IT techs who work by themselves in a school

[6Foot2]

why part time?

 

Age?

 

Curious

Why: Her daughter needs help with looking after the kids (working as a highly qualified therapist, and still training for more qualifications, does not allow you to earn enough money in the NHS to pay for 5 day a week child care)

 

Age: 57.

[CREATISH]

Why: Her daughter needs help with looking after the kids (working as a highly qualified therapist, and still training for more qualifications, does not allow you to earn enough money in the NHS to pay for 5 day a week child care)

 

Age: 57.

 

I see many people on here are on parttime I'm assuming all older because will be tough to find 2 parttime tech jobs that can work well with days required.

[Rob_D]

When I first started out, I was part time in 2 different schools and had a weekend checkout job to get up to approximately full time hours. Then I got another part time school gig, taking me up to 3 different part time schools, and dropped the shop work.

Now I work full time in one school, I kind of miss the verity.

 

IMO smaller schools with less budget want IT support and a tech who knows their system, but don't want to/ can't afford a full time tech, so getting someone in for a couple of days a week is a good compromise. Also (as has been suggested), it's attractive to older people on the wind down to retirement/ or post retirement. Which means bags of experience without breaking the bank (hopefully anyway).

[Edugamer]

When I first started out, I was part time in 2 different schools and had a weekend checkout job to get up to approximately full time hours. Then I got another part time school gig, taking me up to 3 different part time schools, and dropped the shop work.

Now I work full time in one school, I kind of miss the verity.

 

IMO smaller schools with less budget want IT support and a tech who knows their system, but don't want to/ can't afford a full time tech, so getting someone in for a couple of days a week is a good compromise. Also (as has been suggested), it's attractive to older people on the wind down to retirement/ or post retirement. Which means bags of experience without breaking the bank (hopefully anyway).

That makes sense. Btw looks like you got a pretty sweet PC man! Nice specs.

[DrBeaker]

...

 

Also teachers often ask for support with administration software, but don't understand that I.T professionals aren't necessarily adept at Excel, Word and Sage!!

 

Unfortunately despite my skills I'm not an expert in every piece of software ever written. Do the users even know there's difference versions of the same software with added (or reduced) functionality? Who do they think trains us? The IT fairies?

 

Do other IT Technicians always have something to do?

 

In a school with 400 or so students all 18+, most of the infrasturctre where im based is very good and solid, I am definitly worth while and price of lessons require no waiting hours to solve issues, however I can have days where I do not alot atall.

 

do people always have something to do?

Curious

 

Yes! I would love the time to have "nothing to do". I've got 8x projects on my board I know need to be done, all in various stages from concept to execution. The only chance I get to work on these is during the school holidays. Daily stuff/BAU stuff takes up my time during the normal week.

 

There's always some ideas to be working on, R&D etc and also self-training by catching up on developments in the IT world.

 

 

I don’t have a lot to do in the normal school day , I’d say I’m more busy In half term

 

For me that's when I get a shedload of work done, in peace! This week I've got new PC installs and builds, removal of the old PCs, upgrades and catching up on tickets/BAU jobs I couldn't do during term-time. For my my next available "free" time is Thursday next week!

 

Problem is that list never ends, once you think youv'e completed it, you start it again! you are always looking at ways to improve and make teachers life easier (and your own).

 

ITIL - Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Yep. There's always something that can be improved on. I've got "roadmap" of where we currently are from an IT perspective to where I want to be a few years time. Whether that happens due to resources, budget etc is a different thing however.

[mikeprice]

Many years ago I used to have a list of things to do - it varied from 'must do NOW' to things I dreamt up that might be useful at some point

 

on my way into work each day I would generally mull over these tasks and sort out what I needed to do today

 

the the phone would ring and it all went out of the window

 

 

same happened when I worked alone as an IT tech in a school

 

there is always something else that you COULD do - with IT the possibilities are endless

 

I would suggest that if you have nothing to do then you need to think deeper and further

and look at what other people in the same situation do and how their systems work - ask on here for local people who want to show off

you will probably find loads of possibilities - some of which may be a really good idea ( and some that just won't)

 

Oh - as a footnote -when I left that job I mentioned at the start I found an old To Do list and it was mostly still relevant

I had done about half of it

it was 15 years old

[mavhc]

If you're not adept at Excel, then that's the first thing to learn.

 

Also https://xkcd.com/627/

[CREATISH]

Unfortunately despite my skills I'm not an expert in every piece of software ever written. Do the users even know there's difference versions of the same software with added (or reduced) functionality? Who do they think trains us? The IT fairies?

 

 

 

Yes! I would love the time to have "nothing to do". I've got 8x projects on my board I know need to be done, all in various stages from concept to execution. The only chance I get to work on these is during the school holidays. Daily stuff/BAU stuff takes up my time during the normal week.

 

There's always some ideas to be working on, R&D etc and also self-training by catching up on developments in the IT world.

 

 

 

 

For me that's when I get a shedload of work done, in peace! This week I've got new PC installs and builds, removal of the old PCs, upgrades and catching up on tickets/BAU jobs I couldn't do during term-time. For my my next available "free" time is Thursday next week!

 

 

 

ITIL - Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Yep. There's always something that can be improved on. I've got "roadmap" of where we currently are from an IT perspective to where I want to be a few years time. Whether that happens due to resources, budget etc is a different thing however.

 

To get a better idea on what takes up your time which project are you working on?

[DrBeaker]

To get a better idea on what takes up your time which project are you working on?

 

• Still figuring out systems and software the previous IT Manager didn't bother to leave any notes or documentation on
  
• Equipment Audit
  
• Investigating why the decades old PC equipment runs slow (for all of us here, it's pretty obvious WHY)
  
• Desktop refresh (but no money to do it)
  
• new SIMs server and 3rd party systems migration
  
• website update and new website launch
  
• new ID card system, I wasn't consulted on or anyone bothered to tell me about
  
• Laptops setup 12x months ago that intermittently fail and weren't setup properly with no documentation on these either
  
• move to temporary office due to water leak and refurb
  
• to name a few off the top of my head.
  

 

oh - did I mention it's just me there as the tech btw?

Edited February 22, 2019 by DrBeaker

[mavhc]

• Still figuring out systems and software the previous IT Manager didn't bother to leave any notes or documentation on
  
• Equipment Audit
  
• Investigating why the decades old PC equipment runs slow (for all of us here, it's pretty obvious WHY)
  
• Desktop refresh (but no money to do it)
  
• new SIMs server and 3rd party systems migration
  
• website update and new website launch
  
• new ID card system, I wasn't consulted on or anyone bothered to tell me about
  
• Laptops setup 12x months ago that intermittently fail and weren't setup properly with no documentation on these either
  
• move to temporary office due to water leak and refurb
  
• to name a few off the top of my head.
  

 

oh - did I mention it's just me there as the tech btw?

 

There's always money, question is what do they want to spend it on. Make a case that they're wasting valuable teacher time. Teacher costs a school about 50p/minute. So just need to save them x hours to make something profitable.

 

£150 4 year old HP desktops from ICT Direct, with SSDs, image them all.

 

Reimage the laptops, I've not had to install anything specific on laptops for a while, import a driver pack to WDS maybe, that's it.

 

Once you have it set up so you can just take the latest Win 10 .wim file and add it to wds, and then auto install everything required, it's a set and forget system.

 

My ID card system involves an svg file, saving as pdf, printing pdf to inkjet printer, have to do cards in pairs, and open the printer at the right time and shine my phone's flash led into it to make it notice the card tray is in. So much fun. Not enough staff to justify a £500 printer.

[Patrick]

I work part time in a few different schools(all small primaries), half days, one day a week etc which amounts to full time. I definitely have quiet days, but i normally use the time to research new tech, work on new skills and work on existing projects.