I've ended up writing two daft books about being a school IT manager

[LeonardTwitty]

Evening all. New-ish here, so hello properly first.

I'm the IT manager at a secondary school — eleven to sixteens, one server cupboard that runs a few degrees warmer than anyone is comfortable with, and a kit list held together largely by optimism.

A few years ago I started writing down the parts of the week that weren't actually technical. Reception needing the printer fixed before break. A new head arriving with a Digital Vision and no budget line attached to it. Twenty-three staff accounts needed yesterday. One desktop that has outlived three refresh cycles and shows no intention of stopping. "The internet's gone", which turns out to be one cable.

It became two books, which was never the plan:

Have you tried turning it off and on again?: The Chronicles of a Secondary School IT Manager
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GVRMW763

Ctrl+Alt+Survive: The Chronicles of a Secondary School IT Manager
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H67P5NDM

Names changed, school fictional, printer entirely real. Both are on Kindle Unlimited if you'd rather not pay for the privilege of reliving your own week.

I've read the advertising sticky and I'm not trying to bend it. I'm not a supplier, there's nothing here for a school to buy, I'm not after leads, and I won't be PMing anybody about it. I saw crimsonspanner's book thread last year and took that as the precedent for posting openly rather than assuming. Mods, if it's the wrong side of the line, bin it with my apologies and no hard feelings.

Mostly though I'm curious about the source material rather than the books. What's the one thing in your school that everybody knows is held together with tape and hope, and that you're quietly dreading having to explain to an auditor?

[Rogueleeder]

That'll be a purchase from me, I could use a good chuckle.

 

To answer your question, my new place I'd say at my current place, its our Google Workspace. My predecessor (I've only been here 3 months) wasn't very trusting of people and sort of Anti-Google so while the network is secure and the onsite Servers are all good, the workspace is a mess of random drives, weird permissions and a structure that isn't user friendly. Basically G-Suite, a product that is designed to be user/self service friendly, was brutalised into being like Microsoft, no balance.

[LeonardTwitty]

Rogueleeder — that's very good of you, thank you.

That's a particularly maddening flavour of inherited mess, because nothing is actually broken. The servers are fine, the network's fine, you can't point at a single failure and say there, that's the problem. It's just been bent into a shape it was never designed to hold, and the cost only shows up as a hundred small daily frictions that nobody ever raises a ticket about.

The part I'd find hardest is that over-restriction is much harder to undo than under-restriction. When something's locked down too far, people don't complain — they route around it. A personal drive here, a folder shared with everyone-can-edit there, a spreadsheet emailed back and forth because nobody could work out who owned the original. So the moment you start loosening it properly you're not just changing permissions, you're dismantling three years of workarounds that people have quietly built on top, and every one of those is somebody's actual working day.

Three months in is the right time to be seeing it clearly and the wrong time to be fixing it. The people who've been there for years have stopped noticing. You still can. Worth writing down everything that makes you wince now, before you acclimatise, because in a year you won't see it either.

And your point about balance is the one that gets missed. Locking it down isn't neutral. It just moves the risk somewhere you can't see it.

Are you going to rebuild the shared drive structure, or work with what's there? I've never regretted a rebuild, but I've also never finished one in the term I said I would.

[Rogueleeder]

My predecessor was here for 18 years. I don't fault him for his choices, I've just found over the years that as you point out, the more you clamp down, the more people work around, then you wonder why teacher's and staff digital competency is low. Its because IT didn't trust them, so didn't teach them how to use things. I'll keep my school safe, however my current post is a SEN school, a place of accessibility and inclusion. Seems a bit backwards if the tech doesn't follow that ethos. 

 

The shared drive structure, I'll probably rebuild it to make access and ownership a staff issue rather than an IT one. I used to do the same thing with Teams and Sharepoint. It endured people to trust me as I then trusted them with bits of the IT system. The staff here all acknowledge its a mess, probably left over from when they migrated off File Servers, and want help fixing it, I made it clear it wasn't going to be just me doing it (I have no team, just me)

 

To sum it up, its kind of like a cloud migration was attempted, but never finished and didn't have a plan. I'd have done the same Pre-Covid, early in my career, but 2 In House Posts and 2 MSPs have taught me better. 

 

I've got a NotebookLM full of notes and ideas, and the beauty of not being a contractor anymore so time is on my side again 

[Rob_D]

15 hours ago, LeonardTwitty said:

What's the one thing in your school that everybody knows is held together with tape and hope, and that you're quietly dreading having to explain to an auditor?

For us it's bits of the BMS. We recently had a problem with the data line to part of the system not sending its reports to company's external server. It works now after some firewall wrangling but I can't for the life of me work out how it ever worked before. And I'm pretty sure the solar array isn't reporting back to county anymore, but no-one's asked me to fix it and I have to go up on the roof to do that, so if they're happy to leave it, so am I.

  

31 minutes ago, Rogueleeder said:

I've just found over the years that as you point out, the more you clamp down, the more people work around

In that vein... We recently started moving toward Yondr pouches and "phone free school", one of the teachers comes to me worried, because if the kids can't use their phones in lessons how will they bypass the web-filtering?

[LeonardTwitty]

We have started using a web based software called StudentKeeper, it is by a company called Activion.  it is designed as a safeguarding support app that allows teachers to better manage their classrooms.  It allows staff to allow or block different URLS, can be used to message students directly, there is an AI assistant for the students to use, which if a safeguarding concern is raised it locks the account and sends an alert to the designated staff member (whoever you allocate into that roll).  All in all while there are still some bugs to iron out, it is a very promising system and the team are very active in incorporating it into the overall design.  maybe worth a look.  Puts control over to the teaching staff and less stress on the IT department (I also am a team of 1)  but I am still somehow described as an IT team or the IT department.......must be my moods being mistaken for multiple personalities.

[LeonardTwitty]

Rob_D our Remote access server is the same, it worked....once but after 2 years and multiple support calls and tickets with the local authority (which has stumped them also) we have reached the stage of, it must have been witchcraft.  I took over as IT Manager in December 2023 and the Remote access just stopped for no reason or at least no comprehensible reason that 12 different people can find.  Somethings are either fixable or just existed once.

[LeonardTwitty]

Thanks all for the support with the book. I've had more orders off this thread than everything else I've tried put together, which tells you something about where my actual people are.

 

If you've had a read and enjoyed it, an honest Amazon review would be hugely appreciated. It's the one thing that genuinely moves the needle for a self-published book, and it takes about sixty seconds.

 

Cheers for the welcome, it's been a good week.

 

Right, back to the trenches. The printer's been quiet all morning and I don't trust it.

[Rogueleeder]

35 minutes ago, LeonardTwitty said:

Thanks all for the support with the book. I've had more orders off this thread than everything else I've tried put together, which tells you something about where my actual people are.

 

If you've had a read and enjoyed it, an honest Amazon review would be hugely appreciated. It's the one thing that genuinely moves the needle for a self-published book, and it takes about sixty seconds.

 

Cheers for the welcome, it's been a good week.

 

Right, back to the trenches. The printer's been quiet all morning and I don't trust it.

I got you first one yesterday evening and I have to say I hope there's more to come. Really well written and I appreciate the illustrations 

[LeonardTwitty]

8 minutes ago, Rogueleeder said:

I got you first one yesterday evening and I have to say I hope there's more to come. Really well written and I appreciate the illustrations 

There are 2 out now and I'm currently writing the third, my aim is to get it out before Xmas but realistically probably looking at after.  The whole aim was to take real experiences in my job and turn them into funny stories. My only hope is that people get a giggle from them.

[Rob_D]

Did you do all the illustrations yourself. They're great.

[LeonardTwitty]

6 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

Did you do all the illustrations yourself. They're great.

Book 1 no i used ai for the illustrations, but I wasn't a fan but couldn't afford to pay someone and I can barely draw a stick man ha.  Book 2 a good friend of mine offered to do them for 50 quid so that's why they are different.  I will be using him in the future for Book 3 too.  Also he did the book covers too. The original book 1 cover was AI made and I hated it so when my friend offered I changed it. Ill see if I have the original book cover and will show you how bad it was lol

[LeonardTwitty]

This was the very first cover.

[kevin_lane]

orderd the first book just before i go on holiday for the week, the sample read was very funny, really looking forward to reading this!

[LeonardTwitty]

10 minutes ago, kevin_lane said:

orderd the first book just before i go on holiday for the week, the sample read was very funny, really looking forward to reading this!

Thank you, I hope you enjoy the read, and more importantly enjoy your holiday and the break it hopefully brings!

[junz]

Bought both books on Kindle  and loved both books. Especially loved Mrs Henderson's character and Dai. Never mess with the old timers and always befriend the facilities tea.

 

Please let us know when book three is released and in the meantime if anyone knows the titles of any similar style books. please share.

[LeonardTwitty]

3 minutes ago, junz said:

Bought both books on Kindle  and loved both books. Especially loved Mrs Henderson's character and Dai. Never mess with the old timers and always befriend the facilities tea.

 

Please let us know when book three is released and in the meantime if anyone knows the titles of any similar style books. please share.

Thank you very much, I would really appreciate reviews for the books on amazon if you have the time and please feel free to share about the books to anyone you think would enjoy them.  I appreciate the support you have all shown more than you know. This started as a simple project to just have a laugh but I have found great joy in writing these, I may have to do one from Michael's perspective one day haha

[Rob_D]

22 hours ago, junz said:

in the meantime if anyone knows the titles of any similar style books. please share.

The obvious one is "This is Going to Hurt", a similar style about a Junior Doctor in the NHS.

[LeonardTwitty]

A small ask, and then I'll say no more about it.

 

If you've read either of the books and got something out of them, would you consider leaving a review on Amazon?

 

I'll be honest about why I'm asking. Reviews are more or less the only thing that makes a self-published book findable. There's no publisher behind this, no marketing budget, no table in a bookshop — just whether Amazon decides to show it to anyone, and that's driven almost entirely by reviews.

 

It doesn't need to be an essay. One line is genuinely enough. "Made me laugh, reminded me of my old job" does more than you'd think.

 

And if it wasn't for you, say that instead — honest reviews are worth more to me than kind ones.

 

Thank you either way. Genuinely.

[MartinT]

Both paperbacks ordered - thanks!

 

It'll be fun to read of other people's woes in IT!

[LeonardTwitty]

6 hours ago, MartinT said:

Both paperbacks ordered - thanks!

 

It'll be fun to read of other people's woes in IT!

Thank you MartinT your support is appreciated.  Hope you enjoy them.

[Rob_D]

Started reading the first one over the weekend, great fun so far. Will drop an amazon review when I'm done.

[Devontechie]

Got them both on my Kindle via Kindle unlimited. Will be ordering them as well soon

[LeonardTwitty]

I know I've said this already, but I just want to say thank you to you all for the support, I really hope you enjoy reading my books, while they are stated as fiction I'm sure you all will be able to tell that they are all based on real experiences that you will have had at least once.  And I will do my best to get the next book out as quickly as I can for you all.

[smurfomatic]

Ordered both over the weekend, just been delivered. Straight to the top of my reading pile, once they're done I will get a review posted