Putting the needs of pupil’s first

With the help of XMA, Oakwood Infant School has introduced effective ICT capabilities into its classrooms in the way staff felt would best serve the needs of their pupils.

“I knew exactly what I wanted the school’s computers to do and how they should look but I just didn’t know how to achieve it.”

That was the situation facing the head teacher of Oakwood Infant School, Mrs Moores, who was tasked with updating the school’s ICT capabilities. The Infant school in Southampton already had some equipment in an ICT suite and classrooms, but teachers were keen to extend this further.

Consequently, Mrs Moores asked several providers for advice on how to create an IT strategy that would help her staff deliver the best possible education to their pupils. After a lengthy consultation process, Mrs Moores selected Nottingham-based XMA to provide the services the school required.

“We needed a solution that was very practical and would suit our way of working and we felt XMA was the sort of company that could achieve the end result we wanted.”

Oakwood staff and governors eventually chose a solution that included equipping the school’s ICT suite with upgraded computers and a new server. XMA also provided all of the associated networking infrastructure such as printers, as well as some of the software required.

A bespoke look and feel

The fact that XMA could install everything the school wanted was vital. Mrs Moores was keen that every PC offered pupils the same experience with a standard look and feel. She therefore asked XMA to implement a common technical specification across all the machines.She says: “We wanted to have control over how the children used the computers to learn, so we had all the software installed in an identical fashion by XMA staff. Of course, that also meant we could make sure we had the final say on what Internet content our pupils could access and what was restricted.”

 
On-site technician
 

Like many school staff, teachers at Oakwood felt that they were not qualified to be IT specialists and wanted to concentrate on the teaching benefits of the solution, rather than its technical elements.

Consequently, Mrs Moores wanted to set up a maintenance agreement with XMA. Options of having a full-time expert in-house, or a remote agreement with no on-site support were considered, but eventually, an alternative option was reached. The school agreed that an XMA specialist would visit the school for half a day each fortnight to address any issues and would also receive unlimited remote access and helpdesk support.

“Dan, our on-site technician, keeps everything ticking over for us,” says Mrs Moores. “If we have any issues we make a note of them and when he arrives we ask him to work through them. In addition Dan has just recently introduced an on-line fault logging service.”

“He’s a good problem solver but we also take advantage of the fact that he’s a friendly face, who is always happy to discuss our ideas and offer advice.”

“It’s because we can rely on people like Dan that we feel confident that we can also rely on XMA to provide a top quality service.”