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Have a look at this: http://www2.smarttech.com/kbdoc/1418 I found it whilst trying to sort out something completely different about a poxy fartboard.

Very interesting this. My job spec isn't entirely different to this and i've planned and executed the replacement of over 100 desktops and three servers in the past year, including all the infrastructure that goes along with it, as well as day-to-day support. What is interesting is the different values placed on the jobs - i'm on just over a third of the Barnet Academy salary and not in a much more economic place to live. It amazes me that state schools can have such massively differing values for what is in effect the same post, particularly after we've been through some "single status" rubbish that meant we were supposed to get fairer pay (the result of which was that i lost another £500 pa).

I think Oldfield Girls School, Bath currently have a techy job going, but it looks like it involves a bit of LSAing as well.

Maybe i'm being cynical, but the Group Director post doesn't actually seem to have a lot of requirements to it. I recall a post at Lewes which was advertised on here a while back which had a list of requirements (or desireables) as long as my arms and was offering £11k. Perhaps that is whats wrong with the sector.

Having been short of time to build a boxes for applications at school, I've bought several PCs from BigPockets in recent months, both for personal and work, all of which have been well built and worked straight out of the box. Their high end stuff is a bit pricey, but the lower spec stuff is a pretty good bargain. Having had a Dell machine on evaluation alongside a Viglen, an HP, a BigPockets tower and a local pc shop one, i would never *ever* buy a Dell. The bloody thing started squeaking and squealing at me every time it was booted it up after i took the case off to see what was inside and was performing well below what it should have been doing for the supposed spec it was. There were also far too many specialised parts inside for my liking. The only slight saving grace it had was not being as crap as the one built by a local company whom a worrying number of schools recommend. There was little to choose between the HP and Viglen boxes, both being similar in price and performance.

It is possible to save real audio streams from Listen Again for practically all national BBC programmes, then convert them to whatever you need for further use. The software i use is NetTransport, but there are others available out there.

I don't have a great deal of time for Gates, but Jobs is an absolute arse. The man wasn't a problem when he was content making his own, specialist IT equipment, but the poor performing, badly constructed and expensive crApple music player and its associated software is just plain evil. If Gates had cornered the market like this, he would have been strung up by the balls years ago, yet for Jobs and Apple to do it is acceptable, even applauded for bringing digital music to the masses. The fact that in the same move, he has been responsible for thousands of people losing their jobs as record shops worldwide get pushed out of the market doesn't seem to matter which is a personal bugbear of mine - i used to be able to visit about 20 proper record shops within a ten mile radius of home, now i have two HMVs (neither of which stock vinyl) and one Virgin. All the indepents have been pushed out of business. I now have to order records from a mail order firm in Leeds. FFS. Anyone who buys an ipod is a fashion victim. There are better value for money players out there which don't tie you in to itunes. In many cases you can buy copies of CDs for less than they are on itunes. That is ridiculous. And the media should be thoroughly ashamed of itself for promoting it through anal "Whats on my ipod" features. .....AAAAAND RELAX.....

Morning all, Does anyone here use a smartcard or magnetic card registration system with SIMS? We're looking at using something like this for registering sixth form attendance and i'd really appreciate any feedback on systems currently in use. The only suppliers i have come across so far is EasyTrace and i'm currently working on a specification for the system to get a price for it. Cheers.

Thanks for all the feedback, and especially to sylv3r for the pdf.

We're thinking about trying to set up a facility in the ICT office to provide our students with basic IT consumables - memory sticks, CDRs, DVRs, headphones - that sort of thing, and have met with a lot of opposition from a certain member of SMT who insists that we would be breaking VAT rules by doing so because the equipment must be specificially for educational purposes only. I'm sure other schools must have similar facilities - i've already found others that sell blank paper, mp3 players and all sorts of stuff which could be used for things other than education. What do the rest of you do in this respect?

Of course it is WiFi thats making the kids disruptive! It has nothing to do with the dozen cans of Red Bull they're drinking before they go into the class!

Securus is very much about setting it up to suit your circumstances. Setting up a custom list of blacklisted words or phrases which directly affect you the most is the best way to do this, give these high severity scores, then sort by phrase severity in the view list.

We've disabled PC locking for students, otherwise you'd go in to a computer room at the start of a lesson after Year 11 had been in there and find 27 locked PCs.

Our kids know that writing a naughty word into Word or Excel will get it logged. My predecessor used to drag every child into the office who did this, but personally unless it is being used in a derogatory way towards somebody else, i can't see the point. It tends to be mainly other kids doing it whilst their 'friends' aren't at the computer anyway.

I'm another one with very wide tastes. Current favourites are: Sebastian Tellier, David Guetta, Maximo Park, Panic at the Disco, Apoptygma Berzerk, Royksopp, Fettes Brot, Jan Delay, Jack Penate, Panic Number and Switches. My random playlists quite often upset the rest of the office...

We deal only with the printers, the photocopiers get done by Reprographics. We tend to get through 2-3 reams on an average day. However for a period of about two months just before Easter we ran out of paper completely and after the initial moans, it was surpising how quiet it went. We have a severe problem of staff not only wanting all work printed out, but them also getting multiple drafts of it printed out. Most of it is still shockingly bad anyway, but i'll resist another one of my whinges about spelling and grammar...

We have an (almost) blanket policy of having IT rooms barred from use as registration rooms. The one which does have a registration group in it sees an awful lot of mouse balls go missing, which certain cretins love throwing at each other. Its also worth investigating getting some cheap PC based CCTV - we've only invested about £700 in ours and have about eight cameras all streaming to HDD from motion sensitive cameras. It has already paid for two power sockets to be replaced in the sixth form room. I'm surprised a manufacturer hasn't come up with some 'brat proof' mice and keyboards yet.... Anyone want to accompany me on the next series of Dragons Den?

I'm with Demon on the Home Office package, but only have been for about a month having upgraded from Dial-up because BT killed off the surftime package. First impressions are very good. Connection speed is 2.2 to 2.7 mbps, which is double what anyone else in the village has told me they're getting (one through Sky and one through Tiscali) and the downloads seem to be flat out at about 265-275k/s. The only drawbacks i have found are occasional disconnecting when i'm idle, but Demon dial-up did this as well. Even better is the weeks worth of BBC Radio listen agains downloads in just over an hour instead of taking all weekend at 5k/s Its setting me back £25 per month, but i get a static IP, webspace, email and the like. The upgrade from dialup was seamless too.

I see, i see. I get referred to by all the kids as "Andy on the bus" anyway. It still has its odd outages, but Mono is still going and i've now been a user for over ten years. And i still don't get half the jokes :?

Morning all, I'm Andy, the IT Systems Manager at Culverhay School in Bath. This is my first job working at a school, having spent the past four years until September 06 working for a bus company. I found edugeek.net whilst searching for... actually, i'd better not say! My main conference/support for IT matters that we don't have support contracts for is Monochrome (mono.org), but its good to have an alternative which supports the working environment too.

What a thread to make a debut on... Are with the only IT office with an account down at the local cash and carry for confectionery? Current favourites are: Creme Eggs, Chomps, Space Raiders (although i can't stand them), Sherbet Fountains, Sherbet DibDabs, Flying Saucers and about five different flavours of cabley things, by far the best of which is apple. There definitely isn't as much Sherbet in the fountains as there used to be.