Dual purpose furniture to be used as classroom and IT suite

[genesis]

Hi We are planning to set up a new IT suite and this classroom must be able to be used as IT suite and a classroom.

Schoolcare does this type of furniture and Please post me if any other company dose these type of desks and would like to compare the desks with cost.

 

https://www.schoolcare.co.uk/ict-suite-design-and-installation/

 

Thanks

[bald_pig]

Looks like they get their furniture form these people:

https://zioxi.co.uk/portfolio-item/zioxi-p4-to-p10/

[TechMonkey]

We have just had Folio in. The desks look good, nice and rugged, simple solution.

 

We have also seen i-Desk. Again desks look good but they are a bulkier option and as they are powered with an electric motor there are concerns about fingers, wires and points of failure.

[TomFreeman]

We had some great electric riser ones from John Knight Interiors a few years back.

Sorry i don't have any pictures of when they're down to hand.

Edited March 5, 2019 by TomFreeman
Addition of picture

[unixman_again]

We've got something a bit like this, but they are single desks. I don't know where they came from as they were supplied with the new building - three years ago. The verdict is they are pants.

• When I was first putting the monitors in, I closed one and it wouldn't open again as it was badly installed. I had to remove the whole gubbins and reinstall it.
  
• Two were missing the keyboard rest, which is level with the desktop. The installers didn't want to know.
  
• Within a couple of weeks, most of the edge veneer had come off. The caretakers got fed up with glueing it back on, so we gave up.
  
• Two of the pistons have failed, causing the lid to close and smash the monitor.
  

 

https://www.mikeodwyerofficefurniture.co.uk/secure-flip-top-computer-desks/552-smart-top-ict-desks-single-user-computer-desks.html

[edmokeski]

In our secondary, we've got two suites of the Zioxi ones (bought back before Isis thought maybe it was time for a name change) and have been pretty happy with them. We've gone manual (and older model of the FlipScreen ones), no servos. They occasionally break or fall apart when badly abused (students dancing/jumping on the lid), but generally hold up pretty well. I think the most common damage is just decapitating mice by closing the lid without having put the mouse back in it's hole. When we looked at them, we looked also at iDesk and decided we wanted the PC to be separate for upgrading and maintenance purposes, and we also looked at a sort of jigsaw-y one I forget the name of, which felt a bit too much like it'd been designed for a prison or something - kind of too robust.

[synaesthesia]

Throwing an alternative out there, building a lovely charging unit for a bunch of laptops, saving a LOT of money in the process and using standard furniture?

[jslate1980]

Throwing an alternative out there, building a lovely charging unit for a bunch of laptops, saving a LOT of money in the process and using standard furniture?

 

I have to agree. I used to work at a bsf school with 100s of isis/zioxi desks. After a couple of years they fell to bits. I wish my school had spent the money more wisely.

[robyholmes]

We created a new ICT Suite last year and fit kitchen worktop on custom made legs. Width of worktop means you can push screen, mouse and keyboad back to allow students to work in books. A good joiner is all you need.

[edmokeski]

Throwing an alternative out there, building a lovely charging unit for a bunch of laptops, saving a LOT of money in the process and using standard furniture?

 

Or Chromebooks?

Our laptop trollies never got any use b/c they were perceived to take too long to boot up and log in over WiFi, compared to the already powered on and hard wired PCs in a suite. (Leaving aside the issues of irresponsible users not ensuring the laptops were on charge when put away.) Chromebooks might get you around some of this, though, if they otherwise can meet your needs.

Granted, we retired the trollies a few years ago, so laptop hardware and wireless bandwidth have come on a bit since then.

[synaesthesia]

Was gonna say, one of our reburb laptops is at the windows login screen in under 10 seconds and at desktop after another 20. Not massive wireless users here though, but that's around 15 concurrent laptops on a single Unifi Pro wireless point. Still, mobile devices overall may indeed be a better fit and cheaper TCO.

[Bev]

We've got something a bit like this, but they are single desks. I don't know where they came from as they were supplied with the new building - three years ago. The verdict is they are pants.

• When I was first putting the monitors in, I closed one and it wouldn't open again as it was badly installed. I had to remove the whole gubbins and reinstall it.
  
• Two were missing the keyboard rest, which is level with the desktop. The installers didn't want to know.
  
• Within a couple of weeks, most of the edge veneer had come off. The caretakers got fed up with glueing it back on, so we gave up.
  
• Two of the pistons have failed, causing the lid to close and smash the monitor.
  

 

https://www.mikeodwyerofficefurniture.co.uk/secure-flip-top-computer-desks/552-smart-top-ict-desks-single-user-computer-desks.html

 

I also have these, although the double version, and I agree, they are pants. We've actually had the whole cabinet fall down and land in a students lap more than once.

 

I'm about to rip them all out and replace with normal tables, which is how I stumbled upon this thread.

 

At another school I used to work at they had ones like this - https://zioxi.co.uk/portfolio-item/zioxi-p4-to-p10/ operated electrically by a removable remote so only staff could open / close them. They were very nice and worked well. Although hard to access monitors / cables etc, but that's true of all of these kinds of desks.

[jimmy_2k]

Personally I would avoid anything with a mechanism or flip desk like the plague. I have had a lot of issues with flip desks, students banging lids during lessons or the mechanisms breaking, cables getting snagged etc. The repair and maintenance just costs a lot in time and money. What I have found works out the best is go get the widest desks you can with the computer monitors either on stands or with computers such as NUCs with the base unit mounted on the back of a screen. When a non IT lesson needs to be taught, simply push the keyboard and mouse out of the way. I'm not saying its as tidy as a flip desk system but its easier to maintain and more reliable as there isn't much to break. No one in my school liked the flip desks and they were happy once I had switched over to large desks with monitors on mounts.