Pointless Question of the Week #8

[sqdge]

This week my school has had engineers in fitting projectors in all the remaining classrooms that didn't have projectors in before this week (I probably could have phrased that better). It's been something of a logistical nightmare making sure that they don't interfere with any lessons. I would have preferred them to have installed all this stuff in the school holidays, but SMT overruled me (I think they may be regretting it now....I just look smug).

 

This leads me on to this week's PQOTW:

 

What is the worst management decision you have ever made / experienced?

[witch]

That would be the one where my boss, the IT co ordinator, has had responsibility for IT across the curriculum taken away from her, and given to goodness knows who, (haven't been told who, officially) whilst I am still solely responsible to her as the IT tech.

How can she tell me what needs doing across the school if she doesn't have any idea what is being installed? (and believe me, we have come in to find new equipment just 'there')

How can I sort out whether we can support stuff if I don't know it is there?

It is a ridiculous decision

[Geoff]

Do you mean amusing? or serious?

[Joedetic]

The old network manager lent one of the VI Form a scanner.

 

I dont think he ever saw it back. It's not like he actually asked for it back either though.

[Cmd.exe]

"I know, lets buy 3 laptop trolleys"...

 

"What do you mean, the entire IT budget has been spent on replacement laptop keyboards, screens and cd drives?"

[gwendes]

The old network manager lent one of the VI Form a scanner.

 

I dont think he ever saw it back. It's not like he actually asked for it back either though.

 

My girlfriend did that with her mobile phone in a nightclub!

[Pottsey]

“What is the worst management decision you have ever made / experienced?”

We spent to much on ink. Well we bought what we normally need and printing usage went down. Instead of having enough ink to last until the summer holiday we now have enough to last until December at least.

[philjones2000]

Brilliantly (I was in a rush) I managed to name the new admin office computers after the person that sits at that desk. Now 6 months on its very confusing and having to explain to the Bursar, John why his computer is called "Wendy" is a little embaressing

[sqdge]

Do you mean amusing? or serious?

 

I don't really mind.

 

I've just been reminded of a previous ICT Co-ordinator at our school who hired a compnay because she was having an affair with the MD. Needless to say, the relationship ended on less that positive terms and now we have a lot of dodgy equipment.

[BKGarry]

Someone decifing to by these desks with folding lids to protect the LCDs of the teacher machines in each classroom. We have gone from 1 LCD broken over 3 years to 37 broken since Christmas.

[steve]

Worst imposed on me: reportmaster - purchased without any thought, consultation. Dropped after 1 set of reports.

[Cmd.exe]

Worst imposed on me reportmaster - purchased without any thought, consultation. Dropped after 1 set of reports.

Sounds very similar to what we're experiencing at the moment.

 

I wonder if any school actually gets a technical viewpoint before purchasing reporting software.

 

Ours is MS Access based - not the best for 100+ users over a wireless network.

[john]

Calling the Assistant Heads PC Ass-Head, whoops!

[GrumbleDook]

Too many to choose from, not many that can be publically (or politically) mentioned.

 

Here's one. Deciding that it was not important to include support staff on a decision to by laptops for teachers on behalf of a town-wide consortium and to be left with a bunch of laptops that are buggy, have limited warranty, fails to run NT4 (even thought they say NT4 ready on the sticker ... but that only applies in the states ... even thought this model is not sold in the states because it is not NT4 compatible!) and leaves primary schools loathing you.

 

Worst decision I made?

 

Easy ... I hold my hands up and say that I made a balls up when purchasing some tablets and wireless projectors. Educationally a fantastic idea ... technically it was fun and innovative ... kids loved it ... staff loved it ... the only issue was that it used the built in Wi-Fi to connect to the projector .. which meant trouble connecting to the WLAN ... and the projectors would not hook into the WLAN so you could not have it all working smoothly. I ended up getting additional cards to connect to the WLAN and the internal connecting the projectors ... and then the cards in the projectors failed so they used them on the VGA cable ... and we were left with wasted cards and expensive laptops. I would use the same technology again but do it differently (ie better!)

[BKGarry]

We had the Ass-Head here buy a reporting and grade solution, Aim-High, Which they still make the teachers use for reports but graded go into SIMS Assement Manager, But this Aim High C**p caused us to loose 2 sets of reports before my eyes and the eye of the teachers as they was typing them in.

[Friez]

Not really a 'decision' as such, but more of a trend of decisions by SMT here is to move stuff from A to B, then change their minds and put it back to A wasting our time, effort and ultimately our backs.

 

For example: "oh can we have those 50 old pc's and monitors moved into this store cupboard in the space of 10 minutes?", "oh actually can we have it back in the area it was in?"

 

and...

 

"Oh can we move all the old whiteboards that were in science into (for example) maths, and give science the new whiteboards maths had?"

 

I can't wait for the riot from Maths (or whatever) over that one and the day we have to move them all back. They think these things are like carrying a sheet of A4 paper or something?

[AlexB]

My worst of late... buying 15 laptops without checking the battery life. To be fair when I did try to check after the fact neither the reseller nor the manufacturer website listed the battery life and I hadn't noticed when buying!

 

That said, its now priority one whenever I look to buy laptops now!

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

Having to put up with? A managerial decision to move away from CC3 to Vanilla, 2 weeks before our NM left and still with loads of kinks in the system that we could have avoided by staying on CC3

[BKGarry]

If you need help with Vanilla windows network give us a shout Kerry, been working with it for 4 years now in our school

[Skoggmeiger]

My worst of late... buying 15 laptops without checking the battery life. To be fair when I did try to check after the fact neither the reseller nor the manufacturer website listed the battery life and I hadn't noticed when buying!

 

That said, its now priority one whenever I look to buy laptops now!

 

Acer?

[Firefly_Transport]

Site taken by me in 2003, with 250 systems, 20 of which were laptops. SIMS not out problem, Bromcom not out problem, telephones not our problem. Single site with 850 users and 120 staff. No serious WiFi, projectors or IWBs, .5 Meg Internet pipe. Lite website maintained of site.

 

Maintained with three staff.

 

Time passes, site grows until in 2006, we have 550 systems, 200 of which are laptops, and we have taken on SIMS, dumped Bromcom and rolled out to SIMS for registration, taken on all communications, Split site with 1200 users and 200 staff. Full WiFi across site, DECT across site, 35 Projectors & IWBs, 10meg Inet pipe. Full VLE with onsite Website systems. Full onsite WO system for job tracking & Room booking system.

 

Maintained by five staff. with a combined 33 years of proper IT knowledge, a proper Webmiester, a proper security manager, a proper deputy doing 3rd line support and a proper 1st line helpdesk specialist.

 

LEA & NCC demand cuts - despite 20 years of professional experience in the 'real' world saying this was the right size team - my team is cut to three.

 

I quote: 'But why have you cut 1st line support and projector booking?'

 

Still at least both of the leavers got better jobs in schools nearby. I cannot tell you the pure contempt I have for the people that thought this was the right thing to do, and the fact that far more has been wasted that it would have cost to keep them. Nor can I suitably explain my irritation for the line that MK schools only use three. So what - doesn't mean it is working properly, and it doesn’t mean that they were comparable schools.

[sidewinder]

SMT ordering a full room of desks with PC's built in and motorised raising monitors, against our wish and advice.

6 months of cut keyboards, mice and general nightmares with the product later, they make their next mistake

 

They order 32 more

So now we've got 2 rooms full of these awful machines that are so much hassle to get up and down they are left up 90% of the time, so they could have just bought normal desktop PC's that would have saved them a fortune and would be far easier to support

 

A close second, or perhaps even worse, is the previous NM ordering machines with only 256MB RAM (2 * 128MB sticks just to make it more fun) up until easter 2005

 

Also the sudden rush by every department to buy wireless laptops before they had actually seen what real world performance was like. They all expected machines that are as quick as wired ones. 2 years later and we now have several rooms with network points in every desk in order for them to actually use the things