No clear winners as tech titans battle for Fermanagh schools’ loyalty

Let’s draw breath. It wasn’t that long ago that local clothing retailers had the kudos of being the only supplier’s name known to schools, simply because of them stocking nearby schools’ uniforms and with it, the hope that it not only gave them the sales of the multiple blazers, trousers and skirts, but also, the all-important footfall and reputation.

Mind you, I often thought it was a hard-earned bit of business, because they became the first port of call for every charity event their designated school ever ran.

Alongside them were the big tenderers for everything from mobile classrooms to rolls of sellotape.

They too were part of the brand awareness, but their interaction with the general public was limited to a liveried van leaving their cargo off during the last week of August.

Then there were those teachers who got a ‘point’ for compiling lists of suppliers from what they called ‘recognised’ school providers.

For the vast majority of teachers, the rationale behind these activities was nothing short of the dark arts.

For the record, a ‘point’ is now called a teaching allowance, currently worth slightly north of £2,000 a year, or about £10 a day.

There’s a PhD thesis in the science of who gets points in schools, but that’s for another time; it’s a much fought over battlefield in a system that isn’t always level.

Then, of course, Covid-19 arrived and interrupted the gently flowing storm of education.

Before we knew it, a then fairly small company called ‘Zoom’, became the ‘go-to’ meeting place, so much so that it has become a verb, noun and even an adjective.

Zooming merrily trundled along, but before long, the now virtual classroom became a major standoff between Microsoft and Google.

Of course, there were other players, but for most pupils and students, the Battle of Blended Learning began in earnest some time in 2020, and it’s still raging today.

So what of their strengths and weaknesses? For Microsoft, there’s a whole suite of household brand names at the disposal of the teacher and learner, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Equally, for Google, Google Classroom has equivalencies throughout equally robust, but lesser-known Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, for example.

In a way, Microsoft has a nose in front here, and central to that is the famous ‘Teams’, a package that allows people to access documents, projects and schedule meetings.

To be frank, despite its slightly fiddly and steep learning curve, it’s a pretty impressive collaborative tool.

Google, on the other hand, is arguably a bit easier to use, so teachers who aren't that IT-savvy can incorporate it more easily into their teaching and learning.

One such example is where you can comment on students’ work as they are doing it, adding ‘in-progress’ notes as you go along.

Why teachers would feel the need to do so is another argument; they just have about enough time to mark something once, and selling that as a feature isn’t really going to cut it with too many teachers.

Against that, being aware of the marketplace as intimately as Google, they include in their packages a host of management tools.

For example, the “Classwork page lets you quickly jaunt between assignments so that you can spend more time interacting with students than evaluating their work”.

That’s their marketing spin, of course; let’s remember the whole reason they’re using blended learning in the first place is because you, as a teacher, are not sitting in front of your charges.

Finally, Classroom is compatible with other tools such as Workbench, which is aimed at creating and sharing lesson plans and work in technical subjects and maths in addition to the whole Google suite of software.

So what do teachers think of the current situation? Firstly, there are the ubiquitous caveats that their opinions tend to be very much based on what they are used to, something to which they freely admit.

The second proviso is that with education being increasingly squeezed, teachers simply don’t have the time or resources to learn new systems.

As a result, what blended learning system they have learnt largely depends by accident, though in my experience, many schools locally seem to be favouring Microsoft, and MS Teams, fiddly and all as it is.

Their reason? Principals in many schools favour it, and somewhere along the line, they are of the common opinion it is more secure and flexible.

In the words of one post-primary Geography teacher: “Definitely Microsoft is better than Google for teachers, both in respect of video and voice recording, and being able to draw in their notebooks – it’s actually quite mind-blowing all the things you can do with your class”.

Another, however, wasn’t that keen on the chat feature in Teams, with that post-primary Maths teacher saying that sometimes it can be a problem because the students “abuse it, talking and chatting with each other all the time, playing with the emojis and wasting time”.

A third teacher, this time a post-primary Technology teacher, said what is basically my view, namely: “If you are in a school which is running MS Teams, then it can’t be beaten. However, if your school has gone down the Google route, Microsoft isn’t strong enough to go through all the hassle and retraining of changing.”

Of course, there are other platforms that include some very devoted disciples. ‘Talent’ is noted for its excellent training; ‘Adobe Learning Manager’ is pricey, but very good for integration and offline learning; while ‘360 Learning’, ‘Stream LXP’ and ‘iSpring’ don’t seem to have many users in Northern Ireland, but again, they have a very dedicated band of faithful followers.

Where do we go from here – will we see Microsoft sponsoring your Under-14s hockey, or the senior basketball team?

Will Google put their name behind the school Nativity in return for 100 extra hits?

I doubt it, though they probably have read this article by now, as I wrote it on Google Docs – so you never know!