students workshop

[suesmate]

I want to set up a technichans workshop in an old ICT room at my school. the idea is mainly to have room to do onsite repairs and have much needed storage space.

I would like to also (to help persuade management ) set up some sort of course/club where students can come in has anyone any ideas suggestions or good/bad experiences of this.

 

Here are a few of my ideas any suggestions/comments welcome

 

Working on old Pcs

Students bringing in faulty machines

Building machines

Lunchtime

After school

During lessons

Students with low ability

gifted and Talented

[indiegirl]

I wondered about doing something similar in our school, but was put off by Health and Safety measures - I personally am not insured nor allowed to be responsible for students and there would have to be a teacher present.

 

Also, seeing as our 6th form 'helper' (kind of like community assistance for 6thformers) blew up a power supply when he was on his own in a room the other week, I'd be very nervous about letting kids get into machines in a 'workshop'.

 

I don't think I'd cover 'faulty machines from home' because the last thing you want would be parents demanding you recover data from a machine that 'worked before darling Johnny brought it in here'...

 

Maybe I'm too cautious, I'll be interested to see what others say...

[russdev]

I wondered about doing something similar in our school, but was put off by Health and Safety measures - I personally am not insured nor allowed to be responsible for students and there would have to be a teacher present.

 

You are insured all staff at schools are as the insurance covers all staff as long as you a member of staff who has passed a crb you can legally be alone and be resonsable for students...

 

In fact you have legal responsibility for safety of the students..

 

What you cant do is teach as you need to be qualified as a teacher to do this..

 

Russ

[john]

I have thrown the idea about in my head, and did it for a few weeks, the numbers were small, and then they dwindled and then it came to an end. I have thought of starting it again as some are interested, and will do some for those that are interested in it, but there always seems to be something more exciting than computers for most kids really.

[indiegirl]

You are insured all staff at schools are as the insurance covers all staff as long as you a member of staff who has passed a crb you can legally be alone and be resonsable for students...

 

In fact you have legal responsibility for safety of the students..

 

What you cant do is teach as you need to be qualified as a teacher to do this..

 

Russ

 

But I've been told that I shouldn't allow students into classrooms without a teacher around, as if anything does go wrong I can't be liable for their actions.

 

Hmm, guess that might just be liability rather than insurance then...

[russdev]

hmm to be honest any school that said that to me would raise alarm bells hence why soon to be your ex-school..

 

As staff are ARE liable for and responsible for students this as it gets covered by duty of care statement as all staff could be prosecuted under failure of duty.

 

In basic terms every staff member has to b law make sure nothing that you do might bring them into harm so extreme example but student on roof of building if you walk by and dont do anything aka report it, raise alarm and just shrug shoulders and say not my problem then you could be prosecuted.

 

Now that is extreme example on other hand by fact that you have got duty of care means you are liable for students if they enter a room.

 

So if students come into a room you have legal liability to those students to do your best effort to make sure no harm comes to them.

 

Russ

 

As

[MkII]

The way I understand it you can't be alone with students as you are not trained to be. There are various health and safety issues which would make it a big no no.

 

Yes, like all staff, you have a duty of care, but if students enter a room with you alone in it, your duty is to get them out or call for another member of staff immediately, as you're putting yourself and them at risk if you don't, which backs up Russ' comment.

 

In the interest of thier safety, if you can't control what they're getting up to on the internet, you'd be putting them at risk. There are a truckload of legal minefields over loads of issues around looking after minors alone. Without full training you've got to be mad to put yourself at such a risk.

 

The school can provide some very basic training which would cover them, which is what has happenned at my place. Still the official advice was that non teachers shouldn't be supervising kids on the internet. The opposite now happens in classrooms, with HLTAs taking the place of Supply Teachers.

[Ric_]

It's a nice idea but would you be given assistance looking after the kids or a pay increase since your workload will have increased? I doubt it.

 

As for the whole looking after kids thing... do you get paid as much as a teacher? Didn't think so, so why should you do their job for them? Would a member of teaching staff offer to do an hour's worth of network management tasks for you?

[russdev]

No as working in schools as staff member you are assumed to have basic knowledge on making sure kids stay safe and being able to supervise.

 

You are even allowed to have one on one with kids (but not recommended) but all staff are allowed to supervise kids.

 

But of course you follow what ever school policy is...

 

But then any school that tried to tell me i could supervise kids if i wanted to (in fact it was part of my employment that may need to do lunch time clubs) would get long list of reasons why i could.

 

But important thing to make distinction between look after and supervise lessons of students the former is you enter a room and students are running wild you can get class to order while you wait for teacher to turn up to the class.

 

On other hand you could refuse to look after class as no teacher as this is job of cover supervisor, hlsa or lsa (in some leas depending on local agreement)

 

But you can say run lunchtime club (this not lesson) and in fact i think all all support staff should do some kind of thing like that in fact school of thought says that all staff including support staff should have it in there contracts to do a lunchtime or after school club.

 

What mark is going on about is idea (and good one in my view) that all support staff should go through some formal class and behaviour management lessons nothing intense just covers you on lot of aspects and also can help some support staff not used to working in schools to help with pupil control.

 

 

Russell

[russdev]

Also qca agree just found this: -

 

http://www.qca.org.uk/14-19/6th-form-schools/68_254.htm

 

"Recent national initiatives have encouraged, and sometimes funded, institutions to use staff other than teachers to support and supervise students in different contexts. These include mentors, key skills supervisors, technicians and staff from a learning or resource centre."

 

@ric thought better of you get ready pet hate alert...

 

disclaimer this not reflect on anybody this is my view...

 

I hate support staff who use well "teachers job to look after students"

 

nope it is all staff jobs to look after students we are there to help students and look after them and that excuse just dost cut it imho ...

 

I am happy to look after kids i have in fact done it number times not only in school related helping class while teacher deals with incident, dealing with students who teacher not turned up due to error in cover stuff like that all on i am there and we need keep students focused and working until problem resolved. Heck took first 15/20 minutes of french lesson before and my french is about as good as english..

 

But also in out school stuff like clubs and then also a youth worker...

 

But this is my view but to use old adage teachers job is wrong as we all want our jobs to be taken seriously.

 

Also if do clubs then ask for time to be paid or for time off aka spend lunch hour doing club leave hour early one day etc Schools most of time will do this.

 

Russ

[Ric_]

@russ: The reason that this is currently one of my pet hates, is because I was recently asked to look after a group of approx 8 year 11 girls while they did some yearbook work. I explained to the teacher that it is the School policy for a teacher to be present yet he refused to supervise the kids. I knew fine well that he was just going to slope off to the staff room and do nothing while I supwervised kids that were doing HIS work!

 

It also detracts a great deal from my work - I use lunchtimes and after school to do network tasks that would otherwise cause disruption. On this particular occasion I was also just about to leave the room to go and look at a couple of terminals in another building - I wish I'd just locked the door (only I have the key) and gone about my business.

 

The teacher then went and had a whinge to SMT who said I could leave them alone in the room! Strangely though, the story changed from 'supervising from a distance' (a misnomer if ever I've heard one) to 'popping in regularly' - although why he couldn't have done his 'work' in the room is anyone's guess!

 

Anyway... got that out of my system. I still think that it is unfair to expect support staff with little/no experience of looking after kids to supervise lessons or extra-curricular activites. Particularly wehen teachers are taught how to do this, paid a premium for it and in most cases receive further remuneration for out-of-hours stuff.

 

/rant

[russdev]

Also this good document on how remodel proccess effects oshl

 

http://www.continyou.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_482.pdf

 

Russ

[GrumbleDook]

A computer club ... a decent computer club ... a club that actually looks at computers and not ICT and funky ways of using words or frontpage ...

 

wow ... a lovely and really good idea.

 

Being serious though, there are a few things that needs to be looked at first.

 

Yes, Insurance as to whether you can look after the students needs to considered. Teachers have this through union membership and you do through the schools insurance ... but you are relying on the school to back you if anything happens. This goes back to joining a union.

 

I would also speak to the head of ICT ... if students are coming along it might be an idea to see if any are in computing or ICT classes and making sure what you are going over does not contradict what they are being taught .... yes, we all know that we know the best way everything through the sheer fact that we are gods ... but we also need to remember that exam boards are staffed by humans and they may put different priorities on things.

 

As for H&S stuff ... have a look at what is needed to teach A+ and N+, as long as you stick to these you should be fine.

 

As much as it may seem a little over the top you might want to do some serious planning for this. A 12 week program slowly building up skills and concepts ... but trying to make it far more fun than an ordinary lesson, after all, they tend to cover "this is a hard drive" in ICT lessons ... do they want to see that again?

 

I would avoid faulty machines for the first 6-9 months (ok ... a whole year really) and concentrate on G&T.

Get them to build a machine as a project, that should take 3 weeks of theory and practical (3 1/2 hour sessions a week). Use DOS 6 to show that it works and get them used to the idea of command line (and basic)

 

Then spend 2 weeks in DOS doing things in BASIC (menus, sounds, commands).

 

This then leads you into Linux.

 

If you work on the principle that 3 students can work on one machine that might give you an idea of what resources you need.

 

Once you have then installing linux you can then start on the theory for other areas. First could be networks ... and you get all the machines working together (but not on the school network).

 

Then you can start looking at what jobs the machines can do ... at this point you dig out Karoshi and each group of 3 students has their machine doing a different job. This gives them the idea of how multiple machines work together to make the world go round.

 

After Karoshi you can move onto windows ... which will seem a piece of ... erm ... urine after Linux.

 

To fill in between the concepts there are fun things to do ...

 

Set up a chat server using IRC. Talk about nettiquette.

Set up a web server and get them writing things up in blogs.

Set up a media server and they have their own radio station.

Set up a gaming server (eg quake) and let them chill out fragging each other.

 

Get DV and digital cameras to make video and picture diaries.

 

Just a few more ideas (mainly things I would love to do if I had time, space and spare kit!)

[ITWombat]

concentrate on G&T.

 

Eh .. not sure the school insurance would cover this even for a 'progressive 'school

[StewartKnight]

I took a class showing kids how to build computers. It was at a local night school place, but we had it after school.

 

One of the little darlings was helping me move the computers into my new car (2 months old), and he put a large scratch down the side !!! GRRRR

 

Still, the school did pay for the respray, as I was on school business. I won't be doing it again though!

[danIT]

the less the "kids" know about the machines the better,

the more they know the more hassle it will be for us. A number of our year 11's asked if they could do work experience with us but due to health and safety and confidentitality we decided against.

[GrumbleDook]

Surely the more they know the more they will respect the kit and how fragile it can be ...

[danIT]

The more they know the more likely they are to "mess" and cause problems. We already have kids remove network cables and RAM. I understand that it would be nice to educate about the cost and fragile-ness of the components, but remember these are kids. 14yr old pulling components out of a machine because a litte knowledge is a powerful thing

[GrumbleDook]

There is a difference between allowing students to learn about building computers and letting them get away with causing damage to classroom machines.

 

I suppose it also really depends on the school and what students are being targetted.

[webman]

The type of pupils who are likely to attend a "computer club" aren't usually the type of pupils who damage the school's equipment.

[CyberNerd]

We have kids in at lunchtime to build pc's for us, we also send them out to change mice/printer cartridges etc. It works well for us here - the kids get extra experience of IT and we get free manpower. The biggest problem is that some of the students have the attention span of a flea and training them to properly finish a job can be a lot of hassle.

[e_g_r]

We ran a PC build club last year. Made sure they understood ESD and H&S (first session). Second session enforced these concepts as they had a touch/feel session with components. More H&S for the third session as they had a master class from me in takeing a PC apart (including destroying heatsink and fan). Fourth session it was down to them in groups of 2 dismantling then re building. Once done it was partition and format followed by loading O/S.

 

Worked well and one of the pupils did work expeerience with us this year and works with us on a wednesday afternoon.

 

As long as you do a risk assesment and ensure that you follow H&S measures you will be fine.

 

I actualy enjoyed doing it as the kids had an interest in computers.

 

I wouldn't go as far as letting them bring their own PC's in though, another insurance kettle of fish.

[danIT]

we dont "let them get away" with damaging equipment. I do agree it depends on the kind of pupils who would be intrested, im sure many of our kids would love to be envolved in something like this.

 

If a kids going to take a network cable home to plug into his Xbox he'll do it regardless.

 

a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, we dont want to turn them into "home users" do we!!!!

[witch]

CRB check? What CRB check?

 

The only one I have is as a governor of another school and that is very very recently. I have never filled one in at either school I work in - where does that leave me, do you think?

[NetworkGeezer]

CRB checks are an HR issue and so a matter for SMT to sort out.

So long as you resist the urge to give the little darlings a clip round the ear you should be fine