Been given £8000 to spend before April, any ideas?

[farquea]

I've been given £8k to be spent before April and at the moment im struggling for ideas on how to spend it apart from the usual, desktop, monitors, server hardware etc.

 

I'm looking for a few "out of the box" ideas that anyone can suggest?

[Dos_Box]

Managed wireless. You can make a hell of a start with that kind of cash.

[penfold_99]

How about a 5 Year Wildcard SSL Certificate?

[MK-2]

if you dont need anything then dont spend it, why waste £8,000 on something that was purchased merely because the cash was there....it's not brewsters millions

[MatthewL]

I know if we do not spend the money we loose it.

 

If you haven't already I would check any support contracts that need renewing, failing that wireless would be a big one for me as I have seen the advantages it can have.

[localzuk]

iPads for all staff?

[MK-2]

so you don't spend it and lose it.....so?

say you spend it on setting up something new, the 8k pays for most of it, then next year the budget is cut and you can't finish the job without affecting other areas, so you now have a half-assed solution somewhere in the school.

 

also, its wasting money if you really dont need anything. so in the small scale you dont get to spend 8 grand on segway scooters or something, but in the larger scale you waste £8,000 of taxpayers money on something completely not needed. if you have no projects that this could be used for, and no other plans for it, i dont see the point of needlessly spending

[farquea]

i said above it is from a grant that if not spent, is lost. And its not that we dont have any projects, just that im trying to come up with a list of certains things i could do with it and things that can be completed fully. Edited January 24, 2011 by farquea

[Arcath]

if you have no projects that this could be used for, and no other plans for it, i dont see the point of needlessly spending

 

the point is that if they loose it then next year when they need to replace servers etc... they wont have the money to do it because they had £8000 left over at the end of this year.

 

+1 for the managed wireless, a lot of my primary schools are going that way now and loving it.

[timzim]

Spend it all on beer

[somabc]

If MP's have taught me anything this is what you should do. Open a bank account, put £8000 in it. Create fake invoice for £8000 worth of services. Go to Jail.

[3s-gtech]

How good is your network infrastructure - backbone, core switches, etc? That can be a worthy investment, especially if anything's creeky.

[localzuk]

VOIP phone system? £8k would get you about a 50 handset system if you use Asterisk.

[farquea]

the school is only a few years old so we have a fairly up to date and decent network infrastucture and phone system, thats why im struggling for ideas

[localzuk]

Digital signage?

[JJonas]

CS5 Master Collection site licence

Technet subscription

A training course for yourself

[Arcath]

golf carts for equipment moving and improved response times?

[m25man]

Storage, thats one area that has grown exponetially buy good quality AD integrated NAS/DAS/SAN box you will alway use it for something...

 

Wireless I'm not so sure about, unless you have a guaranteed requirement for it.

[AyatollahPies]

Sponsor a forum on Edugeek for a year.

[m25man]

golf carts for equipment moving and improved response times?

 

You can laugh but this is what Chelsea FC IT Dept have at Stamford Bridge....

[Butuz]

You can laugh but this is what Chelsea FC IT Dept have at Stamford Bridge....

 

They also turn over around £300million a year making it somewhat easy to afford some golf carts for the IT dept

 

Butuz

[GrumbleDook]

Can it only be used for capital spend or can you also use it for CPD? I'm tempted to look at stuff that might help with programming with the students, perhaps a few workstations for Kodu ... something that can provide facilities for a lunchtime coding club ... app development for Windows, Android and iOS with device to test them on?

 

How about looking favorably on a nearby primary? Replace some of your nearly new stuff and then give that to the primary ... the money has been spent and you have also done a good deed / got PR brownie points?

[plexer]

Segway?

[dwhyte85]

How about looking favorably on a nearby primary? Replace some of your nearly new stuff and then give that to the primary ... the money has been spent and you have also done a good deed / got PR brownie points?

 

That would go down a storm here... lol!

[steveg]

Stock up on toner, paper, blank cd's etc etc, could probably easily spend at least half of it on that - will then free up some of your budget next year when you may need something.

 

Steve