Keyboards - Keys pulled off

[timbo343]

How do those that have keyboards keys pulled off the students manage this?

 

I know it's a classroom management problem but what do you do if this doesn't work and after telling staff to be vigilant about this, students keep pulling keys off the keyboard.

 

I've thought about trying to source some keyboards that don't have removable keys and that are fairly cheap however it's like looking for rocking horse muck.

 

If there's no such thing, maybe it's time we invented one.

[Squelch]

Charge the department for the replacement. If it happens in an English lesson the English Dept pay for their lack of classroom management. Not much else you can do really.

[Bedders]

Take a picture every day of the damage, log it and the cost of the keyboards in the room at the time (say, £5-10 each?). Then take it to SLT and propose a saving of x hundreds of £££ if staff can learn to control their -ing classes.

 

Or just don't replace the broken ones. That'll show them!

 

EDIT to add not to take my advice too seriously, I'm tired and it's Friday.

[Novalee]

This is classroom management, you're right.

 

We don't have this problem in our classrooms where there is an assigned teacher as they take a pride and ownership.

 

'Drop in' rooms are another story though. It seems to happen when no staff are around.

 

We've just seen these: Accuratus WP127 Flexible Keyboard

 

Which would solve the key issue (albeit at a massive cost), but then it's only a matter of time until they start carving their names in them and playing with scissors on them.

 

Maybe projected keyboards are the future for schools...but then...they'd shine the lasers at each other...

[3s-gtech]

I charge the departments when my spares dry up. With certain laptops, I have a large number of spare keys and scissor hinges as I had to buy new ones (and kept the broken ones to canibalise). These are sometimes pretty expensive - it didn't take long for them to start taking more care after they got a bill through!

 

If the student is caught pulling keys off, they're off the system. I'm not involved in billing them - I don't think it ever works - but it certainly goes on their behaviour records.

[Squelch]

It seems to happen when no staff are around.

 

There's your problem.

[timbo343]

The rooms in question are rooms assigned to a teacher however they can be booked by other members of staff and classes so it would seem that it's a bigger issue than just charging that one department.

 

For us to check the room after each lesson would mean one of my team going down each hour to make sure nothing was vandalised whilst the lesson is in change over.

 

Yesterday, we pulled 7 keyboards out of an IT room.

 

I do like the idea of flexible keyboards though but trying to justify the price is proving difficult - actually here's a few cheaper options on amazon:

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Accessotech-Flexible-Foldable-Keyboard-Computer-x/dp/B00E8NDWJ6/ref=pd_sbs_107_7?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=HQVMEFGEHWPAWT498C68

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flexible-Keyboard-Oxsubor-Full-Size-Compatible/dp/B01NCK9H4Z/ref=pd_sbs_147_10?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=E2BZ209TY9DM2DGNK36B

[synaesthesia]

We make a point of ensuring those caught are appropriately punished. Like being sat in internal exclusion after school putting the keys back/back in the correct order on all keyboards they've damaged with no point of reference. Word gets around

[FN-GM]

All staff check the room before and after and report any issues. Anything that comes up un-reported the previous teacher has to answer to a senior member of staff and their department pays the bill. Even if it was damaged before they entered they failed to follow procedure so they pay.

 

When I started at this place there was loads of damage. Hardly any now due to this system.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Just to add, if the department can prove who did it they can charge the kids. But they do all the hard work.

[difinity]

This is classroom management, you're right.

 

We don't have this problem in our classrooms where there is an assigned teacher as they take a pride and ownership.

 

'Drop in' rooms are another story though. It seems to happen when no staff are around.

 

We've just seen these: Accuratus WP127 Flexible Keyboard

 

Which would solve the key issue (albeit at a massive cost), but then it's only a matter of time until they start carving their names in them and playing with scissors on them.

 

Maybe projected keyboards are the future for schools...but then...they'd shine the lasers at each other...

 

I have a similar flexible keyboard here. It's ok for occasional use but the keys are horribly mushy and it's not very nice to use. You'd hate to have to write more than a couple of sentences with it.

[mikeprice]

I've found that going through a phase of checking every suspected room every hour is worth it in the long run. When I have done it the vandals have been identified fairly quickly and they can then be dealt with by SMT

 

also the teachers realise that they will look bad if IT find a problem in their lesson so they start to watch more closely

 

then you can stop the hourly checks

 

then it starts again a year or so later - but unless you can change the basic makeup of kids in general then this will always happen

[speckytecky]

The only problem there is SLT tend to get a tad twitchy at the mere suggestion that their erstwhile subordinates are making a Horlicks of supervision.

 

Take a picture every day of the damage, log it and the cost of the keyboards in the room at the time (say, £5-10 each?). Then take it to SLT and propose a saving of x hundreds of £££ if staff can learn to control their -ing classes.

 

Or just don't replace the broken ones. That'll show them!

 

EDIT to add not to take my advice too seriously, I'm tired and it's Friday.

[SamanthaD]

CCTV in all IT rooms. Helps with all sorts of issues.....

[bwestlake]

if you have time to review it and get told when it happens....

[Novalee]

if you have time to review it and get told when it happens....

 

Exactly this - people don't report damage. So when someone comes in and says 'By the way, did you know there are 7 broken keyboards, 2 broken mice, 3 missing mice and a missing keyboard and 3 of the computers don't work in room 12' it can be the first you've heard of it. So it's often fruitless even looking on CCTV as it could have been done at any point.

 

If damage were reported at the beginning / end of each lesson, CCTV would work wonders.

[Grey-gear]

Exactly this - people don't report damage. So when someone comes in and says 'By the way, did you know there are 7 broken keyboards, 2 broken mice, 3 missing mice and a missing keyboard and 3 of the computers don't work in room 12' it can be the first you've heard of it. So it's often fruitless even looking on CCTV as it could have been done at any point.

 

If damage were reported at the beginning / end of each lesson, CCTV would work wonders.

 

CCTV works for me as I need to check damaged hot spots ever lesson. Time consuming but helps hopefully when you catch them the rest of the students take note.

[SamanthaD]

And once the teachers know it's there and the guilty can be caught, they're more likely to report it quicker....

[DrBeaker]

Exactly this - people don't report damage. So when someone comes in and says 'By the way, did you know there are 7 broken keyboards, 2 broken mice, 3 missing mice and a missing keyboard and 3 of the computers don't work in room 12' it can be the first you've heard of it. So it's often fruitless even looking on CCTV as it could have been done at any point.

 

If damage were reported at the beginning / end of each lesson, CCTV would work wonders.

 

 

Been there, done that and got the T-shirt. All to no avail. Even when caught red-handed, SLT and the powers-that-be did absolutely nothing about it. Yet were quite happy to moan about computers not working.

 

Daily checks - no time to fix the issues we'd uncovered due to having approx 30x seconds to check each computer. Me and a colleague did this for other a month, with a spreadsheet shared to IT and SLT. Nothing done about it.

Spot checks - even with people found and caught red-handed, nothing was done

CCTV - caught several times, including one time we'd sorted out laptops for the teacher to then let the kids move then all about, tangling the power, network and security cable leads all up as "they wanted to sit by their mate" . You would have thought the teacher would say "NO you sit where I've put you", on the CCTV you could clearly see he didn't and let the kids basically do what they wanted - lack of teacher-to-student discipline and classroom management somehow translated to an IT problem?

 

Funny how this never happened in the business world I worked in for nearly 10x years. Only in education it seems or it's ghosts as "it's always been like that" or "it's been like that for ages" are the typical excuses.