The technical help desk infrastructure being established at the moment could be used to provide help as educators grapple with initial exposure to ICT skills. The capacity of this desk is not known, but could be reviewed at regular intervals. Other means of support include web portals and mailing lists. Both could be responded to by help personal in their slack time, but could also be responded to in a collaborative way by whoever has the answer and the time.

The education managers of each major project will have to co-ordinate the development paths of the educators involved. This development will take place in the context of educational use of ICT. The nature of the training and the educational objectives are likely to overlap. The task of the education manager will involve narrow involvement with the educator development programme.

A co-ordinator of the trainer / mentor programme would have to be appointed. This person would have to

• select prospective trainer / mentors
• provide training and support for the trainer / mentors in preparation for the programme
• provide ongoing support for the trainer / mentors during the programme
• conduct continuous assessment of the programme
• ensure that the content of the online learning process is scheduled and managed efficiently
• coordinate the establishment of collaborative teams of educators
• monitor and analyse activity of the programme
• conduct evaluation of the programme and provide progress reports
• moderate the assessments of educators at the culmination of each course
• liaise with accrediting institutions
• co-ordinate the issuing of credits / certificates
• register, monitor and moderate training activities conducted by registered trainers / mentors not within the scope the projects, but providing ongoing courses for a wider spectrum of educators.

An educational team consisting of

1. Educational Initiatives Director
2. education managers
3. trainer / mentor co-ordinator
4. educator development consultant

will be required to continually monitor the programme in terms of the success of its materials and modus operandi, and make the necessary adjustments.

The training materials will be available on CD and on a web site, with revisions and latest updates being posted to a web site in the period between CD upgrades. Support and interaction will be conducted largely by e-mail, with telephonic and postal services being used as required. These are conventional technical requirements already catered for within the technical specifications of the projects.

A web portal will be required to do the following:

• provide password protected login to specific course areas
• support logged synchronous chat
• allow such chat to take place in selective web environments, thus enabling different teams to conduct separate chats simultaneously
• support asynchronous communication such as a forum / bulletin board for threaded discussion
• allow multiple threads of forum discussion
• provide access to content updates
• provide a range of opportunities for educators to submit resources, links to resources, examples of work done by themselves and their learners
• enable true collaborative sharing of ideas and documents to the extent that one person could publish this, and other educators are able to build onto it and submit related ideas and documents online
• give project managers access to database information and the ability to monitor and analyse online activity

The most basic assumption that is being made pertaining to the success of the SchoolNet educator development programme is the existence of reliable technical infrastructure at the school involved. It is particularly important to ensure that the schools at all times have:

• Internet connections that are fully paid-for and functioning.
• Functioning networks that do not operate only when a highly qualified network engineer finds the time to repair it. Simple and reliable networks are preferred.
• Computers that are in good working order. It is not feasible to have high expectations of a project that is dogged by the unreliability of refurbished machines.