tomscaper

Hi I was wondering if anyone could help me, i have a friend who works down in the reception and she is getting upset regularly and always crying on my shoulder about being treat like rubbish. She has told me of times where she gets the blame for other people's mistakes, and branded just because she is part of the same team. Was made to set up a lost property stall, and had to rifle through all sorts of dirty, unclean discusting things. And even when she did that was given grief about it by the head. Often gets random jobs from the head who she feels she cant say a thing to because of his position. She logs calls in the school and even tho this is the procedure of emailing all calls to staff, she gets flack from staff parents and the SMT about not hearing straight away. I want to help her but i have no idea what she should and shouldnt be doing. It seems that she is getting the blunt end of everyone elses problems. Does anyone have any advice about anything or someone she could speak to, as i want to help but i feel i am doing no good. Thanks Tom

You definately have to put it up, give it a title something like "tips for staff when new technicial takes over."

Yeah me too, i would love to put it up anonomously but they would know it was me. Not like it could be anyone else.

We use NOD and have no trouble with it, some of our older pc's do run a little slower with it, but those same pc's could do nothing with sophos on.

i think the trial is for the extras that comes with logmein, i think the remote access part stay available. but i am not 100% sure.

if your interested here are the names and sizes

if they have there usb drives connected you can create a shared in the computer management to that drive on the computer and delete the games off. But i would never do that tho.

How about https://secure.logmein.com/

The best i could do regarding this was to keep a copy of it myself and do a search for *xls on the student drive and compare file sizes. Sometimes you can find them straight away as they rename pacman.xls to dfdhdkdfkd.xls how original, but some are clever and rename it to it coursework.xls. It is long winded but it better than searching them one by one. Other than that i have no idea. Again it should be the teachers watching the kids are not playing games in lessons. But they tend to be far to busy drinking there tea.

do your site maintenance staff wear a shirt and tie? I wear casual. I would like to wear my liverpool fc tops and t shirts but i cannot walk around the school with carlsberg plastered across my chest! Site maintenance wear polo shirt or normal with logo on, with usually casual trousers.

What was there reasoning for complaining.

I am curious what the dress code for everyone is, i have to wear a shirt and tie, and dress smart like the teachers, i find that shirts get wrecked from all sorts because i am always under something or in and out of something and get messy often.

Full time here, i am on 13k, work 37 hours a week. NM is full time, 37 hrs a week on 22k

I think alot of training in schools is a problem, as you said that technicians are expected to learn/fix software and hardware pretty much straight away, and when i first started here i didnt know anything and i did my best to get up to spead. It is very easy to knock teachers and i do it myself, sometimes we forget it isnt easy to learn something new. Mabye the bigger picture is that all staff in schools need far more training, us for learning in sw/hw and the teachers in how to use the systems, and confidence to use them. I have taught staff here many things, and i never wanted to teach, i dont believe i can do it that well and have the patience that others have. I just think that if there was real training for them, rather than me doing it, where i know only certain aspects. They would understand and be able to use it much better.

We block internet access to and now we also can block every website and open up the ones we want, there are a few kids who have this and probably will for most time here. Those kids i blocked came and complained that they couldnt do there coursework, and the head of there year has asked for them to be unblocked. Surely it is a punishment to have them blocked and for a teacher to demand them allowed on underminds our authority. how are the kids gonna learn responsibility if they know no matter wht they do they can get out of it.

What we are thinking of doing is taking it out of the department where it is currently getting abused and putting it in Maths, where it SHOULD get better treatment I can't believe that teachers can say "its your responsibility..." what a cop out....teaching staff can be such ignorant people.....i don't know grr! *shakes fist* firefox_2006 I dont understand how they can say its not my responsibility, if they are using the equipment then surely it becomes there resposibility. I make it my business now to check everyone who has used the trolley, just so i can catch them out now and ban them from the trolley. Problem i sometimes find is that mangement let them off the hook due to needing for school work. Off topic but we have 6 kids who's accounts are banned for the week, but i doubt it will last all week as teachers will come up and asking if they can be unlocked so they can work. I am going to try my hardest to say no and they can write it on paper and type it up at home or next week. Just shows that there is no discipline and they can get away with it whenever they want.

@localzuk Didnt notice the part about the budget, my fault i briefly skimmed the message. @button_ripple I know your budget has gone, is there any chance if you explained that they could save money in the long run, that could get your budget increased a little. The logger part papercut is free so you could use it to show them how much is being wasted. This might force there hand and you might get some money or get the SMT on your side to get the staff in to shape regarding printing and wastage. We waste alot of paper, i will go into the comptuer rooms to find a whole ream of paper has been wasted and no one has come to collect it. Staff and Students both don't care about wasting paper. We have whiteboards, computers which supposedly makes the system paperless but they still need to print for some reason.

@button_ripple Do you have any printing management software to limit how much they can print and keep logs of what they print, we use papercut works with windows. - http://www.papercut.com Also we force staff to photocopy rather than print, so say if they need 30 copies of a document staff used to print it out 30 times. so now we make them photocopy it, which the photocopier is far better for this and ink is cheaper and lasts longer. We also charge for paper, paper is locked away and we log how much they take. Currently tallying up the charges for this term on paper, ink and photocopying, it is looking very expensive, but papercut shows exactly what was printed, how many pages and who by.

We often have staff book computer rooms and then not turn up to use them. Then we get other teachers coming in and asking "who has this room booked", we have a booking form on the internet, why can they not look themselves. They came all the way up stairs to see if anyone was in, why not look at there computer first.

There is one member of staff who regularly askes for help with writing up a sheet of paper into word, she will often come to me and say "tom can you write this up for me, i dont know how to" The attitude is that if it is ICT related then i do it. I dont mind explainig how to use something to help them and even sit down with them and show them how bit by bit. It is exactly the same that the kids do. I will help but i wont do there work for them. How will they ever learn.

slightly different you safety had a capital S.

The problem is that our jobs are very vague such as support staff - that could mean anything, does it mean help them no matter what, or is there a limit to help. It seems teachers know what they can do and cannot do, and regularly tell everyone. I have been here for 2 years, never once seen a contract, job description or even know what it is that i am meant to do. my boss trained me and half explained what i do, but that didnt cover the what i dont do. Sometimes i get complained because i cant help someone as i dont know how to use the software, dont know how to do this that or the other. Do they really expect me to know everything, and have an answer for anything they come up with.

Why is it often on here you read about teacher, smt and even the heads of schools asking technicians, support staff to do work that is not part of there job, they have no training what so ever in, and just expect you to roll over and do this. Is there a line in our job descriptions that says "we can, will and know how to do anything you ask". There doesnt seem to be a limit of what they ask. My time here has made me really hate teachers and management in schools, as i have been forced in to situations where i have had to do things i have no even knew a thing about. I am not a teacher and never want to be, only once i was pushed into teaching a class, which was a complete mess. Luckily nothing happened but the chance was there. Mabye i am to quiet and often just do things, but that is my nature and i do want to help, i enjoy it. I wouldnt work here if i didnt. @ Pete10141748 - Like alot of people if your not in a union, i would deffinately join up. There was a recent post about a technician been asked to do something, and he got the union involved and the head backed down, you need to show them not to mess with you.

havn't been on skype since monday, have been round my lasses house all week. Will check tonight when i get in.

As Mr Happy said, Get the teachers to plan there own lessons, if they do not understand how to use databases why are they teaching it, and if they dont understand then it can be up to you to teach the teachers.