Schools without IT Booking system

[Outpost]

Hi,

 

Are there any schools that don't use a booking system for IT rooms? My SMT are looking at ways to get rid of the booking system and make depts responsible for their own rooms.

Can't really see how it would work mind.

 

Thanks

[6Foot2]

We don't have a dedicated ICT room booking system [although I would like one!]

 

If a member of staff wants to use an ICT room they are supposed to go to our Facility/ePortal Cover organising admin person and book the day an lesson they want the room for.

 

Alas it does not work that way as I am frequently called to rooms on the way down expecting to see one member of staff and their class and when I get there it is another teacher/class entirely.

 

Working things the way that we do is open to lots of abuse/misunderstandings.

[beeswax]

Hi,

 

Are there any schools that don't use a booking system for IT rooms? My SMT are looking at ways to get rid of the booking system and make depts responsible for their own rooms.

Can't really see how it would work mind.

 

Thanks

 

The attached is the room booking system before it was all moved online. Though it was not the techies responsibility, the book was kept in our office and could not be removed. Therefore we were constantly getting calls to see if certain IT rooms were free, and sometimes asked to arbitrate if there was a "double booking". Teachers complained that they had to walk from the other side of school to use it, so puting it online was a no brainer.

A room booking system has nothing to do with making departments responsible foir their own rooms, in fact it could assist in this by nailing down which class and teacher had left a computer suite in such a state. We only use ours for booking ICT suites when the timetable allows. All other rooms are on the general school timetable anyway.

[EduTech]

We dont have a dedicated ICT Room booking system, the rooms are not free that often to be honest so when they are and someone wants to use it they tend to just go and ask the person who looks after the room.

 

But as i say, ICT Rooms tend to be covered weather its for ICT or any other subjects.

 

We are looking to maybe get staff using the room booking system that is built into GLPI

 

James.

[laserblazer]

I just knocked up something in Excel with a worksheet for each week. It also has the library and minibus on it. Works ok but we do get teachers deleting someone else's booking or swapping the rooms about so they get the one with the aircon.

[mullet_man]

We installed MRBS and it's been great moving from paper based systems which each department held! Problem is there is a couple of departments which ignore the online ustrm and continue to use paper based!

 

We since have included the meeting room, library, sports hall and main hall and drama room onto the booking system to help, everyone seems pleased with it and the ability to book laptops/classrooms etc from home when they are at home planning is great for the teachers

[mossj]

Problem is there is a couple of departments which ignore the online ustrm and continue to use paper based!

 

Off topic

You've probley already looked into this, but try and get it to use there standard accounts (LDAP, SMTP, IMAP authentication), because most of the time i get issues with staff not picking things up is just because they cba to learn new credentials...

 

At op have you stressed the many advantages of having it online/computer based. Also MRBS has a feature where you can make people admins of certain rooms, would this not do what your SMT want?

Edited May 4, 2009 by mossj

[eddyc]

We had a web driven booking system which was sat on an access database.

 

I really liked the system, and thought it did the job. However all it took was one faculty to ignore the SIMS timetable and re-rooom so that they always used their ICT rooms whether they were using the computers or not to wreck it.

 

The system was taken offline and now we have more complaints than ever.

 

I feel sorry for the faculties like Science and Technology where there is very little in the way of ICT equipment, and no where practical to install some.

[MrLudwig]

My SMT are looking at ways to get rid of the booking system and make depts responsible for their own rooms.

 

I don't see why not having a room booking system makes departments more responsible for their own rooms, unless your SMT are not going to allow use of the ICT rooms by anyone other than the ICT department!

 

I developed an in-house system to replace our paper based booking sheets 3 years ago. It's nothing to fancy, just a few ASP web pages driven from an SQL database. Any system is open to abuse though, so there are a few restrictions. Teachers can't delete bookings for example, only the ICT support staff and an admin person who manages room changes and cover can do that. Also, the system only displays the current week + 1 week ahead (unless it's a Friday in which case it's the current week + 2 weeks ahead). This prevents teachers block booking all the available time in advance.

 

Surely such systems make it easier to see who was in each room and thus if it's been left in a state or equipment damaged everyone can see who was responsible (at the staff level at least).

[mullet_man]

Off topic

You've probley already looked into this, but try and get it to use there standard accounts (LDAP, SMTP, IMAP authentication), because most of the time i get issues with staff not picking things up is just because they cba to learn new credentials...

 

I haven't looked into this as yet it would be great (it's on my to do list when I get a spare five mins), my main block with some departments was ones with laptops who book 10 laptops and another teacher would book the rest for example and this to my knowledge can't be achieved with MRBS

[john]

I use webmans Classroom Booking System, and its great really nice to use, just need to keep battering him to get the V2 written as i need LDAP really, fine the usernames all match for staff on it but they do get very a bit worked up about the number of passwords they all have to remember. Its one for Serco, one for Logon to Windows, one for Room Bookings, one for email.... see it goes on and on. At least the helpdesk is LDAP so thats one less.

 

(oh and before someone says Serco do SSO / LDAP I won't implement that until I can (as the management don't want to let me but hope I can change that) implement the password policy on staff for windows as they are terrible with passwords, most are tiny if not the original temp ones we give them at times!!! But management are against it as they say it will cause a nuisance as they will keep forgetting them!)

[K.C.Leblanc]

Ours are on a spread sheet, works fairly well. We have to odd issue where some pillock either leaves it open (locking others out) or they copy the sheet to the desktop (instead of making a shortcut) and end up making bookings that only exist in their own little world.

 

The main thing we have is good management support. Someone mentioned teachers changing other's bookings. If someone did that without good reason the assistant head would be asking them to explain them selves.

Edited May 5, 2009 by K.C.Leblanc

[Outpost]

I don't see why not having a room booking system makes departments more responsible for their own rooms, unless your SMT are not going to allow use of the ICT rooms by anyone other than the ICT department!

 

Surely such systems make it easier to see who was in each room and thus if it's been left in a state or equipment damaged everyone can see who was responsible (at the staff level at least).

 

I totally agree on both counts, unfortunately there's never any comeback when a room is trashed but that's down to SMT to sort that out.

I think the general idea is to have rooms fixed to their subjects where possible, we are lucky in that we have 11 IT rooms, some IT based and others for Maths, Geography for example and some classrooms have computers in as well.

I still think a booking system will be essential.

 

Thanks for all your responses.

[mossj]

I totally agree on both counts, unfortunately there's never any comeback when a room is trashed but that's down to SMT to sort that out.

I think the general idea is to have rooms fixed to their subjects where possible, we are lucky in that we have 11 IT rooms, some IT based and others for Maths, Geography for example and some classrooms have computers in as well.

I still think a booking system will be essential.

 

Thanks for all your responses.

 

Surely a booking system makes people responsible..

 

IE you can check who had the room on the lesson it was trashed on and nail them for it?

[Dom_]

We use public calendars - you can make it so each department only see's their own room, and let everyone book/restrict it to certain people.

 

I do all the bookings here, but everyone can see all rooms (except english who have their own laptop calendar). It works quite well and was easy to set up