All Teaching Staff Getting Laptops - Anyone got an expectations form ?

[mikes]

They will forget their laptops, put stickers on them, lose chargers (more like steal a colleagues so they can have 1 at home and 1 in their classroom, though with USB universal chargers this is less of a problem now), you will have to accept that.

We have laptops here because it's generally easier - they can take their laptop into a colleagues room, in the main hall, a meeting room etc and work on it there.

That said we have problems catering to cover teachers/staff and maternity cover - the person on maternity will want to take their laptop home on maternity yet we have to supply another one for the cover.  (despite the person on maternity shouldn't be working?)

So now we are lucky to have had a room refresh leaving us spare desktops, they are fairly old low spec 8GB units but they do run Win 11, I am putting them in more and more classrooms and the staff like having the desktop they can use to show powerpoints etc, while they work on the main laptop. Plus if a staff member forgets their laptop or cover comes in, we don't need to scramble to arrange a laptop - they can use the desktops.

[psydii]

New staff always get a new laptop. The leaver's laptop is recycled into the spares pool if it falls within supportability.

 

We have a pool of laptops dedicated for supply staff (standard staff laptops bought new for the purpose). They are allocated to the cover manager who is responsible for keeping track of them.

 

We have a pool of laptops for trainee teachers (a set of devices we 'refreshed' early for the purpose of building a pool). They are allocated to the Trainee Teacher Manager, but are with IT when we don't have trainees with us.

 

Maternity Cover is a cost of doing business/having people. Generally a laptop is bought for the person brought in to cover.

 

Long Term Absence is a cost of doing business/having people. Generally a laptop is bought for the person brought in to cover.

 

Generally laptops bought in for a long-term cover are recycled into the spares pool when the need for cover ends. Sometimes the person being covered actually becomes due a new device while they are off, in which case they will inherit the new from their cover on their return. Sometimes (quite often actually) the long-term-supply actually transitions to full time employee in some capacity, at which point they continue to hold the laptop.

[PotNoodleTech]

Sounds like you've got that running like clockwork fair play!

[DrBeaker]

We've had it range from "I'm not working at home" to "I'm not charging it at home on my electricity ". 😐

 

ALL real comments from teaching staff, given laptops, who are on considerably more than money than admin, support, TA's etc who would welcome one and didn't complain.

[DrBeaker]

Expectation - Staff take them home to use and work from home, in the event of a covid-saga again.

 

Reality - Staff put them in the cupboard at the end of the day. 

Then next day, come in, get them out from the cupboard in their room in the morning, take it out the bag and connect it up. 

Repeat

 

Devices then don't pickup the system/windows updates for days or weeks at a time, or key updates sent out and do it at login/idle instead when they're trying to work.

Instead of their PC's onsite booting at 3am in the morning, updating, then shutdown, then using wake-on-lan later in the day, so they didn't even have to turn them on in the morning.

 

Laptop cost £800

PC Cost £400

Loss of productivity and efficiency due to worse working practices - £???  

 

Knowing IT was right all with what we said would happen - Priceless 

 

[mavhc]

15 hours ago, DrBeaker said:

Devices then don't pickup the system/windows updates for days or weeks at a time, or key updates sent out and do it at login/idle instead when they're trying to work.

Instead of their PC's onsite booting at 3am in the morning, updating, then shutdown, then using wake-on-lan later in the day, so they didn't even have to turn them on in the morning.

Surely you can set them to turn on at night and update/restart still

[DrBeaker]

5 hours ago, mavhc said:

Surely you can set them to turn on at night and update/restart still

 

Not when laptops are switched off in a bag / switched off in a cupboard though.... I'm not THAT good 😂

[MatthewL]

Right my experience from staff using laptops and I think it should be one device per staff member no a PC here and a laptop to take home.

 

All staff use same laptop or common interface i.e. USB C, a dock they can plug into even if monitor dock and 1 cable to plug in to charge.

Staff will not look after laptops, charge departments for damages and let managers pick that issue up with staff

Ensure provided with a bag

Have a pool of laptops ready, they do get damaged just swap it out and put that one once repaired pack into the pool, same with chargers

Ensure the hostname is on the device for ease of identifying it, have a remote management tool on them so you can easily connect using said hostname

All need to be domain joined, no local accounts, no admin, always on VPN, access to network drives and policies in place to stop stuff been saved locally

Ensure device has bit locker on and is enabled so a pin is entered, devices do get stolen from home and cars, it protects everyone

Ensure as much stuff syncs/auto signs in save the hassle, have handy guides in a common area staff can get to if they need to know how to do something/setup something

Ensure a lock policy is set so if left unattended i.e. at home no one can get on it

Ensure users cannot install home printers so there is no data leak

Make the switch between home and work seemless so user doesnt have to change settings in work and home.

[nicholab]

Key item to make it work:

USB-C hub and power

PSU for home / bag

Always on VPN or modern management Remote filtering 

[msi_school]

Ideally each room will be set up the same, no extra screens or desktop computers in any classrooms, the differences will confuse any teacher who does not normally use hte room and lead to them unplugging everything.

[nicholab]

4 hours ago, msi_school said:

Ideally each room will be set up the same, no extra screens or desktop computers in any classrooms, the differences will confuse any teacher who does not normally use hte room and lead to them unplugging everything.

Forgot to say, get a USB-C extension lead to go from the hub to the teacher's laptop and hide everything else under the desk.