Having just refused to place the logos of two major retail chains onto the desktop wallpapers of the network (as apparently they are our sponsors), I was wondering how the EduGeek masses felt about corporate sponsorship such as this in schools.
Has anyone allowed it? Do you care? In the words of the teaching bretheren, discuss.
you remove the Microsoft logo?
we pay extra for that...
..but isn't this how BSF is funded?
Yes, but, take away the MS product and we take away the ability to learn (until Linux stomps triumphantly across the network).
Using Windows is not the same as forcing every user to face an ever-present corporate sponsor when they log in.
You could argue that getting them to learn on MS Office is the same as force feeding them a brand, but they need to use an office suite and for us to equip them for the future, we should provide them with the industry standard.
However, advertising on the desktop is one of the few things that we as humble support staff can make an moral choice in.
BSF being funded corporately is going to happen wether we like it or not, although I can choose not to be a part of it.
What really amused me recently was a claim by a relative that schools need corporate funding to afford to keep running, which is strange when I look at how much money my school haemorrhages.
We could eaily cut back, reducing sponsorship and waste without subjecting students to this kind of brand indoctrination.
School sponsership. Yes - bloody XX XXXXX stores, not even business. Hate it, every order with reputable specialist suppliers gets passed to sodding XX XXXXX stores, who then cant deal with it and pass it to business, who then pass to to their seperate server specialist company....
As you can imagine, it makes warranty issues really simple to resolve.........
It's even more annoying when they start substituting items be beat quotes, i.e. a toshiba branded mouse (not had one break in 3 years) and bag for a laptop becomes a £1.50 mouse that breaks as you take it out of the plastic bag and £2 bag, which has the straps break as teachers are walking up stairs, causing laptop to bounce it's way down to the bottom. Quality goods there. I really wish this was in the FFS forum so it wont get google indexed, which is why i've x'd out the name, but i'm sure you can figure it out. Meh.
Not been asked to set background to their logo yet though. I really hope it doesnt happen. It's not exactly difficult, but I would rather clean every keyboard in school with my tongue than display their logo. I'm not against the principle and if i had a supplier who was worth it then maybe.....
We have a section on the website and theres advertisments around our Astro-Turf (football pitch stylie) but nothing internal.
That particular supplier's business division, if I guessed it correctly, also has about 10 different companies/trading names under the one group. If you foolishly send a faxed order to the "wrong" one it takes ages flying round their internal systems and eventually you get an email from your account manager at what seems like an entirely different company telling you you sent your order to the wrong place! Well silly me! Why the hell they can't amalgamate all the names is beyond me - Adobe have managed it and they even have recognisable brand images to deal with.Originally Posted by Lee_K_81
Is it something that was agreed as part of a contract when the retail chain agreed to sponsor you?
If it brings additional funds into the school which provides added ICT I don't see an issue with it personally.
Although we are a catholic school and we wouldn't use this type of advertising here.
As Sylv3r states, if that is a condition of being gifted pots of cash, fair enough as long as it is simply a discrete logo (maybe the same sort of size as an icon?).
Sorry, but who are you to decide school policy? Whatever you think of sponsorship (and I loath the idea, and would reserve a special circle of hell for the clown that thought it up) you are paid to do the will of the school management. By all means say you don't like it, but unless there is a technical reason not to, do it, and move on.
Pointless - today's children have grown up in a world where sophisticated advertising has been in their lives pretty much from conception onwards, and will consider something as basic as a logo-on-a-screen laughably beneath them.
--
David Hicks
I remember when I was in High School with big Coca-Cola Banners in the dining hall and the Coca-Cola/Fanta/Sprite branded excercise books that we had
No accident. I believe you are talking about the right company. It was pretty obvious. There was no accident, one of our SLT bought them in. We had an account manager with their specific business dept. but they decided that all orders go through their "high street" chain, who as i say have to pass on to the other brands when they cant deal with it, but still claim the credit for the order.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't think this is my decision to make, I'm not that conceted.
However, this isn't yet part of a contract with these suppliers just an idea of one of the deputy heads (business teacher), as I was the one who first enabled different wallpapers for different groups, I decided to ignore the request.
If I was forced to do it, I would refuse and leave the job. I didn't get into this profession to promote brands to children who are here to learn.
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