IT Department Proactive Involvement in School

[jvalenzuela92]

Hello Everyone,

 

Pretty excited to be able to have a forum to get insight on how other techs at schools might approach this perspective. Just to get some story behind this post...

 

 

There has been quite a restructuring of our IT department at our school. Long story short, we now have a full team with re-defined positions and a new head of technology at our school. I was promoted to Senior Tech, and our new head wants me to start driving for a more proactive approach to our IT department.

 

Usually Students/Staff will only reach out to us when their is an issue. We usually don't get an insight of what the teachers do in the classrooms and at the moment provide only tech support. They are currently used to only reaching out to us when there is an issue. We would like to change that and start having processes in place where teachers are more comfortable speaking with us on how technology can help them. We would like more communication between us and the users beyond just the usual IT support. There can be many ways to approach this I understand. Was just curious to see if there are any techs here that have gone through this approach, and how they went about it at their schools.

 

Any insight would be great!

[pete]

A few easy methods:

 

• Drink coffee in the staffroom at breaktime. Make it clear it's your coffee break too, but if people want to chat about developing their dept it's fine.
  
• Get your techs to keep their ears open when working in departmental areas. Look around - are they Heath Robinson-ing things when there's a better way? Suggest it - "Have you tried X instead?" We've saved weeks of work for staff just by realising they're taking the long way around and suggesting a better way.
  
• IT talks to everyone and goes everywhere. We know who has the cool new toys and who's willing to share in exchange for biscuits.
  
• Attend their dept meetings. Ideally just the first 10 minutes of the schedule - (verbally) prod them for anything they want/concerns.
  
• Interrogate headteachers, deputy heads. "What're your needs Y1/2/3?, What's driving that?
  
• Explain how budget planning works. We need to know what you want so realistic figures get put into budgets in advance. Last minute whims without a plan/pricing get ignored by the accounts dept
  
• Feed them biscuits occasionally.
  

[jvalenzuela92]

Thanks for the insight!

 

We are definitely planning to join department meetings to get insight on what challenges they might be facing that we might not otherwise know through just Help Desk Tickets.

 

I also wanted to start a feedback form , not sure if this is the right mode of communication, but just wanted to have some bridge of communication outside of our ticketing system so it feels more like a suggestion box than a "Help, I have an issue" sort of thing

[jmak]

There was another thread on here earlier this week about a problem that was never apparent in testing, but which one teacher endlessly complained about and the best suggestion I saw on there was to go and be in the classroom during the lessons that were being complained about. That way you understand whether there's really a problem or something that is very minor - or user error or pupils pranking.

 

I'd suggest it's worth doing this proactively. Some teachers will put up with things that should be better, some can be easily helped and seeing how the kit is actually used rather than the theory you used when you configured it can inform (equipment) management and procurement strategies.

 

It's also a quick way to find out who will be good advocates when you want to make a change and who will complain whatever you do for them.