Educational Ideas' Services

Continuous access to reliable, affordable ICT support is a prerequisite to building confidence in ICT systems - to support teaching and learning as well as management and administration.

Educational Ideas strives to help schools manage, organising and run ICT support; using skill sets to define jobs, recruit staff and find sources of funding and other help. We offer a one-stop-shop, continuous support to ensure that you get the right products and service on an on-going basis from the start of your project onwards.

Defining your needs - three simple steps

To ensure we deliver the best possible solution to your needs, we recommend you follow a simple three-step process to assessing your requirements. Download our ICT specification template (see right) to help you through this process.

Step 1: Clarify your IT objectives

You need to have a clear idea of what you need to purchase to achieve your ICT objectives. There are many factors to consider, which are all covered in the form.

Step 2: Check your institution's ICT development plan

The second thing you need to do before you purchase anything, products or services, is to check the ICT elements of your school's development plan.

This should give you information on the following:

The broad objectives for the development of ICT within your school
The budget available for ICT purchases
Timescales within which any new purchases of equipment should be in place
The latest date by which the procurement process needs to start to achieve the timescales

Step 3: Compile a functional specification

For the third step, you need to collate everything into a Functional Specification that sets out what the new equipment or service is expected to do, for example, provide all pupils with individual areas to save their work. Again, a framework for this information is included in the downloadable template.

The functional specification outlines the minimum specification that you would consider and puts the emphasis on us (or another supplier) to suggest the solution that best meets your needs. This removes the pressure from you to provide a highly technical specification and leaves it to us, or other experts. It also cuts down on the amount of research you have to do.

Your functional specification will be a working document and you should expect to keep changing and adding to it as you research and cost-out your planned purchase in more detail.

What's the next step?

Once the functional specification is complete, you will know roughly what your planned purchase will cost. Then, you need to check that this falls within the available budget (outlined in your schools ICT Development Plan) and that funding is available.

This means considering the following:

Is there enough funding for all your planned purchases?
Do you need to reconsider your planned purchases in the light of available funding?
Is there any additional funding available?
Would alternative funding options be suitable, for example, sponsorship, leasing or rental, loan, and so on?

If you decide that rather than amend your planned purchases, you wish to explore further funding methods to find the extra budget you need, Educational Ideas will be happy to take you through the different ways to finance purchases, other than by lump-sum purchase, highlighting the pros and cons of each and advising you on the next steps.

For help, advice or further information on any stage of the ICT specification process, please do not hesitate to get in touch..