Stolen/Vandalised IT equipments

[raimon]

Hey chaps,

 

What do you do when you find an IT equipment has been stolen by someone (Kids/Staff), vandalised by kids, but you don't know who, equipment such as Mice & Keyboard

 

We do nothing apart from just place them with a brand new one, we are having to replace mice constantly and nothing is done about it thats why they have been going at that rate. We are not allowed to install CCTV in classrooms.

 

Cheers.

[LincolnE]

Unfortunately we seem to lose a huge amount of Keyboards and Mice here. The issue is that if no-one sees who actually does it, there is no CCTV so we'd never find out. The issue is teachers don't seem to really care the ins and outs why there isn't one there, all they care about is getting it replaced. We've found getting all the IT rooms locked out of lesson time helps slightly with this, but we've found that when there's a will, there's a way.

[DevilsAdvocate]

We generally recharge the department that the equipment is located in. It's their responsibility in the end to ensure it's looked after. There are a few exceptions to this, rooms with no 'owner' for example which we (IT Support) foot the bill for, but we make sure these are looked after. Since we cable tied the mice and keyboards we've noticed a drop in the amount 'moving'. The kids also seemed to have some sort of 'thing' with moving the mice and keyboards to the front USB ports, which has since stopped.

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

We're constantly supplying our schools with keyboards/mice and I remember my school having the same issues.

 

At one stage someone was going around replacing the balls with malteasers...

[3s-gtech]

Cable ties!

 

Doesn't stop them moving the keys about, but we can then track our logon logs to see who used it last. Generally - voila.

[themightymrp]

We have a huge problem with damage to keyboards and mice. We have CCTV in some of the rooms but this doesn't help. Most of the teachers take no note of what is happening in the lessons and so damage isn't reported until maybe a week (or more!) later. At which point, who is going to sit through a weeks worth of CCTV to find out who broke a mouse? Answer = no-one

 

We just end up replacing stuff. But we buy the cheapest junk we can lay our hand on

[SiliconAlley_Sam]

Maybe we can get @witch 's daughter to design something that showers students in red ink if they try to mess with/remove a mouse or keyboard.

[synaesthesia]

CCTV. Not necessarily expensive, first few times you pull people up on it and show them footage (even better when it's "HD" quality) word gets around quick.

[hallb15]

Why do they insist on unplugging stuff and moving it to another computer?

With ours it seems to be headphones that get moved because "they don't work" when actually they just have the volume turned down.

I use hot glue to stick the plugs to the PC, but they still move them - quite how the teachers don't notice a child ragging at the plugs I don't know.

 

Since we had CCTV in the ICT Suite this has reduced, but it still happens occasionally.

[FN-GM]

We bill the student or staff member who caused the damage. If we can't pin it to an individual we bill the department responsible. They soon learn! We hardly have any damage here.

[Grey-gear]

You need to get the staff monitor the room better, the only way I think to do that is have a technician walk around the computer rooms check them every lesson or two and then when damaged is found then see who was in the room last and then charge the department.

[mikeprice]

Had this problem in my last school - stopped when we cable tied all the mice and keyboards

Still get broken mice when the little darlings lever the buttons off - and keyboards where the keys have been chucked around the room but at least they don't get robbed

[Sam_Brown]

It's very frustrating. Even more so when the teachers don't seem to give a damn. But then when you have teachers that have chargers go missing and other teachers who hand laptops back at the end of their employment with 3 or 4 chargers in their laptop bags then what hope do you have?

[jonnykewell1]

cable ties work well for us here in terms of theft, I don't think i've had a case of a keyboard or mouse go missing since I started here last year. Most of the time it's just re arranging the keys or physically damaging the mouse. We do have a problem with them kicking the face plates in on the computers and stuffing them with rubbish. We encourage people to lock the rooms but 9/10 this doesn't happen.

[Grey-gear]

We have starting using this : - BitFenix.com » Products » Accessories » S2

 

Keeps the wires neat and secured the to computers with a pad lock (pad lock not include).

[Nibiru]

+1 for cable tie the leads to the network cable.

 

We went through several phases of keyboards & mice being either moved to the front ports (WHY?!) or swapped to the adjacent machine (presumably for the chaos that causes)

 

All stopped once I deployed my magic cable ties.

[raimon]

This is true most teachers don't give a damn, they just want the equipment replaced.

 

That is a good idea, charging the department for it, but unfortunately we don't do this here.

 

Cable ties, we have cable tied them, but while this may reduce theft it does not stop vandals, and when you need to replace a broken mice, you have to cut through all the cable ties that you put on originally.

[raimon]

Charging the department is the best idea. Doesn't cost the IT support anything, we just replace it and it comes out their budget. They will soon look after their equipments

[CamelMan]

Cant stop general damage - we tried cable ties but still had mice / KBD moving. In the end we replaced all our suite machines with ones with a lockable panel at the back with all the cables inside, popped security screws in for added protection. This is what we use but other venders have similar ones:

The Novatech Pro NAI13

 

Not had a mouse / keyboard stolen and no more instances of "There is no mouse /kbd on all these machines!" - "yes they are all plugged into this one!"

[Bananas]

Motion activated CCTV it's the only way to go, since we put that in (at ICT teachers request) the incidents of stupid damage (keys swapped and usb/ps2 ports swapped round) has dropped to nil, it's even stopped them picking the Dell badges off the fronts and if you do have something happen you can identify the guilty party and bill the parents, that's what we do here bill goes home for replacement parts and our time at £30 an hour