Scuff

Give it to the art department to make sculptures out of

Tey're not too bad really. The students can be little bastards but they dont really seem to bothered about theft or vandalism. We work everyday during the holidays so we're always gonna be on site if anything goes wrong. Thing is, seeing as they're paying for room hire they might think they're paying for IT support as well if they're using our facilities, which they most certainly are not! We've got a huge summer project to run without running around to classroom because little Jimmy has unglugged the USB smartboard to plug in his data traveller.

I have found the Promethean boards very durable. Only concerns i have is: The corners have been known to be broken off, this exposes a weak part of the board. and if not delt with striaght away, if the corner is damaged, it damages the matirx, thus the mouse icon flicks around the pen when appled with the baord. I ahd this happen to a board, unfortunately it was not reported to me. Had to get a new baord. great thing is though promethean do refurbished boards at a smaller fraction of the cost. The Pens can become a little worse for wear i.e. the nibs wear down or the barrel button becomes stuck, usually due to been dropped. good thing is promethean supply replacement nibs free of charge. as for the pens chassi and barrel button breaking, if the board is under warranty, you can replace both pens free of charge. Other wise you can buy 10 peans for around £100; £10/pen. They sound good! I might have to have a play with one at some point. Trouble is we've kinda set a standard now with smartboard across the campus (about 70 boards). I really dont want to do this. Especially if they expect support them over the summer. The director of ICT said it was something he might consider as a last resort though. I guess we might have to go with it. Gonna go with that signing the board in and out thing on top as well. Cheers for the suggestions everyone!

Yeah I see your point. But they still need a board to teach on and theres more smartboard space on the wall than conventional whiteboard in a lot of places. So rather than have to arrange replacement of 20 whiteboards with only a few days notice in September I'd prefer to look at preventative measures rather than have to clean up after everyone.

Yeah we do. Trouble is they're difficult to get money out of and our commercial services manager doesn't like doing it because they're good customers apparently (crazy I know). I try to avoid moving them if I can in case they get damaged in transit, or thrown at the back of some dusty store room with a load of chairs piled on top of them.

We're pretty lucky cus all our stuff is DELL and they've got some sort of collection scheme they run which doesn't look too bad (although we havent needed to try it yet). We still havent planned what we're gonna do with eveything else (eek!). In the past we've left it outside maintenance and it... dissapears. We've called up charities in the past but they havent always been able to take everything we've had to give them and they rarely turn up when they say they will so its not really best to rely on them I find. Also one year a couple of volunteer workers helped themselves to a little more than was on offer.

Wow! We'd need about 20 of them just to do the rooms we hire out. We've got a board in pretty much every classroom. Mallets are cheap and we already have plenty in CDT.

Well we're gearing up for the summer again, and during the hols we have foreign language schools hiring our rooms off us (because we dont make enough money off the extortionate fees we charge). Its always been an issue in the past with outside teachers using our rooms without training on out interactive whiteboards. We get them drawn on, we've had holes in them, we get cables unplugged, pen trays ripped off, etc. So every year we try and come up with a solution to protect them from misuse. Last year we made laminated covers out of harboard and hung them over the whiteboards so they could be used with regular board pens without the surface being touched. However some teachers took off the boards and damaged the smartboards in the process. Also we've had an issue with storing the covers during the term time. This year I'm considering putting a layer of white paper over the board surface and covering the whole thing in self adhesive acetate, then giving the teachers washable markers again to write on the acetate. I was wondering if anyone else has had issues with damage to smartboards and what preventative measures you've taken.

Well we're gearing up for the summer again, and during the hols we have foreign language schools hiring our rooms off us (because we dont make enough money off the extortionate fees we charge). Its always been an issue in the past with outside teachers using our rooms without training on out interactive whiteboards. We get them drawn on, we've had holes in them, we get cables unplugged, pen trays ripped off, etc. So every year we try and come up with a solution to protect them from misuse. Last year we made laminated covers out of harboard and hung them over the whiteboards so they could be used with regular board pens without the surface being touched. However some teachers took off the boards and damaged the smartboards in the process. Also we've had an issue with storing the covers during the term time. This year I'm considering putting a layer of white paper over the board surface and covering the whole thing in self adhesive acetate, then giving the teachers washable markers again to write on the acetate. I was wondering if anyone else has had issues with damage to smartboards and what preventative measures you've taken.

I was asked this in the health and safety meeting last week. This is definately a job for the cleaners at our place. We've got 500 computers and a 4 person technical team. I really dont think that in the course of the day any of us have the time to go round doing a clean of the equipment. Then there would be a big debate as to where the money for cleaning wipes would come from, and how regularly it should be done. Termly? Weekly? Between every student that sits at the computer? Personally what I would like to see in place is a cleaner going round giving the keyboards and mice a quick clean every night with some anti-bacterial wipes. However most of them are scared to go near the computers as it is and I can just imagine the headmasters email regarding Lord Such and Such's dietary requirements for his visit next week getting accidentally deleted because he didn't lock his machine down before going home. Also we've got a suite of machines that dissapear down into Folio desks (worst installation ever) which probably wouldn't get done. On the whole though kids here are pretty clean. At least we dont have poo up the walls!