How much (if any) downtime do you get - Honestly!

[jamin100]

Just curious how much time you get in a normal working week where you find yourself very little to do.

 

I've had a very busy past 2 weeks but this week i'm struggling to occupy myself with work. I know there's always the dreaded documentation to get through..

 

I have plenty on next week but have just ran out of useful and productive things to do for today and tomorrow.

[Edu-IT]

I can't remember the last time I had nothing to do!

[localzuk]

What is this 'nothing to do' thing you speak of??

[jamin100]

I can't remember the last time I had nothing to do!

 

Its not something that happens very often, well this probably could be the first time. but hey..

[Mako]

I'm sat here on Edugeek now because, touch wood, everything is working at peak efficiency and there's not a lot to do at the moment. Same applies to yesterday. This will be the first time it's been quiet since we returned in September.

 

When things are quiet like this I default to monitoring activity on the network, making sure everyone is behaving. As much as I like a break it does get a bit boring, and theres only so much of Edugeek that one can read!

 

I realise I've just jinxed everything and there will probably be a massive rush now...

[ChrisH]

There is always something to do, especially for me. I rely on everything running smoothly so I can do all my SIMs stuff such as assessment etc.

[witch]

I actually don't have much immediate stuff to do as we have Ofsted and everyone is avoiding using technology!

If I do get 'downtime' then I use it to look into things for the future like Helpdesks or network monitoring - things like that

[sted]

normally just the amount of time it takes the server to reboot (most schools i work in only have 1 curric server and i generally dont touch admin) though i did have one school (and my only one with 2 servers) go down for about 3 days as it decided to lunch the global catsalogue and i ended up having to rebuild everything new domain rebuilt almost all the pcs and both servers and startred from scratch. On the plus side its a new dopmain im not carrying over any old bits someone else put on 5 years ago and that i haddnt seen

[sparkeh]

I have three schools to manage, there is no downtime

[AngryTechnician]

In my current job, none. Right now I have 7 open tickets to deal with and 24 items on my to-do list. That's actually significantly down from the start of term.

[elsiegee40]

Downtime = grab a cup of coffee and a trip to the loo quickly!

[ninjabeaver]

I don't get downtime either, but this week has been strangely quiet. Prepping for the big crash next week now. Or something similar. Paranoia is setting in.

[jcs808]

If your school is anything like mine then sometimes there can be so much to do you just don’t know where to start.

 

I've been doing this job for 10 years now and my advice is to appreciate the quieter moments, we all know there aren’t that many of them. Catch up on your paperwork or read that technical manual instead of taking it home to read.

[Soulfish]

What is this mythical downtime? I have a to-do list that only ever seems to get longer .

[elsiegee40]

Maybe the answer to this question could be best answered by Zero_Hour looking at the average time we spend on edugeek during hours?

[sparkeh]

Maybe the answer to this question could be best answered by Zero_Hour looking at the average time we spend on edugeek during hours?

 

Hey I consider reading Edugeek as part of my job...its..er..training or something

[Pottsey]

How much time varies a lot from none to way too much. Today’s jobs went too well now I have 1 hour with nothing to do apart from clean screens and keyboards. Then it’s online testing at 11am and helping the arts diploma people after dinner.

[cromertech]

Work load fluctuates randomly. Can go for a couple of days sometimes a week with no reported problems so gives me a chance to get inventory updated. Recently though been having problems all day every day and now I find myself with a bit of a backlog

[AngryTechnician]

Hey I consider reading Edugeek as part of my job...its..er..training or something

 

Ditto, I genuine do believe it counts as professional development. The number of new things and methods for solving problems one learns about is well worth the time put in, and I challenge any employer to argue otherwise.

[gshaw]

No such thing for me either, if I'm not working on server and \ or desktop migrations it'll be the VLE... if not that it'll be trying to find additional tools \ resources for the network or to improve management & monitoring. If somehow all that gets exhausted there's network documentation and online training resources to eat up any possibility of free time!

 

Being part of user groups and forums is important as no-one knows everything so you can only gain by sharing experience and ideas

[CHR1S]

Some days I can work through my dinner and into the evening, other days I can have very little. I say it evens it self out over a year.

[PEO]

We had a Viglen network which constantly went down on a daily basis for two year until I managed to convince my line manager (deputy head) to cancel all deals with them and move to a vanilla network. We've had zero down time since we moved over back in the Easter holidays. I've never been so happy and more productive and continue to move forward with new developments everyday.

[Rydra]

I have had quiet days before, but today is especially so. I'm down to 5 jobs on the helpdesk, and 4 off it for major upgrades to plan for 3 weeks time.

 

-1 group of netbooks that need AV installing; need to arrange half a day to take them away to do the installs.

-1 Bit of software needs ordering; they bought the wrong license

-One laptop that needs 30gb of data transferring from my portable hard drive.

-Printer driver needs installing on a win 7 laptop

-install Italc in one of the ICT suites; master PC is done, just need to configure the client ones.

 

Plus 4 Projectors needing work; 1 reinstall with a new mount, 1 replacement/upgrade, 1 new install, 1 warranty fix.

 

The first part is about a days work, the 2nd is waiting for other input/to place orders, which will be done this week.

 

This is the first time in 2 years that I've effectively run out of things to do; if I hit things hard I could finish all of it today, but I'm hoping to grab 5 minutes with the HT today to find out what work I don't know about that needs doing, and hoping there's enough to take me through till xmas.