pcstru

I could call it anything but still be in the dark about what it does. Perhaps if I knew what it does, it would be easy to find a word for it! Looking at it from another side, what innovative technology or uses of technology have been introduced to schools over the last decade which have made a real difference to student outcomes? VLE's? iPads? what? I think when you propose something that senior leaders won't recognise as being needed and that costs a lot of money, time and effort, then you are onto a loser. Sure private companies don't put up barriers as such, but there are still plenty of dead end positions in the private sector which the only way to escape from is to move employer. When you apply for a job, there is no obligation on the employer to provide for progression without end. To be perfectly honest it sounds like you want to change the world when the obvious answer is to change yourself. I don't mean that personally, just that the solution to the lack of progression in schools for people with good skills and talent is already within their grasp. Given that, asking schools to spend money they haven't got is unlikely to receive a positive response from their leaders. And really, does it hamstring schools to operate in that way? When you look at the people on Edugeek - do you really see evidence that schools are employing people who's talent and skills are second rate? I think that is a reasonable implication if what you say is true.

I'm still struggling to see what that might look like. I've given some detail on what ours did. Does that sound like it fit's the bill or is it different in some way? It is just the case that when you get to the top of the tree, there is nowhere to go. It is kind of arbitrary where the tree top is for different professions. What possible progress is there within a school for a head? Why should NM's be special to the extent that we have to build tree extensions specially for them? What about cleaners, caterers, caretakers, admin staff etc etc - where is their progression for them? Fact is a school is there to educate children, not to act as a career vehicle for arbitrary roles. For those that do find themselves at the top of the ladder and who are frustrated at the lack of development opportunity - the answer is simple; if development won't come to you ... Sure, sometimes that is even true. I can't see that it is actually a problem for schools in the case of (technical) IT professionals.

I don't see where you are actually interacting with any kind of mail object. If you are using Net.Mail then adding in recipients looks like : $smtpServer = "ourmailserver.org.uk" #Creating a Mail object $msg = new-object Net.Mail.MailMessage #Creating SMTP server object $smtp = new-object Net.Mail.SmtpClient($smtpServer) $msg.From = "[email protected]" $msg.To.Add("[email protected]") $msg.To.Add("[email protected]") $smtp.Send($msg)

Fair catch. My comment makes it sound like the majority of project and programme management is of a higher quality than it actually is. It is generally very poor in schools and often enough merely aspires to mediocrity in the private sector.

I have to admit, having resisted 'cloud' services up to now, I expect now when I run the numbers moving guest servers onto Azure will start to become a sensible option rather than replacing iron, so in the 3-5 year period, this is likely what we will be doing. I also expect M$ licensing will be providing a hefty push in that direction too.

@Ephelyon : So you know what skill set they need and who you think they could be. I'm still none the wiser as to what you think these people would actually do? In our case, we had a role which was "IT Across the Curriculum" (or similar) and they were focused on ticking the ICT boxes in Ofsted criteria. Practically that meant a focus on IT in the classroom, 'curation' of software or content and delivery of training. The biggest changes coming from the role here were use of Google Apps and Chromebooks - so quite substantial although both have had a somewhat mixed reception and it was expansion of the IT repertoire - there was no consolidation or rationalisation, so we now have some teachers doing Google while some stick with what they know and a few do both as it suits them. One problem with the role for anyone technical - and I think the "specialist" tag hints at it, is that it is not thought of as a full time post. Practically that, as well as the emphasis on teaching and learning rather than 'tech' mean that it will be given to a teacher along with an appropriate increment on the leadership scale. Schools need opportunities like that to allow professional development of teaching staff - the chances of a non teacher getting it are (IMO) about the same as a non teacher being made Head - there is nothing to actually stop it but it is incredibly rare. I think the other problem with your analysis is it looks to solve this problem of progression for "Network Managers". Perhaps unfortunately - this is a problem for individuals, it is not a problem for schools as businesses. Yes they may lose some talent as people move on but people do move 'up' into that position; schools are generally quite good places for young people to get a decent breadth of experience with technology (where in the private sector focus is usually much narrower), experience which can stand them in very good stead when they move on.

(Moved from http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/168917-replacing-servers-age-virtualisation.html ), it was too far off topic by this time). You said : "You just have to look at the pittance that is being offered in salaries for an IT Manager to show how much schools value IT technical skills." I think the following is reasonable : a) schools underpay. I think that is almost explicit in the quote. b) since they underpay, the market rate must be better, otherwise how can they meaningfully be said to underpay? c) schools know this and are happy with it; they do not value IT technical skills so they advertise at under market rate and are comfortable with the compromises that might mean. Alternatively, they are simply incompetent. d) since people can get better salaries elsewhere, the post will not attract people with skills that they can sell for a better deal. e) schools therefore generally have people with poor skills compared to their better paid peers elsewhere. To my mind, the 'market' is irrespective of any individual view of value. As a manager it would be odd not to be informed by "market value" when setting a salary on a post. Personally I 'value' both technical, managerial and almost every other skill people can acquire. As a 'manager', when I recruit I try to recruit what I need to do the job for a price that the business is willing to pay. My apologies, you didn't say manager. However, specialist/manager whatever - what do they actually do? As I said I have experience of working with people who were tasked with doing what sounds suspiciously like what you have in mind, but since you haven't really said what they actually do, that may well be an assumption. In terms of who might fill that role - while it might not be a teacher, like Principals, it has to be unlikely in a publicly funded UK school, that non teachers would actually be considered. It's also a role that is unlikely to be seen as a full time It is very unusual that training isn't part of a project or programme delivery. When delivering cultural change in an organisation it tends to be the biggest single cost.

I think we have drifted off topic too much so have moved the discussion on IT Managers and stuff to : http://www.edugeek.net/forums/general-chat/168966-future-managers-schools-replacing-servers.html#post1446083].

Your original post clearly referred specifically to "IT Managers" in relation to salary, not SLT teams, teaching or general admin staff. I'm afraid I can only respond to what you actually write. If my responses don't correspond well with what was not written, that is not surprising (to me anyway). Again, I'm afraid I can only respond to what you actually wrote. The "telling retort" is just pointing out the fact that Schools do fill posts on the salaries they advertise, salaries you contend are low. Since they do fill posts, perhaps it is not a case of schools undervaluing skills, it just is the market value for those skills. I'm not sure what might be telling about that other than it tells exactly what it says. I understood "e-learning specialist" to be someone light on the kind of skills a Network Manager would have (detailed technical) , instead focusing on pedagogy so likely to come from qualified Teaching staff (my conclusion that you think them not up to this comes from your statement that Teachers "stick with what they know best and suits them"! - which is hardly a glowing reference to their ability to innovate). Perhaps you need to elaborate a little what you mean by an "e-learning manager", since it is not a well understood or common role at the moment? As a school, we have tried here with a Teacher leading on "IT across the curriculum" and it has so far been a bit nebulous and ineffective - at least as far as innovative use of IT in the classroom goes. IMO there is no question that the curriculum requirements are not the domain of an "IT manager", but we have more innovation happening with the subject domain experts (so within departments) than being driven by our (version of) an "e-learning manager". As a general observation, it's not lack of innovation that is difficult when it comes to effective IT use in schools, it is poor implementation (change/project management). Schools seem to be full of people that believe that if they say "we will do X" it will just magically happen. Even good ideas will fail to deliver value when poorly managed.

IT salaries in Schools have always seemed poor on average compared to the private sector. I'm not sure people here will recognise themselves as having poor technical skills (or thank you for implying they do) so perhaps schools just find that they can employ the people they need for the money they offer? I'd agree that the IT manager is on the way out but I disagree on the reasons why. Larger schools may want more from their managers - so you may find yourself (as I have) managing other functions (I manage Science and ADT technicians, our library and reprographics.). Smaller schools may find they can outsource network and core service support - there must be a market for preconfigured puppetted core services, a form of IAAS (on a local or remote iron) and such a thing would be easier to scale support for. It seems surprising that you predict the death of the IT manager when you (seem to) see the replacement as lacking competence or having the necessary breadth of knowledge. Schools might be a little blind to the importance of IT - but that only lasts until it starts to go wrong. Something that doesn't work for whatever reason, will not become the norm.

"unexpected" was perhaps a poor choice of word. I'd agree you can use risk management to some degree to plan for the "expected unexpected", but there are limits in a school environment building in proper contingency since we can't carry forward funds and a contingency pot would need to be large enough to cover replacement of (say) our SAN but might well not be used. I can't see senior management being terribly happy with an approach which maximises the money tied up in that way. Warranties would probably be more desirable in that sense since the expenditure is planned, effectively we offload the risk to the equipment suppliers and minimise the year to year expenditure. I'd like to think that here we operate in harness with the pedagogy experts setting out the requirements and the IT specialists then need to provide infrastructure to facilitate those. We did have a head of ICT who had a whole school role driving forward IT in the curriculum and who thought he should be in overall charge of IT. I think for it to work well, that person would have to have great breadth and depth of knowledge. I suspect that the bar to the future you predict is that there are just not many around with those skills and knowledge. We also deal with requirements which come from administration (and in our specific case by two businesses) and teaching staff are generally a little light on understanding the requirements there - so while I think that in a school the student outcomes are the most important consideration, there are other factors which will make a good working partnership between IT professionals and teachers the most common way to get the best value from IT in larger schools.

Yes. This year I was asked to half the IT budget and extending the replacement schedule is important to being able to do that. I haven't quite finished grappling with the consequences of the cuts yet, but right now I'm assuming our VM hosts will now be looking at 7 years in the rack - assuming we can increase spending again in two years. I think we have been quite fortunate over the last few years so we are in good shape to weather a bit of austerity on the infrastructure, somewhat less so when it comes to curriculum or staff machines!

Need and capability of what? I run rolling replacement for servers on a 5 year plan, not because the servers themselves are unfit at that point but because financial constraints mean that spreading the cost that way is nicely controlled. If I wait and replace only when they absolutely must be replaced, I potentially face a huge bill over a short time which we will then struggle to do. Senior management will also then become used to a lower spend per year and when I then unexpectedly pitch up asking for tens of thousands of pounds to replace kit, they may at that point have other priorities. Strategic financial planning necessarily involves planning replacement of kit - not quite irrespective of capability (it is an informed prediction on the equipment lifetime but like all long term predictions, it has quite high error/tolerance ), or in other words - the "need and capability" of the hardware may not be the ultimate deciding factor.

Some. We have redundancy built in both to storage and our hypervisors so we can lose some capacity before we need to make hard choices about which services we would run. We still maintain some servers on warranty (our storage nodes for example) simply because the cost of a quick replacement is potentially quite high and disruptive.

Ever wanted to know who exports what where or what they import? You need The Atlas of Economic Complexity.

We have one which is wall mounted, in a cage with an electric screen on the other wall. The projector has a long throw lens to cover the distance (largish hall, two badminton courts wide) which was probably the most expensive bit!

I've used paper tape and punched cards. I've written COBOL programs that relied on data coming from one tape spool while being written to another. I've felt the floor shudder as discs the size of washing machines span up to offer less storage than a cheap disposable mobile phone. All that technology lost in time, like tears...in...rain.

I picked it up on a whim and when I initially loaded it up I thought I'd made a mistake. I think the addiction set in 10 minutes after that and I'm now unable to lead a normal life.

"OMG the heads email went into my spam.. That's because the spam filter is agnostic to authority, it's not such an ass about the appellation as you." (could probably do some nice alliteration with "a" words with more thought)

#!/bin/bash LOGF="./bulkuseradd.log" USERLIST="./userlist" echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------" >> $LOGF ; date >> $LOGF; echo "-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------" >> $LOGF ; while read USER; do PASS=$(tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 # unix account # see -g and -G options to handle groups, see also usermod # new account is disabled by default; see man useradd # useradd -s /bin/false $USER ## alt: enabled unix account with password: EncryptedPASS=$( mkpasswd --hash=md5 $PASS ) sudo useradd -b /home -d /home/$USER -s /bin/bash -m -p $EncryptedPASS $ USER sudo mkdir /home/$USER/public_html sudo chmod 755 /home/$USER/public_html sudo chown $USER:$USER /home/$USER/public_html # output so you can tell users their password echo $USER $PASS; echo ; echo $USER $PASS >> $LOGF; echo >> $LOGF ; done < $USERLIST echo >> $LOGF; This is a bash script for an ubuntu LAMPS server to create users from a list of names supplied in a file (one username per line). The main loop processes one line at a time, generates a password, encrypts it and then runs commands to add the user, set up the home directory and directories for local user access via apache (the /~name thing). It then spits the info into a log file to send to the teacher.

I think there have been several updates - After Dark (ooo, pretty lights) and Snowfall (ooo, pretty ... err, snow), neither of which add much to gameplay. On the other hand, I still sit down thinking I could just spend a few minutes trying out x,y or z and damn if the hours don't just disappear!

I try to use the terms appropriately to communicate with people but as with most verbal communication, the key is to use words where there is a common mutual understanding - i.e. the most important thing is that the person I'm talking to understands what I am talking about even if that means I sometimes have to misuse words. That becomes more difficult when communicating in writing since the audience is unknown, so IMO it is better to use words appropriately and accurately (as much as is possible). Properly, the world wide web is a subset of internet infrastructure and communication and exists at the application layer. "the internet" would be the current set of all devices and infrastructure which can, configurations allowing, communicate from any one point to any other. It really starts to exist at the network and transport layer.

You can make your own tracker very cheaply and simply.

@SteveM555 - that is a cracking exposure. Really shows what you can do 'just' with a camera and a bit of tracking.

I'd consider fitting some appropriately sized fuses after the transformer on the 12V side. If there is a short the transformer might well deliver enough current to be a fire risk. Hot switching of high current DC can be problematic with arcing creating plasma between the contacts leading to high temperatures which inside a sealed relay can lead to the unit failing in interesting ways - ways which do not exclude the signal side coming into contact with the supply side. Looking for info on traffic lights using incandescent bulbs suggest they might be anywhere between 50W and 150W, the higher of which which would be pulling more than 10A - albeit @ 12V. It is one reason why opto isolators are used on some relay boards (the main reason would be to limit propagation of noise due to the switching - noise which can 'crash' controlling electronics leading to unexpected behaviour (including rapidly switching the contacts)). I'd agree, although I strongly suspect that unless you are a qualified electrician, you will be breaking the law.