An interview with Jon Stanley.

Jon Stanley has been working at Lynwood SHS since 2016 and has made some impressive strides forward in the use of technology at their school. For those of you who were lucky enough to be in the leadership stream of 2018’s IT Update you wil l have heard Jon share his experience.

Jon and Kelvin have turned Lynwood around from a technological standpoint. They have replaced an aging and out of warranty network with all brand new equipment. The teachers are using MS Surface Pros and the classrooms all have TV panels or projectors. Everything is within warranty and the oldest device is three years old. A key component of this success was to think outside the box and change the type of assets used within the school.

I caught up with Jon at Lynwood on a cold Thursday morning. The first thing to note about Jon is that he is tall. The kind of tall that makes me think he could give up this IT thing and go and play some sort of professional basketball. The other thing is that the man works in some sort of Nerd Nirvana straight out of the IT crowd. There was a VR station, a 75” TV, a PlayStation, lots of games, White Dwarf Magazines and one of the tallest sit -to-stand desks I have ever seen. Also he seems to have a cat at work.

But for all of that Jon is still just like the rest of us, our time together was constantly interrupted by staff members who couldn’t access their email or log onto the Wi-Fi, which of course meant unlocking their account.

What is something cool you do at Lynwood?: We run a daily Gamer anime club every lunchtime. Students play together on Wii U and PlayStation 4 pro. We have 4 consoles and a anime series for students to watch. We get about 40 kids every lunch time. 

What makes Lynwood Special?: The unique blend of cultural backgrounds among staff and students. 

What makes Lynwood unique in regards to ICT?: We have very new equipment, everything is within in warranty period and we use a lot of wireless technology. 

How would you rate your schools use of ICT: 6 out of 10 (plenty of room for improvement). In our recent upgrade, we removed all teachers devices in the classroom and offices, including staff iPad’s. These were replaced with Surface pro’s and surface docks in offices and classrooms. Additionally, the aging fleet of interactive whiteboards were replaced with cheaper 70” tv’s. Interestingly this new technology moved the interactivity from the board to the teachers device and as a result teachers are more inclined to be interactive with digital content. As a whole, particularly with younger teaching staff, technology use has increased across the board. 

What is your next big project?:  10gig backbone and SMI. 

Favorite Technology at the school?:  At the moment it would have to be the VR technology that we are trying to implement. We are very wary that it is not used as a gimmick and there is going to be educational benefits to its use. 

BYOD, do you run it and if so what do you do?:  Yes, this has been a challenge for us. We are currently focusing on windows only devises with the intention to move to the Lenovo yoga 11e for the 2020 program