tsky

No, not consulted whatsoever - I just gatecrashed one of their high-fly meetings. I'm good at gatecrashing and spoiling "aren't we wonderful!" parties.

haven't had any reports from staff - though we don't really look after it at all... that module has always been a problem for us though.. especially printing-wise.

Just threw a huge spanner in the works with our BSF plans seeing as noone had noticed the gaping hole in their rebuild ideas. Main Internet connection comes into site A, main network currently routes from site A to site B (200 yards away) to connect the two sites. Link to site A is critical to keep connection to Internet and LEA for teaching and learning, purchasing through county, SIMS, yadda yadda yadda.... BSF Build plans: Site A is having a new building slapped on the side when BSF build starts. Site A staff and pupils then move into new building on Site A, freeing up Site A. Network is not connected to existing network as new infrastructure about to be built in Site A. Site A is gutted and renovated, new network infrastructure installed and server room moved. Site B staff and pupils move into renovated site A and the new site A is switched on with managed service. Site B is demolished. "So... what happens in the 18 month gap of renovation where you turn the network off to the school, don't have a network running in your new building and are still teaching?" says I to the SMT and the BSF team that were in. "Uh... er..... we hadn't thought of that... oh... that might affect the other schools who are doing the same in the LEA" "yes.. I should imagine it would. I should imagine you want to put a continuity of service clause and penalty in any contracts you're negotiating!" I'm out of here (as probably are the rest of my team) before managed service kicks in...(my contract is a fixed 2 year one which runs out about 9 months before the managed service is due to kick in) so we'll not have anyone in here potentially who will be able to link systems or sort problems. Then.. it gets better... "What happens 5 years down the line?" says I "What do you mean?" says SMT & BSF guys... "Well.. your contracts with managed services seem to be a 5 year fixed and you're talking about infrastructure bits in with that. So.. in 5 years, you're potentially in the position where you A> don't have any staff in the building who look after your IT infrastructure or know how it runs and B> don't actually have any infrastructure to run on a day to day basis" "....er... well... oh... we hadn't thought of that...." "For someone who is PAID to THINK about these things.. don't you THINK it's about time you ACTUALLY DID!?!?!?!?" BSF.... FAIL. Why is it that the people who are in charge of the whole process who were put in charge because they were supposed to THINK things through and CONTINUE to keep education running are doing their hardest to STOP the teaching and learning process!?!?!?

cha-ching.. freebies... woooohoooo! w00t!

"... but with the blast shield down, we won't be able to see anything"

That was the county-wide "managed" solution... we're currently ripping it out to replace it with one that we manage internally so we have more control over what is and isn't blocked. Like most things in education.... "managed service" doesn't ACTUALLY MEAN what it says on the tin. Coming from years in industry, it's been amazing to see what shiznit companies get away with just because they're dealing with education. ho hum!

Woah... scary... we've just done that with mediaWiki

We're supposed to have filtering that blocks everything naughty, risque or unwanted.... the sad truth is that most of the stuff gets through.... brilliant one Cachepilot... nice work letting all the pr0n through

I went through the Graduate Teacher Programme which was a hands-on paid route into teaching. Depends what your LEA runs - might be able to look at different routes in via PGCE, GTP, SCITT etc. paid for by yourself or by your employer.

.. is it because we strive for the maximum frames per second?

If you want to move up to management level and not just "administration" or "technician" level, it's likely you'll need a degree to do so. Experience and qualifications and personal skills are what move you forward, but that's only achieved through you setting goals for yourself and pushing forward with what you want to do. You can progress down the network management route into datacenters if you have the experience and the MS/Linux/Cisco quals - a friend of mine did that route after deciding uni wasn't for him. He ended up spending a lot of money on the courses though in order to counter for the fact he didn't have a degree. He's now a senior network engineer, I just moved to being a network manager in a school from being his number 2 for a couple of years. It's not that he couldn't do my job - he's much more technically able than I - but some jobs out there (like the one I have now) require a degree as a prerequisite to applying. Most of the time this is just historical "well if they have a degree it shows they have staying power" thought processes (which are stupid), sometimes this is because people recognise a degree will give you the tools to think about learning how to do jobs, not the tools to do a particular job. Bottom line is - do you see yourself doing a degree, and if yes, what do you see yourself doing after your degree? If you are looking for alternate routes - have a look at other jobs and if they have training budget associated. You could always stick where you are (if you can) and push for training through the school. Get as many courses under your belt as you can and try and learn a wide range of things rather than specialising until you know where you want to go and what you want to do - then you can tailor your learning to what you want to move into.

It would have to be Simon Pegg - because the kids reckon I look like him at the moment anyhow...

"Computer the size of a planet and all I do is serve files"

Have separate shirts done for your specialities with an appended line on the back.. "VLE specialiast..." on front and "...Stop me and try one" on back "MIS specialist...." on front and "...Stop me and try one" on back "Network specialist..." on front and "...Stop me and try one" on back "User specialist..." on front and "...Stop me and try one" on back

Budget this year is non-existent. I foot the bill for broadband (14500) - VLE and Mail and Filtering was on top of that (another 7000) until I ditched the contract and decided to do it internally. Printing 8000 - (previous net manager spent closer to 12000 last year and staff see me as 'free printing' - about to remove their free printing and claw back costs through charging) development budgets are around the 20K mark to cover new lab construction, new servers that are desperately needed, cables, UPS, server software. about 8K marked for repacing about 12 projectors that are broken. using devolved capital I've managed to claw about 56K in total (to cover leasing schemes previous guy put us on, what we need for this year in hardware, software and consumables). School is 1100-ish pupils, 100-ish staff, split over three sites on the same campus. Needed more cash to replace some of the infrastructure that's starting to wobble but they don't want to invest too much in anything as we're going BSF in the next 2 years.

set a policy to disallow changing of network settings on your latops.... then put a computer together to download as many films / files / images as possible on his connection so it goes over bandwidth and they cut him off. he'll lock it down soon enough

Nothing in Teesside.... but then, we don't feel anything up here because we're all thick skinned northern monkeys

It's not so much the PC:Support Staff problem, it's all the additional things you have to do AS WELL as support the computers. Take for example this morning's one - head has put presentation together and wants to show it in assembly. We are told we have to click through the presentation. He's not the only one in here that does that... ICT Support staff always end up having to do training for things like IWB's, VLE's, the latest software from each department and suchlike. None of the BECTA cack factors this in, and on none of the BSF info I've seen so far is this taken into account for the phone-call of "er, I'm in Room X and I can't get my screen on". One 'technician' is required for turning things off and on apparently, nothing more - everything else will be remotely handled. Yeah... right... like reconfiguring network switches that have corrupted and hopped onto VLANS taking them off the main network, checking drives in servers that are failing in RAID arrays, pandering to every member of staff's urgent curriculum needs and file modification from Office 2007 to 2003 format before an urgent presentation they forgot about. There's myself (NM), full time paid Technician, full time training Technician (who is on a placement here), about to have a voluntary trainee a few days a week unpaid also to gain some work experience. Between the four of us, we have days when we're flat out trying to do everything and days when we get to take stock, document, prepare and plan. We're supporting about 350 PC's, 25-ish switches and routers, 9-ish servers (currently moving to virtualisation from physical systems), about 60 classrooms, 1200 kids, 100 staff.

I'll try and fudge around with the PS drivers for the printers and see if it helps - I just can't understand what on earth their code is doing when it's sending the printer output. Extremely unimpressed with the support I've had considering we're paying X thousand a year to county... but, hey... Managed services are on the way... and soon they'll be managing my whole network and telling staff to move printers around the site when it doesn't print.

Tried reinstalling drivers and printers, can't understand why the software won't work when Office works fine, PDF's work fine, IE works fine printing.

I have a problem with printing from SIMS cover module. The printout appears as if it is scaling to 25%, but the printer works fine in all other applications. This only happens on certain printers, which I cant explain. I have a Brother 1018 which doesnt work, a HP ColourJet 1600 which doesnt work, but a HP LaserJet 1300n which DOES work properly. With all printers, printing from other applicaitons is correct - same settings and user accounts on machines and it doesnt work from the cover module. Any thoughts/Sensible Suggestions/Lists of approved printers appreciated from anyone that knows. support from county and from SIMS results in the response: "Move the printer that works when you want to print out". Genious. Have been trying to chase this one down for about 3 weeks now, starting to get a tad ridiculous.

Cold Cathode tubes everywhere... I've got blue ones and the kids are all "woooooo" when they walk in. Staff are all "WTF are you IRRADIATING ME!?"

Network monitoring boxes... have them checking on all the new kit and creating reports... Game servers... Office Heaters...

One big whiteboard with lots of network scribbles on it.... And a large call-centre LED display displaying random IT messages on it.. that works a treat too

Some of our staff are refusing to go on strike even if the union demands it.. they say they can't justify the action. Good for them. There's always one money-grabbing barstool in each union that has crazy ideas like this....