IT Room Damage.

[witch]

CCTV is allowed - you set them up with no sound and in such a position that the teacher standing at the front cannot be seen. Our local high school has them in all IT suites, and labs etc and the NUT havent kicked off about it

[synaesthesia]

Indeed - it can be used to help them directly too. Perhaps it's because CCTV very often cuts out the need for union intervention with some matters because there's hard evidence readily available? (Touché I know!)

[6Foot2]

We could put up a poster [Teachers like posters]

 

http://i.snag.gy/H9Wmm.jpg

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

Can you imagine if you stuck CCTV in and discovered it was the cleaner, who has a lifelong grudge against the school...

[nullensc]

All this makes me happy that I work in a girls school - over the course of this academic year the worst we had was 3 damaged mice when YR11 left. Oh, and some strange yellow substance accidentally spilled on a keyboard once

[Alkaline]

I find if the room looks nice and new, they tend not to damage anything. Of course that only lasts for a year or so, after that its every week. If a teacher keeps an eye on them it wont happen. If they open the door and walk away thats when the trouble starts. We have CCTV. Edited June 24, 2013 by Alkaline

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

Thank you everyone for contributing to BWestlake's post. It's funny how much time and money is spent on kid-proofing PC hardware, designing tamper proof power buttons, cable shrouds, scratch proof face plates, solid blanking plates, hard glass monitors etc, but no-one ever thinks about the link from the peripherals to the hardware. Suggestions would be welcome. We've thrown ideas like telephone bungee cord, reinforced cabling like you get on bike locks, and such like. There are your durable keyboards and mice with tamper proof keys, spill resistance, and even kevlar reinforced cable locks etc, but chopping through the cables could also be solved. I reckon with some good ideas and a bit of support from you guys I could get a research project kicked off here at VeryPC to look into potential solutions, cost them up and see if they'd be viable for the education market and get some prototypes out into the EduGeek community to play with. Alternatively WiFi / BT would eliminate the point of failure - but I can already see why we don't sell many of them to education.... If you think how many times you replace a Keyboard and Mouse and the cost associated with that (including lost learning time and wasted tech time) the total cost of ownership of a simple wired USB keyboard and mouse could equate to a serious amount of money..

[Pyroman]

Thank you everyone for contributing to BWestlake's post. It's funny how much time and money is spent on kid-proofing PC hardware, designing tamper proof power buttons, cable shrouds, scratch proof face plates, solid blanking plates, hard glass monitors etc, but no-one ever thinks about the link from the peripherals to the hardware. Suggestions would be welcome. We've thrown ideas like telephone bungee cord, reinforced cabling like you get on bike locks, and such like. There are your durable keyboards and mice with tamper proof keys, spill resistance, and even kevlar reinforced cable locks etc, but chopping through the cables could also be solved. I reckon with some good ideas and a bit of support from you guys I could get a research project kicked off here at VeryPC to look into potential solutions, cost them up and see if they'd be viable for the education market and get some prototypes out into the EduGeek community to play with. Alternatively WiFi / BT would eliminate the point of failure - but I can already see why we don't sell many of them to education.... If you think how many times you replace a Keyboard and Mouse and the cost associated with that (including lost learning time and wasted tech time) the total cost of ownership of a simple wired USB keyboard and mouse could equate to a serious amount of money..

 

Also a whole suite of wireless keyboards would either go missing immediately or would interfere with eachother so much that they're not worth the money

[synaesthesia]

Keyboard & trackballs physically fixed to desks.

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

Agreed WiFi is a no go; having spoken with over 30 customers now the solution is probably not a hardware fix or ruggedised cable, but more of a behavioral fix. I think BWestlake will appreciate all the advice given on how to manage rooms, pupils, teachers and the like to prevent deliberate damage.

[Tall_Paul]

We're getting a lot of damage here too. It's like the arrival of summer has transformed the kids into wrecking machines.

 

We have a lot of wireless netbooks and have had keyboards with the grommets ripped off, broken screen, swearwords etched into casings, etc.

 

Our vice principal has spoken to the Year 7's and 8's about it (it bodes well for the future that the youngest kids are doing it) and now any damage at all is resulting in us removing the trolley from the room for the rest of term.

 

I wish we charged departments for damage. It would soon stop then.

[peterpan]

Iv had the same problem in the past i i resolved this by installing IP cameras and a large tv screen in the office. left the tv on so the kids could see that they were being watched and it killed the damage over night.

[RTFM]

Our PC damage has virtually reduced to zero now we are nearly 100% @VeryPC (the only damage they can do is to USB's which on the whole they havent resorted to). Instead they have switched their attention to mice and keyboards.

 

We consider these sorts of things to be classroom management issues and push the emphasis back onto the teaching staff. We will departments where we can for any damage

[Redwinegirl]

hi- can anyone recommend tamperproof keyboards that don't cost the earth? Spending too much on replacing the things!

[synaesthesia]

No such thing - ultimately the toughest stuff out there will have keys prized off and snapped. Classroom control, careful monitoring.

[mavhc]

For laptops or desktops?