PC Checking

[Gatt]

Ok after yet another spate of vandalism, our Head as finally agreed to start forcing teachers to check each and every PC in the room at the start and end of every lesson and any problems recorded.

Has anyone implemented this?
If so how do you get them to log the faults? (Excel Sheet, Web Form?)
Any chance I can get a look at it?

Now for the fun bit of telling them that as of Monday Morning this has to be done and that their budget will be used to recover the costs of any vandalism that occurs on their watch :twisted:

[Geoff]

Visual walk round by one of the IT Techs each morning.
If anything is reported during the day we have records of who has used the classroom. We can then report it and pass it up to SMT to deal with.

[tosca925]

Seating Plans

All our staff who teach in IT rooms have to have seating plans for each lesson. This way we can track who, where and when. Lets face it, if a kid is comes to work at a PC in period 5 and the keyboard is trashed or had the keys moved about then we can see who last sat there form the relevant teachers seating LAN. This was enforced by SM and has worked wonders for us.

[Midget]

They suggested something similar in my place, except they wanted me to do it, at the beginning/end of every lesson.

They were told where to go with that one.

I'm sure you'll have a mini revolt from the teachers for this, probably have unions getting involved because teachers are so hard pressed already

[mattx]

Not sure if anyone will find this script helpful. It logs details of a user when run and places a text file with date, time, IP address etc in a file in a directory called logs. [ C:\logs ] - this needs to be created for it to work !!
When run again it will add to the text file.
I use this on all our PC on our network and it runs at startup. [ When a user logs on ] Feel free to use and edit it to your own requirements.

; AutoIt Version: 3.10
; Language: English
; Platform: WinXP
; Author: Matt Marsh
; Script Function: Script that records logon details in log file
; Date: Oct 2005


Dim $sLogPath = "c:\logs\logger.txt"
Dim $sLogMsg = "User: "
_FileWriteLog($sLogPath, $sLogMsg)

Func _FileWriteLog($sLogPath, $sLogMsg)

Local $sDateNow
Local $sTimeNow
Local $sMsg
Local $hOpenFile
Local $hWriteFile
Local $user
Local $cname
Local $ip

$sDateNow = "On " & @YEAR & "-" & @MON & "-" & @MDAY
$sTimeNow = @HOUR & ":" & @MIN & ":" & @SEC
$user = @UserName
$cname = @ComputerName
$ip = @IPAddress1

$sMsg = $sDateNow & " " & $sTimeNow & " : " & $sLogMsg & $user & " Logged On To PC: " & $cname & "," & " IP Address: " & $ip

$hOpenFile = FileOpen($sLogPath, 1)

If $hOpenFile = -1 Then
SetError(1)
Return 0
EndIf

$hWriteFile = FileWriteLine($hOpenFile, $sMsg)

If $hWriteFile = -1 Then
SetError(2)
Return 0
EndIf

FileClose($hOpenFile)
Return 1
EndFunc

[ICTWizard]

its the same All our staff who teach in IT rooms have to have seating plans and we have just been Givin the go ahead to buy 16 AXIS 225FD ip cameras to
catch them in the .act........

[Busybub]

We also have this problem.

Although computers can log account details of who logs in and when, it doesn't help when the vandal doesn't actually use the computer, or has access via another account if one of his mates has given him his password.

Seating plans taken at the time are far more effective in this regard as they tie down students to a particular location at a particular time but this is not a practical long term solution.

There are still problems as you will still need some means of inspecting the machines on a regular basis, whether getting the next bunch of students to do it, or doing it yourself which is time consuming.
This is problematic if the vandalism involves swapping keys on a keyboard which can be easily missed for days, or involves the appearance of scratches on hardware that already had marks - which they could feasibly deny they had anything to do with.

CCTV is the only solution which produces foolproof results and cuts your monitoring to a minimum, though you would need sufficient coverage to enable you to see all the monitors, base units, and peripherals (preferably from more than one angle), and you would need to trawl through the evidence to find the culprit.

We get this every year with new intake and they usually get bored of it after a few weeks, and we have got to the point where frankly we just don't bother kicking up a stink anymore since doing so only encourages them to carry on (since they then know it is annoying you and they have just got away with it), and the cost of policing the room is far more than it costs to replace a mouse, keyboard or monitor:

In three years we have had to pay for 2 monitors not covered under warranty (£200), one keyboard (£7), and 8 mice (£5 each). Two thirds of our monitors shows signs of abuse (including full height vertical scratches), half of the keyboards have been scratched up or covered in pen marks, and every mouse has damaged buttons, but they all still work.

I would love to have kids that respect the hardware and the fact that it is used by everybody else, but for us, the cost of actually identifying the vandal with 100% certainty is too high to be practical (we can't afford another CCTV system).

[Gatt]

We have just ordered 60 new PCs (oh god help us all!)
SLT seem to think that the kids will "respect new hardware"

Frankly, i would give them all a 386DX2 running DOS 5! with a 10Mb Winchester drive...

after all - "640K ought to be enough for anyone"

[Lee_K_81]

SLT seem to think that the kids will "respect new hardware"

Hmmm, yes, funny that isnt it. We had same thoughts.......

[align=center]****WARNING******
Anybody from SLT/SMT please do not read following line, as it may offend!

Just goes to show how detached from the classroom (some) members of management are![/align]

[GrumbleDook]

I am not offended by that comment at all ...

I would throw a few of the usual arguements at it though.

New computers can often provide a surprising amount of engagement within classroom situations, sometimes caused by the 'newness' factor or the simple feeling of the school thinking that the student is important and deserves the best ...

It sounds reasonable and is does have a certain amount of common sense to it ...

But ... and it is a huge, whopping but ... the newness factor wears off ... and the little oiks that are going fsck up your old computers will now be doing it on new computers instead!

We get round this by shifting computers around. If we take the old computers from room y and stick them into room x ... then they are new to room x ... and the kids like it.

Strange ... but true.

[kingswood]

Having bought lots of new computers in the last year- and with lots more coming this month- I can second Tony's comments. Newness runs out and gives way to neanderthal tendencies :-)

[Lee_K_81]

Dont get me wrong, the newness kept them safe for a while, but unfortunately, we dont have the option of moving the pc's every few months / year. Nice suggestion though, and if we had the network/power points in each room i'd be very tempted!

I've considered getting a glass cabinet with thick rubber-gloves stuck in it, so the kids cant get their grubby little hands over them but they school wont shell out for it.

GrumbleDook, i knew you would be the first to bite

[CyberNerd]

Our new computers are thin clients (miniITX 1GHz). They run exactly the same speed as the old ones (P2 333) yet many teachers and students report them being 'faster' even after booting (the new ones do boot a few secs faster).
There is definitely a psychological factor with newness but I'm mixed minded about whether it discourages vandalism. The least vandalized ITSuites here are always the ones that are better supervised.

Our vandalism prevention is by way of encouraging teachers to report faults early on - so we can easily work out who was teaching when the vandalism happens. When the teachers get a bollocking from SMT they start keeping the room in check.

[GrumbleDook]

Dont get me wrong, the newness kept them safe for a while, but unfortunately, we dont have the option of moving the pc's every few months / year. Nice suggestion though, and if we had the network/power points in each room i'd be very tempted!

I've considered getting a glass cabinet with thick rubber-gloves stuck in it, so the kids cant get their grubby little hands over them but they school wont shell out for it.

GrumbleDook, i knew you would be the first to bite

I know ... and I hate to disappoint ;-)

I have to admit that we are very lucky at my place ... we do have lots of rooms and we tend to replace 80 units a year (laptops and desktops for students and staff ... including admin staff). This still works out at a 5-6 year rotation (only achievable now that we are trying out Terminal Services) ... We only move machines into roomw that already had computers but if the room had stuff that was 4 years old and we stick something 2 years old in there then it looks almost new ... and then the room we took those machines from gets new machines ... and this happens on a carefully planned cycle ("ok team ... who hasn't seriously annoyed us this year? They get the decent machines!")

[maniac]

We find if the ICT suites are kept clean and tidy, and all the machines work, that the machines tend to be vandalised less. Strange but true! Leading up to the summer last year we had a lot of vandalism, broken TFT screens, wrecked PC towers, keyboards with so many keys missing it's unbelieveable etc. etc.

Over the summer, all the ICT rooms were re-arranged, and set up in a very tidy fashion, all the cables were tied neatly etc. etc. Since then, we've only had minor vandalism like mice being stolen, or the ocassional bit of graffiti on the desks etc. No broken screens, no damaged keyboards, it's amazing!

Also agree that new PCs do tend to be treated better, for a while anyway. Two rooms of brand new Dell machines, and so far no major vandalism. We had a monitor knocked off a desk which tore the signal cable out the plug, but didn't break the screen, and one PC where the little oik deicded to change the voltage switch, this was fixed under warrenty by dell! (We've re-arranged the room now so the machine's aren't as accessible.)

The arrangement of the room also has a big bearing on the vandalism level. One of our rooms was arranged in rows and we got a lot of trouble in this room. We re-arranged it so the machines are all round the outside of the room, and the problems in the room stopped almost immediatly!

Mike