jcollings

They were talking about this a few weeks ago in Ambridge!

If it's not uber expensive I often put stuff like that on my own card and claim it back off school.

@Gatt - Leaping threads - how was your PR?

Jack the ripper wasn't his name though!

Partly the holidays - I'm term time only +2. The variety of things I get to play with, the non IT things I get to do, the kids, good friends etc.

Saw this at the weekend - looks like a good job. When is BSF scheduled to hit?

Our Morrisons is pretty cheap to and right next door to work!

@Lee_K_81 I wasn't having a go at you mate. That's the isssue though for me - I can do IT in loads of places, the reason I do it in school is for the extras - it's generally a fun place to be with lots of diversions which stop me getting bored. It seems under BSF all that goes - mind you I think were about 2013 so it may fall apart before then!

Fine - I get to keep my salary and the term time only + 4 working but how about the working arrangements I have? My boss (the head) lets me work 2 weeks in the hol and use the other 2 weeks of time for out of hours working etc. I also go on 2 or 3 trips a year with students to ourdoor centres (all in term time), direct a KS3 drama production, organise activity day for all the students and the list goes on. The boss is very flexible and knows that all the work I do in school time is for the good of the school and is more than happy to support it. My guess is RM (or whoever) will not be. To them I'll be employed as toner changer or whatever and I don't think they'll take too kindly to me going to Wales for the week with Year 7. Now though the IT in schools is fine it's all the extras that keep me here - that's what makes it a fun place to work and I think it's all that sort of thing that will sadly vanish as well.

We have 5 sets of 15 here. 3 sets of Stone and 2 sets of RM Mobile1. They had an access point in each trolley which they plugged into a classroom wired point each time. This didn't work because staff plugged them in with no power, gave the laptops out 1st etc. so we took them out and blanket covered the site with Netgear el cheapo points which work reasonably well. In terms of usage etc the departments who own them are totally responsible for moving them around and charging them etc. We do maintain them on a regular basis (1 per half term). The RM Mobile 1 are much better than the Stone ones although to be fair any issues we have had are ones of vandalism rather than kit failure, the favourite one being to pick the keys off! The other nice thing about the RM Mobile 1 is you can lock the wireless to always on in the BIOS which is helpful. The other thing we go through is keys - staff leave 'em in - move trolley - hit door frame etc. We also have 15 MacBooks which dual boot for Media. Not a jot of trouble from them.

Occam's Razor

Same as any other member of staff here. Being SLT doesn't get them a different laptop if the standard one meets the need. Our timetabler has a 17" laptop so he can have more on screen at once but it wasn't £700. It's an Acer and I think it was around £500 - seems to be fine.

Here: 1. The trolleys belong to departments or groups of departments. They are entirelly responsible for movement, charging etc. 2. We service them once a term (or ad hoc if someone screams) and bill departments for damage. Personnally I hate them. We have reasonably good kids but they still wreck keyboards on a regular basis! We abandoned the idea of the trolley having a wireless point that staff plugged into a wired point in each room as they were incapable of doing it right.

Bluepoint If you don't have an account we these people it's well worth getting one as they are pretty cheap on lots of stuff and nice people to deal with.

2 of my techies use them in their homes and swear by them. Both live in big old houses so cabling is tricky and they reckon these sort their problem just fine.

Our staff used to do that, then manually work out points etc. The point of the new system is that they can enter results as events happen and get instant winners/points etc. Our guys loved it. I guess that is what the OP is doing it for. I built ours 'cos it seemed like an obvious place IT could make their lives better which is pretty much what I'm there for! ;-)

Excel here - enter results, works out points, gives form and year totals etc. Welcome to a copy if you want.

We have a view over fields and hills - also in Cumbria. @KWestos - you may have a nice view but it is still Walney!

Oh yeah - £130000 a week and when it matters he fails to do his job properly! My heart bleeds........... Over paid idiots, the lot of 'em

We started Media Studies last year and our's manage the course on MacBooks. They have 15 of them in a mobile classroom. Dual boot to XP for network stuff and MacOS for the media stuff. They seem to be getting the work out of them.

Just a heads up that I will be recruiting for an ICT technician in the next week or so. The post would suit someone new to the game or more experienced (salary determined by experience etc). If you want more info on the school : QKS I'll post more detail on the post when I have finalised a few things but it's a straightforward 1st line techie - toners, filters, PC and laptop rebuilds and fixes, supporting feeder primary schools. Some courses available at Lancaster University (NASA, CASA etc) leading to foundation degree. Nice people in the school and very much appreciated by the majority. If you know you're way around a kettle so much the better.

WE collaborate with other equal schools and support our feeder primary schools but I can only pick one option on the vote.

Good luck John. Got to be worth a shot. I pass Parker and Parker everyday to and from work - ah well maybe one day!! The one way system is still awful. Took a colleague 25 mins to go 1 mile from their school to ours yesterday!

I think it's fair to say they've had a rough time but things are improving. Our head is helping out and as you observe my understanding is things are changing. Schools do seem to have some interesting post titles for sure. I wouldn't worry too much about it as it's something you could thrash out at interview. As I said as a place to live I think Ulverston is pretty good. I get out that way a fair bit and if I didn't have a son near Manchester so need to be near the M6 I'd live there. Mind you Kendal is pretty good to!

Ulverston is a lovely place and colleagues tell me it's a good school. Would be tempted myself if the money was better.