pallen

I can see why 2 months may be needed for some jobs in a school (to cover the length of terms etc) but really 2 months is a bit long. I need to work 1 months notice. If they are giving you more money, surely it should be a significant amount to cover the jobs you wont be able to take up due to the extra notice you'll have to give? I thought the standard was 1 month, but can anyone confirm this?

I think you need to remember that you can say no. I have been employed as a technician but am doing the job a NM. My contract has still to be changed to recognise this and this has now being going on 9 months and still does not look likely to be changed. My response is now, if your not recognising what i do, I'm not going to bust a gut to do anything and everything that is thrown my way. I'm not really stressed, just frustrated that schools dont acknowledge the jobs that IT professional do in schools. If it was an organisation there would be times when the workload increased that temp staff are taken on. It doesn't seem the case in schools, who also dont recognise that the job continually grows year after year. At the end of the day your health is more important than any job. Check out your contract again and see which jobs are deemed important and drop any others to the lowest priority. If you are still unable to cope due to the amount of work that needs to be done, it’s up to SMT to address this issue, not you to work longer.

One question would be why haven't they asked the existing ICT Management team to do this report? If it is to identify "new roles" then surely the SMT know what new roles they are considering for this new structure. It is good that you are involved in so much as you know exactly what you do day in, day out. One thing to remember to do though is identify each individual role and appropriate responsibilities. Otherwise like many of us here, your job is IT Technician with actual responsibilities of the Network Manager.

Take the Job. I had great difficulty getting any decent IT job when I finished Uni simply because I couldn't back up the theory with any experience. If you can get the company to pay to continue your education in IT then even better. After a few years you will have both experience and qualifications and you will be in a stronger position than those coming straight from education. The alternative is go to uni and have fun but come out with no money. Great times though

Why do you need this document? I dont see why you need to reassure people. We are all professionals and as such our job concerns what is stored on the network. As a professional I would only look at someones files if i thought there was a reason too and not just because I could. If you want a policy written to cover you for any reason then that is a different matter. Our acceptable use policy states that the network is provided by the school for school work. As such anything stored on it can be checked for content. I'm sure this subject has been covered somewhere on here before and I'm sure someone will point it out?

Are you doing a presentation, or is it for display purposes? If you've been asked to do a presentation, cant you use whatever software you want? Surely you would do a better job using software you are familiar with rather than testing out new software to to make it look "swanky"?

As poeple have said, if you are able to take your holidays all year round, then a mimimum level of support should be provided all year round. However, if you are only able to take your holidays in school holidays then I would be checking my contract. I think it is unreasonable to expect someone in all year round but only provide a limited period when you can take your holidays.

OK, I have been asked to look at a CD with Photos on which contain pictures that do not display. Some of the photos taken will show fine and the icons for all the files are there but some do not show the image when opened. The memory card has been formatted and used again before they realised that not all the pictures had been downloaded ok. Does anyone know any good free software I could run to see if it will restore these files? The only thing I can think of is taking it into a camera shop to see if they can sort it out, but obviously free is better Any ideas welcome...

We have a policy here that covers anything connecting to our network. The security settings are the same, restricted access to install programs and use floppys etc. I inform the staff who are interested in buying laptops that they will have the same restrictions as desktop PC but with the ability to be used anywhere in the school. There are very few staff who need a laptop in order to be able to work at home and continue in school. Those who do work at home do so by email or bring it in on a USB pen. It may be different for larger schools who have a team of IT support, but here there is only me, and I dont have the time to check what is installed on laptops that i do not controll. If the teacher wants local access to it, it does not go on the network and comes under their controll when it comes to licenses etc. If there is a problem, it will be remiaged with the software it had on it when it was purchased. Any other software will only go on if it comes with licenses.

Just a quick question, why do you need the accessories on the start menu? I have been looking into setting up a redirected start menu, but only want to show the programs list and nothing else. If there is a problem with this can someone enlighten me as I was hoping to get it ready for next week

Sorry but it was cack. I watched the first 2 episodes, in the first one a couple things made me laugh, but the second one I ended up switching off as it was too painfull to watch. I agree with the previous post, old jokes and bad characters. Unless of course it vastly improved after the second episode?

It sounds to me like you need a policy written up for your school where the type of content is agreed upon before uploading. If you are unsure about the content you are uploading then dont....you can always add it at a later date if it is required. It may be worth sitting with the Head/SMT to decide exactly what you want your website to do. Bus routes etc are usefull for parents as is term dates, trips etc, but as people have said you dont need to post things just because you can. As for how I would maintain it...If it is going to be you, then I would go with what you are confortable with. If this is manually checking accounts for each request then do that, be aware though that if your website takes off and everyone wants an account it could be very boring for you to check hundreds of accounts. You may also want to think about every September when you get another 100+ accounts to add. You have stated that you are a teacher, how will this affect your teaching? How will you do the updating? As for Moodle, if you set it up internaly you will only be able to use it on your network, by your network users. IF you wish to publish documents for use at home it will need to sit on your web server, or be externally hosted. We have ours externally hosted and this allows staff to upload worksheets and resources for pupils to use outside of school. Some of the English Dept documents would have run to over hundreds of pages but can easliy uploaded to our VLE and then students can pick out the relevant information. Although not all teachers were convinced at the start, the fact that the alot of work was already on our network meant that teachers did not have to re-do any work. It was possible to create their department section (eg english) and upload all their work into the relevent sections and inform the pupils. Eg you can now find the poem under "School VLE>English>Poems". It is explained to all staff that when they are uploading work they need to check Copyright and appropriateness etc.

Here we give pupils usernames and passwords when they arrive in year 7. There is an inductory day where rules of the school is explained to them and codes of conduct expected. This year we are going to promote the use of our network and Internet rules. This has generally been done by the form tutor but can be overlooked as they do not always understand the importance. This year our IT teachers are going to have the induction day to give usernames and passwords to all new pupils. These are generated by me(IT Technician) and are set to never expire. The pupils can then keep them safely in their homework books.(The reason I do this was due to the large amount of pupils who "forgot" their passwords.) Each pupil has their own email and e-learning account created from a batch file I created. This is then used to bulk create accounts. They are shown how to log on and use the systems and that they MUST inform me if they think someone has used their account so I can change the password. Account protection – you need to log into virtually everything on the net these days, I wouldn’t worry about this feature putting people off. If the content is good, people will log in to use it. As for people using accounts left logged on, Educate people that they are responsible for their own account, logging off at the end of their session is a must for all online accounts. Public areas - We have general information for the public such as contact details etc, but so far we have not developed our website beyond this. Any parent wishing to see what is on our website will need to log on with their child and their account to access what our pupils can. This may be developed in the future but at the moment no one is willing to take on this role.

Admin Tools>Computer Management > Disk management

I'm guessing this is more the straw that borke the camals back? People seem to be saying that adding an exchange server is not a full time job, but I'm guessing that there have been many jobs that have been added over time, under the guise of "it's software so you support it". I would suggest that you write everything you do down, compare it with your job spec and flag any areas that are vastly outdated. This may help those that are less IT literate understand what it is you do. If you have progressed from Technician to Network Manager you should have had a new contract. It sounds like this has never been addressed and more work has just been added.

The problem is that if people dont know enough about IT, then they could request you install and look after anything. I am in a similar situation here were more and more software is requested with no extra change in contract status (or pay) However it needs to be made clear that the management of ANY extra software needs to be included in your contract unless the management of other things are being removed. I have started refusing to look after software if it is not reflected in my pay/contract. It may not cause you much extra work (after initial setting up) but ultimately it will be you who is responsible if anything goes wrong. This should be reflected in your contract and I would stick to your guns.

I have only spoken to the support worker who currently works with her, and will be staying with her through our school also. I believe she is completely blind but has been working with a laptop for a number of years and is very confident on using it (Provided by county - which will be staying with her). At the moment there are stickers on the keypad to identify certain keys so it makes typing easier. The only software that she uses is HAL but the only work she uses the laptop for is Word processing. When she comes into our school the work that she will be needing to do will be more diverse than primary and as a result I have been asked to look into how to integrate her laptop into our network. I have been told that she can use the internet but with the support working copying the text from websites into Word or HAL reads everything on the webpage. At the moment she does not move around her school and can print via 2 printer - one a brail printer. When she comes here she will be taking the laptop into every lesson so it may mean there needs to be a central point where they need to go to print out. As I have never had to do this I was after some info from people who already have a system in place so thanks for the feedback guys. Pete

We are set to have a blind pupil start school next september. Currently she has a stand alone laptop with HAL which converts text into spoken words. I have been told there is a possibility that she could use a brail keyboard for inputting and outputting work. Although we do have some special needs children in our school, we have never had to provide any special equipment for a blind pupil. Has anyone got any experience with specific hardware/software that can be used by a blind user and how it integrates with your network? I'm after general advice here as i've never looked into it before and need to get something setup over the summer. Thanks

Our AUP states that all the equipment in school is for education use only. That means that if the teacher wants to use our network/internet connection, they have the same restrictions as our desktop PCs. If they want to use "their" laptop at home then I do not support/install software etc. It is then their responsibility for AV licences etc. If they come to me they will be returned to the state that they recieved them in. The school provides this equipment and staff use it in accordance to the school AUP.

Reboot the server and IE7 ADM should be applied then.

Well I have had 2 exact same calls, using the same number requesting the same thing and been transferred to india and once to scotland. After 30 mins on the phone to someone in India trying to explain that I needed a new monitor as there was no display I was still ansering the same questions. It seems there is a procedure which must be followed regardless of the information you provide. After hanging up and calling back 5 mins later, I was put through to a scottish guy who I then gave the same information to be told " a new monitor will be sent in the morning"....It seems to me it all depends on who you speak to regardless of firm. There are good and bad empoloyees in every organization.

You could also try the settings on the actual printer. If it is requesting letter as the paper size you should be able to overide it to accept A4 instead. You should able to make this the default setting so if anyone prints out using a letter sized document it will still print out using A4. This also helps for when pupils select Letter sized documents using Wizards etc.

" - if the job is that quick, it's not really worth recording. imho" But what about all the jobs you get when you walk into a class such as "while your here..." A simple job often turns into 3-4 simple jobs which when added together takes time. Not filling in a time sheet would end up showing hours of no work over weeks. Filling in time sheets you double the time spent on simple jobs and cut down your time on the more imporatant ones. To be honest I dont have a problem either way of filling in time sheets. But I dont think they give a true refection of the work you do. Poeple dont fully understand what we do anyway. If your busy your not going to do it straight away, it will be done from memory and the hours added up to make your full day.

How about by ensuring that everything that has a plug in it is working? On top of maintenance for all the network (and everything else) I also teach the teachers how to use the new software (regardless of whether I've used it before or not). Teach the teachers how to use exisiting software for those who do not use it. Both then allow the teachers to progress pupils learning. ANd oh yes, I also show pupils how to do certain tasks that allow them to continue with their coursework. So to sum up I would say an IT team supports pupils learning by both direct and indirect teaching and support for all the equipment that they use. I'm sure there are more ways but I'm too tired to think about them now

Ultimately there is not a lot you can do. You can advise staff to follow your guidelines, but in the end unless you do it for them, you cannot guarentee that it will happen. All information for staff only is stored on the network where pupils do not have access. However this does not stop staff leaving a workstation logged on when they walk away. There has to be some level of trust where any sensitive information will be looked after accordingly. In my view leaving a disk lying around with confidential info on it is no different to leaving hard copies lying around. It is much better to educate the staff to be carefull when moving work around.