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Chapter 22: Staff ICT Induction
Dinner was pleasant and the professors had been moved round so that there were different dinner partners. The only ones who did not move were the Headmaster and his Deputy manning the central table positions and ruling the house tables with their eagle eyes. All it took was a stern glance from either of the two professors and some mischief was settled down quickly. Teddy was there in a special high chair next to Remus enjoying some mush as it was completely over his face, bib and the high chair table. There must have been a couple of shielding charms in place as the floor and the near by diners did not appear to be wearing what looked like a pumpkin mush of some kind.
Hermione was seated with the new ICT professor and she had a lovely conversation with him. Some how she got roped into being one of his session assistants for the evening staff development session in the new technology suites. This man was not fazed by the girl's fame as he had experienced it himself. The American professor was easy to talk to and apparently he was a grandfather. Unlike Dumbledore, Ken Thompson wore a short beard and he was softly spoken. Evidently his wife, Bonnie, was teaching at Caltech this year so whenever he could get a weekend pass he was going to be off. The pair of them where going to be commuting to see each other as much as possible.
They discussed the new developments of the library system and Hermione indicated her interest to have an Internet interface and an external access system so people like parents could use the technology to link to the magical world. She also suggested that the school should investigate the digitization of tomes in the library to set up an electronic digital access library. Her interest in this area was that according to her reading on learning difficulties that if the students could utilize adaptive technology such as the text reading programs they could engage in their text and improve their written work. Many students with dyslexia apparently had difficulty with fine motor control and this meant they could have potentially poor handwriting.
Professor Thompson identified that he could assist with the sourcing of adaptive technology for the school, as there was an ICT budget that would allow this type of purchase. The Professor also recommended that she sit in on the ICT committee meetings as she could bring some ideas to the table like the digitization of library texts that could potentially generate a considerable income for the school if corporate users like the UK and US Ministries of Magic decided to subscribe.
After dinner Hermione managed to escape for a while to her private rooms and Tinky was able to push her into a warm relaxing bath. The elfess had checked on her all day and she found it a little disconcerting. She was carrying her own daily medication box and thought now was the appropriate time to show the elfess how to fill the meds for the week as it was a Saturday/Sunday chore for her. In the lounge she set the medications out and talked Tinky through the filling of the Dorset medication system for the week. On her white board near the entrance to her apartment Tinky added this task to Hermione's existing rough schedule.
Now that she was in comfortable off duty clothes Hermione got her laptop out and put it into her chair back pack and wheeled herself out to the staff room across the corridor. Everyone who was attending the staff development session was going to meet there before heading up the ICT suites.
Professor Thompson had also recruited some of the 8th years to be his lab assistants and they were waiting for him at the official door of the staff room. Professor Thompson welcomed the assistants into the computing lab and Hermione was able to catch up with Pansy, Draco and Neville about their first day of the inductions. The three of them were excited and apparently Draco and Pansy had already ordered their own laptops from the school procurement system. Neville had sent an owl to his grandmother to see if she would give approval but seeing that she was on the school board it was highly likely that she would say yes.
It was an interesting evening for the younger members of the classroom as they found that they had to do some one to one tutoring for the older professors who were not computer literate. The role reversal of the teacher and student was a little bewildering but they soon got into the swing of it. Neville actually seemed to gain more confidence in his own abilities. By the end of the session everyone knew how to turn the machines on and off, play solitaire and do a simple Google search.
The professors were also introduced to the library catalogue system and in the post coffee or hot chocolate debriefing session in the staff room Professor Thompson had floated Hermione's idea for the digitization of texts. Poppy Pomfrey was particularly interested in this option especially if they could do some advanced searches on the literature. She also pointed out that it would be good to get the peer-reviewed journals online so that people could access and search the latest research.
The Headmaster joined in the conversation with Poppy about getting journals online pointing out that existing Muggle journals were available online and would it be beneficial to have access to Muggle peer reviewed journals. Professor Thompson and Hermione both agreed that it would be beneficial especially if they had a cross system search option like the Google advance scholar searching for it. But this is where they ran into difficulties about the Act of Secrecy and how the wizarding community could continue to integrate without breaking the law.
There were some serious issues to be considered but Professor Thompson explained an option using the new white board in the staff room. There was a discussion about the Internet, Extranet, Intranets and the need for secrecy. His suggestion was that there would be a school Intranet and a magical intranet that to access the user would have to pay a small annual subscription fee. The American Computing Professor was thinking of more money generation for the school if they wanted to develop the higher education facilities they would need a regular income to support this part of the school.
The Magical intranet would be linked into the World Wide Web but unless you had the access account a bit like AOL you would not be able to see the magical websites. For Muggle websites Thompson suggested that when people joined them they get charmed accounts. Magical people would be able to use Muggle websites such as Facebook and twitter. However the magical web user would have to get the Muggle web site account charmed so that only magical users could see information about magical subjects and the rest of the world would only see mundane matters. This service could be a revenue generating service and the school enterprise organization could develop a specialist ICT and charm support service. It was a potential research and development project for Filius and if he had some charms apprentices they could theoretically go onto work for the specialist charm support service.
Neville brought another idea to the hot chocolate discussion by suggesting that a publisher like the Lovegoods could be used as a joint enterprise partner for the electronic digitalization of peer-review journals as they already did the paper printing. The Lovegood publishing business had experience of running scientific journals and Hogwarts might even start some journals to reflect the current cross-fertilization of ideas.
Draco then advised that Malfoy industries would be interested going into the joint venture development project as an investment company for the research and development. He acknowledged that they would likely have to include the Weasley Twins since they were doing the hardware so it would be beneficial to share the development costs with them.
The academic salon feeling that they had going in the staff room thrilled Hermione. She was excited that she was part of this research and development and she could see the long term development of the magical world with the innovations that they were suggesting in the discussions.
It was with a sorry reluctance when Remus and Marcus Turner escorted the 8th years back to their respective Houses. Hermione made one last comment to Professor Thompson that the magical intranet aka AOL system could be a way to engage Muggle parents into the magical world. The one thing her own parents had always wished was that they could see what she was doing at school and what her school environment was like.
This hit a cord with Minerva and sitting with Severus having a wee dram as the staff room cleared she suggested that maybe they should have parent weekends where they came up and visited the school. It was an awfully long time to be away from your child and not really know what they were up to.
Another thought Minerva had was this was a potential opportunity for the squibs to improve their profile within the wizarding community as they could do the technical hardware roles that did not require magic but only an understanding or awareness of magic.