked, should a child forget the 12 character alphanumeric passcode that they had thought would have been such a great choice for their device.

Until now.

Back in 2009, Jamf purchased an education-focused MDM called Zuludesk, and with it some really great apps for teachers, students and parents to manage their devices. Zuludesk became Jamf School and the handy classroom-controlling app for instructors became Jamf Teacher. As a user of Jamf Pro, we were still left out in the dark.

Thankfully, Jamf announced yesterday at their (remote) Jamf Nation User Conference that Jamf Teacher is now on Jamf Pro. Yay! Hopefully this will mean less Helpdesk calls from teachers and, more importantly, students able to get on with their learning more quickly.

How to make iCloud save the day

For various different reasons and entirely due to my own incompetence, on Monday I managed to accidentally and remotely remove all of the apps from all of our teachers iPads. Not a good way to start the day!

So, after fixing the problem and setting all the apps to reinstall again, I reflected on what does happen to all that app data should any app be accidentally deleted in future. Sure, you can restore from an iCloud backup, but that’s a pretty time-consuming process and it would be better if everything lived nice and safe in the cloud.

So, how did various different apps perform?

iWork: fine, so long as teachers had been saving to iCloud Drive (with the free 200GB of storage with Managed Apple IDs).
G-Suite: absolutely fine, as the very epitome of cloud storage.
Office365: more of a mixed story, depending if people were saving things to ‘On my iPad’ or to OneDrive. The Office apps don’t default to the cloud, which is not great.
Slack: requires the user to know the name of the workspace before signing in, but once you’re in it’s good as new.
Explain Everything: nothing is saved to the cloud, so any projects that weren’t already exported are lost.
Book Creator: not a problem, mainly because I had previously turned on iCloud storage via MDM. Once you open the app and wait a few moments, all of your previous books reappear…yay!

Making Book Creator save to iCloud

Now at this point I need to interject: how exactly did I got Book Creator to save everything to iCloud? It’s not the default setting, that’s for sure!

I stumbled upon the solution a few years ago when we introduced Shared iPad in Key Stage 1. Shared iPad mode heavily relies entirely on apps using iCloud to store all their data so that when a user logs out of one iPad and into another one, all of their app data magically follows them. Some apps support this out of the box, whereas others need to have a few settings turned on via MDM.

One cool thing about MDM is that you can use it to push out certain configurations to apps when they are installed. On Jamf Pro, there is an ‘App Configuration’ tab on apps and it’s in there that you can put in the extra settings. Such as…

<dict>
<key>enableCloudSync</dict>
<true/>
</dict>

If you enter this information, even if the iPad in question isn’t in Shared iPad mode, it will automatically save the user data to iCloud. Handy!

Please see https://support.bookcreator.com/hc/en-us/articles/209212825-Configuration-for-Shared-iPads for full details from Book Creator.

Making Explain Everything save to iCloud

So, could I leverage this benefit to fix any of the other apps? The answer is yes!

Explain Everything supports Shared iPad mode, so I used the same trick to get it to save data to iCloud even if the device wasn’t in Shared iPad mode. The following configuration dictionary in the app configuration worked for me:

<dict>
<key>SharediPads</key>
<true/>
</dict>

Please see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1atOMVFtTh38dG6twc9EbCTjBrB78gsBAbmHMVXrzHUw/edit#heading=h.i0got4llqoyo for full documentation from Explain Everything.

Making it easier to sign into Slack

Now, Slack doesn’t use iCloud per say. But it would be handy if school devices knew the school Slack domain by default to make signing in much simpler. And it turns out that they can!

The following app configuration is what you need:

<dict>
<key>OrgDomain</key>
<string>yourslackteamnamehere</string>
</dict>

Please see https://storage.googleapis.com/appconfig-media/appconfig-content/uploads/2017/11/Slack-AppConfig-ISV-Capabilities-V2-.pdf for full details of what is possible with managing Slack.

Going 1:1 using Shared iPad

So, back in 2016 Apple released iOS 9.3 with a slew of features for education. One of these included ‘Shared iPad’ mode, which allowed a single iPad to have multiple logins, giving a personalised experience to using the iPad without having to actually have an iPad each. It worked with a combination of Managed Apple IDs created in Apple School Manager and a sympathetic MDM, as well as requiring iPad Air 2/iPad Mini 4 or better with at least 32GB of storage.

Now, I’m not really sure how many schools actually use Shared iPad. At its inception, the iPad specs were quite high (our 16GB iPad mini 4s don’t have enough storage) and it needed an MDM that actually supported it. It was a year before we had enough newer iPads to even try it out, let alone deploy using it across the school.

Fast forward a couple of years, we were looking at extending our 1:1 programme and I was thinking about how to actually manage and setup the devices. With KS2 classes, we were able to get children to set them up themselves, putting in usernames and passwords as well as Managed Apple IDs. The thought of getting 5-year-olds to type all that in, or to do it for them, wasn’t appealing in the slightest.

Enter Shared iPad. I then had the thought that maybe we could use Shared iPad mode, but with each device only ‘shared’ with one student. The advantages would be:

Easier to set up. Because all the accounts are made in Apple School Manager and then assigned to the iPad using MDM, the initial login process literally involves tapping on the child’s name on the iPad. This signs the child into the iPad with their Managed Apple ID without having to type the whole thing in.
Easier to manage. With our KS2 classes, some students enjoy changing their iPad passcodes and then promptly forgetting what it is. If they then enter the wrong one too many times and then turn the device on and off again, the iPad will not connect to wifi until the correct passcode is entered. Because of this, any MDM command to reset the passcode just won’t get through to the device and so the iPad has to be wiped and re-setup again…which is annoying! With Shared iPad, the passcode is the Managed Apple ID password (which can be set to four digits) and can be reset at any point by the teacher using Apple Classroom.
Harder to break. When an iPad is in Shared iPad mode, there are all sorts of options in Settings that are no longer available. This gives less options for students to accidentally (or on purpose) break things. It also doesn’t let the student log out of their Managed Apple ID, meaning all their data is always going to be synced to iCloud successfully.

So, a month or so in, how’s it going? Here are a few reflections:

Initial setup really is easy! Once the devices are all organised and set up in your MDM properly, getting kids started with the devices literally involves tapping on their name, putting in the temporary passcode and then choosing a new one. Compared with setting up iPads normally, this is hugely easier.
You really must make sure you wipe the device properly before you begin. iPads these days come with all sorts of apps installed already (such as the Apple Store, GarageBand etc). We found that we couldn’t use our MDM to remove these apps on a Shared iPad device, so it’s important to completely restore devices before you roll them out.
You only get so much storage for apps. According to the Education Deployment Guide, a Shared iPad partitions up the space in a fix manner, which you need to be aware of. With a 32GB iPad, for example, 10GB is allocated for the system, 8Gb for apps and then the remaining is split between the number of users that you decide you want cached on the device. As we are only using the devices with one user, this gives 14GB for the user’s documents and data. However, 8GB for apps doesn’t go a long way, particularly if you want GarageBand on the devices.
Updating the OS isn’t entirely straightforward. To update to a newer version of iOS, this cannot be done by the user on the device but instead must be done via MDM command. There must be enough space in the ‘apps’ partition for the iOS update installer, and the current user has to be logged out too. Once we had figure this out, updates were a bit easier.
Replacing a device is easy. Because Shared iPad mode has the idea of users logging in and out, swapping out a device is as easy as changing a few things in MDM for the replacement iPad and then logging the user back in. All the data for the user is saved to iCloud and so is immediately available for the user.
Make sure you turn on ‘Shared iPad’ mode for apps. Some apps need settings turned on in MDM in order to fully work with Shared iPad mode. Follow the links to find out more information about turning this on for Book Creator and Explain Everything.

All in all, I’m glad we’ve given it a go with our KS1 students. I’m still in two minds about whether to extend it to KS2 in a future roll-out: probably the 8GB app limit will be a show-stopper…

A Year with iPad Pro

I watched with much interest the product launch of the 12.9″ iPad Pro back in Autumn 2015. Here was a fast iPad with a huge display, an intriguing super-accurate stylus and a simple to attach external keyboard. I began to wonder: perhaps an iPad Pro could serve as a single multi-purpose computer for a teacher, rather than relying on the Mac plus iPad combo. With leaner financial times cutting into school budgets ever deeper, could this be a viable option?

There was only one way to truly find out: go ‘iPad Only’ with the iPad Pro. So from May 2016, that’s what I did! I passed on my MacBook Pro to our new technician and got myself a 128gb 12.9″ iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil and a Smart Cover.

Here are my thoughts, one year on…

It’s Big!

The 12.9″ iPad is certainly big. I still get children asking me, “Mr Lings, why is your iPad so big?”, even though I’m sure they’ve seen me wander around the school with it all year. The screen size is literally twice as big as a ‘normal’ iPad, meaning you can comfortably fit two full sized apps next to each other when doing split-screen multitasking. This generous amount of screen estate is great for when you’re sitting down to do some work at a desk. Developers are beginning to take advantage of the size too, such as how iWork apps now can have an on-screen formatting panel rather than relying on a pop-over. However, it does feel a little bit too big for using the iPad when teaching lessons. It’s not impossible, but a slightly smaller iPad would be better for day-to-day classroom teaching.

Split-screen Multitasking

This has been a feature of the operating system since iOS 9 and requires a newer model of iPad (iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, iPad Pro and iPad 5). And it’s really useful! The productivity gains of being able to have two different apps up at once is hard to understate: whether that’s Notes and Keynote when creating a presentation, Safari and Numbers when doing some data crunching or just having Documents by Readdle open on the side when moving files around. The fact the 12.9″ Pro has such a big screen means that both the apps have plenty of room each.

Speed

The A9X chip is fast. Coming from an iPad Air (and an iPad 2 before that), this makes using the iPad so much more enjoyable. Apple’s iWork and iLife apps can be quite intensive to use at times, but the Pro handles them all fine. It truly does feel like ‘desktop class’ processing power, which makes a big difference to productivity.

Apple Pencil

Ever since we had started using iPads instead of Interactive Whiteboards in my school many years ago, a decent stylus was something that the iPad was missing. With the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, that decent stylus is here! It’s really nice to use, particularly when modelling any form of writing when teaching. It really does offer that pixel-level accuracy and has a lovely feel in your hand. Charging using the lightning socket on the iPad is really fast, although it does seem a little precarious. You can use an adaptor to charge it with a normal lightning cable, but it’s much slower that way.

I use a back cover from STM, which includes a little slot to store the Apple Pencil. The only downside to this is that the Pencil stays in Bluetooth connection to the iPad all the time and so discharges in about a day, even when it’s not being used at all. Hopefully there’s a fix to this coming in future…

There an app for that

Part of the journey this year has been discovering and making use of new and existing apps to ‘get jobs done’ on an iPad. With a bit of creativity, you can do most things!

Documents 6 (https://appsto.re/gb/Vw_Vv.i) – FREE: this allows you to manage documents and files on your iPad as well as easily access a range of cloud and network storage. The most useful way to use it is a bit like the desktop on a Mac: you put stuff stuff there whilst you’re working on it. Because it makes use of ‘Document Providers’ in iOS, files can accessed in other app, allowing you to easily upload files on Safari or quickly email multiple documents.
Word (https://appsto.re/gb/PWh9I.i), Excel (https://appsto.re/gb/pqb-I.i) & Powerpoint (https://appsto.re/gb/-ji9I.i) – Office 365 Subscription: I’m still a big fan of Apple’s iWork suite, but sometimes you just need to edit and create native Microsoft Office files. They’ve done a really good job with it and it definitely comes in handy.
Screens (https://appsto.re/gb/MBbgN.i) – £19.99: a VNC app that allows you to remotely connect to a desktop computer. I use this for keeping tabs on a couple of Mac servers, but it’s also useful for those pesky websites that just don’t work on an iPad (Apple School Manager and Mathletics Dashboard I’m looking at you!).

Print Preview and the Share Sheet

One really great ‘Easter Egg’ hidden in iOS 10 is the ability to generate a PDF wherever you can print. When printing something on iOS, it should bring up a print preview below. If you pinch out on it, it opens full screen and has the share button to then do what you like that PDF. This little trick opens up loads of possibilities!

To conclude, going ‘iPad Only’ isn’t for everyone, but it definitely is a viable option. Using iOS all the time makes ‘legacy’ desktop operating systems just feel so overly complicated and time consuming. In a sense, the iPhone is the ‘post-PC’ device, with over 1 billion of the hand-held super-computers sold so far. Because the iPad uses iOS too, it can benefit from that world of apps and workflows too.

Computing with iPad

Ever since the arrival of the National Curriculum subject ‘computing’ in 2014, figuring out how exactly to teach computer science and coding in a Primary school has become a hot issue. Using a Mac or PC (or even a Raspberry Pi), there are some obvious contenders: ‘Scratch’ from MIT, maybe a bit of ‘LOGO’ or even some ‘Python’ for the more adventurous. But what about the iPad? Can computational thinking and an understanding of algorithms be taught using Apple’s intuitive and easy-to-use touch screen device?

There has been a range of coding apps for iPad right from the start, but only recently has the iPad started to really shine when it comes to learning to code. Here are three strong contenders.

codeSpark Academy with The Foos

This paid-for app (with free access for educators) aims to teach the basics of computational thinking to children aged 4+ with a fun, visual and no-words approach. It’s based around five different characters, called ‘The Foos’, who all have different skills and abilities that can be used to solve problems to try and catch the elusive ‘Glitch’. Using an intuitive interface and attractive 3D graphics, it quickly teaches children about sequencing, loops, events and conditions. There is also a curriculum that teachers can download, including ‘off-line’ activities to help explore coding concepts further.

We tried out using codeSpark Academy with our Year 1 children as part of the Hour of Code in December, and are now using the full app this half term as part of their computing lessons. I really like how it uses puzzles to really get children to think and increasingly harder levels to teach new concepts and consolidate learning. Definitely worth taking a look!

LEGO Education WeDo 2.0

Version 1.0 of LEGO WeDo was first released in 2009 and offered a simple way to teach robotics and coding to 7-11s using LEGO bricks. A USB hub connected various sensors to a computer, such as distance and tilt, as well as a motor. Following the onscreen building instructions in the software, children could construct various models and then use block-based coding to program them, e.g. making a crocodile shut its mouth when something is put inside it. We’ve been using these kits for several years and children love them: it’s accessible computing and you get to build with LEGO!

In 2016, LEGO announced WeDo 2.0, with brand-new models and parts and a Bluetooth hub to connect the updated sensors with iPads and Chromebooks, as well as PCs and Macs. The new WeDo 2.0 is a free download (obviously requiring the paid-for LEGO kits) and includes all the build instructions and a range of ‘Guided Projects’, both for science and for computing.

Version 2.0 is a really strong upgrade, both in terms of the hardware and iPad compatibility, but also in terms of the pedagogy; it requires problem-solving skills and creativity from children to both build and extend models as well as design the code required to complete the different projects.

Swift Playgrounds

Debuting at WWDC in June 2016 and launched last Autumn, Swift Playgrounds is a truly remarkable piece of software. It aims to teach children (Year 7+, but definitely accessible at the start for those in Years 5 and 6) the foundations of computational thinking whilst using real Swift code – a programming language Apple created that is used today by professional developers in many popular apps. Many other computing apps take a ‘block-based coding’ approach, where students can drag and drop pre-defined blocks of code and combine them to create a program. This is great for teaching the concepts of computer science, but leaves a chasm of confusion when students try and code using a typed language. Swift Playgrounds overcomes this by using written code from the start, but code that can be selected from smart autocorrect suggestions above the keyboard and then can be dragged around as if it were a ‘block’ of code.

The app is also really fun to play! On the right of the screen is a 3D world that you navigate to solve puzzles, entering code on the left of the screen. The puzzles can be quite challenging, requiring student to think carefully, spot patterns and apply the skills they have learned in a variety of ways. As you progress through the levels, it really does teach you how to think like a programmer through crafting efficient, reusable and readable code.

Accompanying each of the ‘Learn to Code’ books in Swift Playground is a multi-touch book that teachers can download. These provide a full curriculum to help with teaching using Swift Playground, complete with Keynote slides for each lesson.

All three of these apps show how iPad has really grown up as a platform for learning computational thinking.

iPad Wish List

The iPad has been around for 7 years now. It’s trajectory has been quite a mixed bag: stellar sales initially but a year-on-year declines since; aggressive uptake by schools at first but Chromebooks overtaking since in the US due to easier management and cheaper unit prices; 1:1 iPad making a transformative difference in some schools but being left to rot in others.

To be fair, recent developments with iPad have made a huge different and show promise for the platform in education. Apple School Manager, Managed Apple IDs and device assignment of apps make deploying iPads much easier, so long as you have an MDM that supports it. Classroom is very cool and makes teaching using iPad fun and in-control for the instructor. The 12.9″ iPad Pro is a great device for a teacher (if a little too big) and I’m definitely looking forward to the rumoured 10.5″ device. Collaboration tools in iWork are amazing and reliable and the creativity potential with iMovie and GarageBand are remarkable.

However, some parts of the iPad experience could definitely do with some loving attention from Apple. Here is my wish list:

iBooks Author on iPad. It feels like an abandoned piece of software on macOS, but it’s crazy that interactive multitouch books can’t be made on iOS. Book Creator is super simple and fun, but a more feature-rich equivalent would make a big difference.
Apple to support iPads with all of its websites. I hate how I have to VNC into a Mac to use Apple School Manager on an iPad and how icloud.com is essentially inaccessible on iPad.
Xcode for iPad. I don’t develop apps, but it would definitely send a strong signal about the potential and direction of the platform if Apple released it. With Swift Playgrounds, maybe it’s already in the pipeline somewhere in the bunkers at Cupertino?
More aggressive feature parity with iWork between Mac and iPad. I like how all the new additions (like collaboration tools) come to both platforms, but there are quite a few glaring legacy omissions. Like editing print headers in Numbers. Or editing master slides in Keynote. Or highlighting text in tables in Pages.

Those are some of my wishes. What are yours?

Managing Change: the S-Curve

A few years ago I attended an Apple education event where a story was used to help us think about change management. We were invited to imagine that we were on a desert island, with another, better island in the distance. What sort of person were we? Were we the swimmer who immediately jumped into the water and started speeding off to the next island? Or were we the observer, standing on the shore with our binoculars and surveying the water for dangers, obstacles and perhap sharks? Or were we the flag-holder, someone who was going to stay put on the current island thank you very much and had no intention of going anywhere?

I would definitely say I was a swimmer, but it was interesting to discuss about the positives and negatives of each position and how all were important in managing change. Swimmers might get to new places quicker but could also get themselves into trouble. Observers are good at looking ahead and identifying possible problems and issues with a change, but can also be slow to actually take action. Flag-holders are good at championing the benefits of the status quo and questioning the genuine need for a change, although they can hold it back unnecessarily.

What was said next was the most fascinating though: to get to the island, what you really need is a boat. There needs to be a way that everyone can get across to the new island without leaving people behind. And sometimes you might need to burn the flag – staying behind and avoiding the change isn’t an option any more!

This way of thinking about managing change suggests a deep understanding of the Diffusion of Innovations theory (or S-curve). The S-curve theory is about the process of how new ideas, innovations and technology are adopted within a society or social group. It suggests that there are:

Innovators – those who first invent or use a new technology or idea
Early adopters – this who begin to use it more widely
Early majority – a larger group who begin to also use the innovation
Late majority – most of the remaining half of people who then accept the innnovation
Laggards – those who relunctantly capitulate to the innovation, a significant amount of time after the innovators and early adopters

The theory can be applied to any new innovation in history, be it boiling water to sterilise and kill germs, the emergence of the motor car or using computers in school. Returning to the picture of the islands, perhaps the swimmer is the innovator and early adopter, the observer is the early and late majority, and the flag-holder is the laggard.

As someone who wants to see education transformed with (Apple) technology, this theory is really fascinating. Only a small proportion of teachers will adopt a new idea to begin with, but over time many, most and finally all will also adopt it too. I have found this with all of the changes I’ve sought to bring in school, be it with introducing Macs, teacher iPads, ditching Smartboards or going 1:1 iPad with kids or starting to use Slack. It takes time to introduce a change, but there is a critical point where a ‘boat’ is required to accelerate its adoption and give people an easy enough path to move from where they are into the new thing. There is also a point where the old approach and method needs to be decisively removed to enable everyone to move together.