Building an internet of school things ecosystem: a national collaborative experience

Over the course of the next 10 years, the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to have a transformational effect on the everyday technologies which surround us. Access to the data produced by these devices opens an interesting space to practice discovery based learning. This paper outlines a participatory design approach taken to develop an IoTbased ecosystem which was deployed in 8 schools across England. In particular, we describe how we designed and developed the system and reflect on some of the early experiences of students and teachers. We found that schools were willing to adopt the IoT technology within certain bounds and we outline best practices uncovered when introducing technologies to schools.