"Every cloud has a silver lining"

Professor Steve Molyneux, CEO, Tablet Academy International

The coronavirus pandemic, like many other global catastrophes, whether created by man or nature, has brought with it an unimaginable amount of hardship and sorrow, and my heart goes out to all those who have lost a loved one, a friend, a colleague. Conversely, my thanks to all those working hard to ease the hardship of others and overcome this crisis; our politicians, manufacturers, shopkeepers, inventors, scientists, police, health workers, in fact every member of our communities working to keep the fabric of our society secure.

They say "every cloud has a silver lining" and the lessons and skills we will have learnt in coping with, and fighting, this pandemic will have a marked impact on the way many of us may work from now on. I hope it will also have opened politician's eyes to the realisation that funding the deployment of technology in schools requires more thought than just replacing the quill with the slate, the slate with the pen, the pen with the computer, the textbook with YouTube, and that some of the promises made by the latter day alchemists of the late 90s that technology would transform education were untrue.

Introducing VLEs/LMSs to every UK school in the early part of the 21st century did not usher in an era of online school education as none of these technologies supported the most important element of school education - teaching. It's why teachers have not been replaced by automatons in the way some workers from other sectors of society have been such as in Retail, Manufacturing, Finance, and others.

The closure of our schools as one measure to combat the coronavirus pandemic had led school leaders and teachers to adopt online services and their related technologies far more rapidly than expected. It also forced changes to work practices, and pushed training in using these technologies towards the top of the agenda; not just in schools but across all sectors of society, including government itself.

How wrong you would be in thinking that we, as a small company whose expertise lies in assisting educational institutions and other organisations with their ‘Journey To The Cloud’,  would be well prepared for the circumstances forced upon us, and every other business, by a coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

Never in a million years did I believe that we would have to react so swiftly to market forces to ensure that our reputation as a world leader in our field would remain untarnished, and that we could continue to provide our current and future clients with our consultancy and training services, therefore ensuring not only the survival of the company but also the economic wellbeing of all our staff.

Luckily, as consultants and trainers in the field, all our team are already fully acquainted with the use of the relevant technologies, and we manage our entire organisation using cloud-based services. It was therefore just a matter of restructuring our service offerings and implementing new work processes that allowed all our staff to work remotely.

Within one week we had taken 99% of all services we would have normally delivered face to face, and converted them to remotely delivered services. www.tablet-academy.com/remote-services/ 

But how have our clients reacted to this change? Never better. In fact, the silver lining I speak of is one that has made us a much leaner and streamlined operation, delivering our services more efficiently and with less inconvenience to our clients. It has also allowed us to lead by example in demonstrating first-hand the opportunities that working in the cloud can bring with the right implementation and training of staff. The outcome of all of this on our clients will be that on the passing of this crisis they will be far more efficient in their work practices, and be ready for next catastrophe aimed at disrupting the education of our young people; be that school closure due to heavy snowfall or whatever else man or nature throws at them.

Free online courses to help during school closures: www.bit.ly/ta-covid19

To show our support to teachers and parent around the world during these times of school closures, we have released four free courses. Three to help teachers understand and be capable of delivering Remote Learning, the fourth for Parents to understanding how the technology can help them to support their children. These can be enrolled on free of charge and no emails will be used for future marketing purposes.. www.bit.ly/ta-covid19

Finally, stay safe, protect yourselves and others, and in the words of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II "This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavour, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal. We will succeed -- and that success will belong to every one of us,"

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Professor Steve Molyneux is co-founder and CEO of Tablet Academy International, a world leading platform agonistic company founded to assist educational institutions and other organisations in transforming to the 21st century practice of working in the cloud.

More on Tablet Academy can be found at www.tablet-academy.com