Formed in 1999 Icon Information Systems has worked with a wide range of education clients on a variety of projects.
City Learning Centres were built to provide leading edge IT facilities available to schools in deprived areas of the UK and funded jointly by Local Authorities and Government. Icon was involved at the bidding stage for seven of the London based CLCs assisting in the development of their “visions” and writing the successful bid documents. We were subsequently retained to advise on all IT aspects of the buildings’ design, plan and oversee the network installation, select and install the computer hardware and consult on all other IT related issues up until the sites were handed over to their Local Authorities. In some cases we continued to provide technical and educational support after the CLCs were opened.
One of the CLCs was sponsored by Wandsworth Borough Council who subsequently retained Icon to work on a second major IT project in the Tooting and Roehampton areas with funding from the SRB (Single Regeneration Budget) & Connexions. Icon designed the overall technical architecture, project managed the 18 site installation and were involved in all IT aspects of the two “One Stop Shops” which formed the core of the project.
The East of England Regional Broadband Consortium (E2BN) has retained Icon to work on a wide range of projects. Some have been primarily focused on technical services while others have been more educational consultancy and content creation.
Icon is also providing services to Protex Limited in the development of its web-filtering system. Originally developed by E2BN for use by schools and libraries in its member Local Authorities Protex is now an independent, limited company and the Protex web filtering software is globally available for deployment to schools, Local Authorities and commercial educational suppliers.
Icon Information Systems’ clients benefit from John Hackett’s experience of Education IT from both teaching and technical viewpoints. While an appreciation of the educational potential of IT is possible without technical expertise it is hard for non-technical staff alone to fully develop a whole school IT “Vision” and appreciate what is required from the school’s network in order to support it.
Icon’s combination of technical expertise, experience of teaching and working with both local and regional education bodies can bridge this gap. We can assist in all phases of the IT planning process: development of the Vision, selection of local and remote IT tools to deliver it and the design of the network which underpins it all. We can also, if required, assist in the tender and implementation stages as we did with the City Learning Centres.
Take a look the range of services we have provided to our clients then contact us to see how we can assist.