ahunter

Applicant sent fingers crossed..

I'm definately going to put myself forward for this one. Had that sinking feeling of losing out to internal applicants on a lot of occasions in the past so it can be very off putting. I Live in Cheshire so it would be perfect for me and would save the commute to Manchester.

So does that mean that there was no suitable internal candidate first time around? or is this one still open to internal applicants too?

What is the actual job title? isn't this the same job that was advertised as "Network Support Officer" not so long ago?

You are absolutely bob on with this. It's just the luck of the draw on the day. A NM is a techie when all said and done and usually only has to line manager just one other person. It all depends on how SMT view the role and in my experience every school is very different on what they expect a NM to be. The real manager of the network/ICT in school's is usually SMT or the head of ICT. The NM role is to act as an advisor on a subject they know enough about to plan, develop, evaluate and maintain.

I'm not entirely sure that even specialist certs matter, especially in an education environment. They may help but it depends on the particular employer, interviewer and how they see a particular qualification.

Hi, Your not alone, strangely enough I have the same amount of experience and have too put in lots of time and effort at two different schools to enhance my skillset and experience. Picking up Cisco certs, Microsoft Certs etc along the way. I am still yet to land a NM position and It's not because I am lacking in any way (per feedback) it is just that I have been very unlucky and in some interviews the panel has been looking for something specific with regards to future plans etc. In response to your questions: 1) I wouldn't worry too much about qualifications, especially if you intend to stay in education, of course it's good to have them but most school's look at experience and your approach rather than how many qualifications you have. 2)If your a Senior Tech, you are pretty much already at the level of NM especially with regards to the technical side of the job. You just need to enhance the managerial aspect of things, all I can recommend is speak to your current boss and ask them if you could take on some additional management level roles to get some more experience for the future. It is very difficult to make that step up to NM even if your ready. My old school never had a NM just 2 techies, Junior and Senior. I was the Senior so was responsible for the overall network but it is difficult and it really varies from school to school how they see an ICT Manager. I think it's just the luck of the draw, if your being promoted to Senior Tech I would say your pretty much there. Senior Tech's in school's are sometimes referred to as Assistant ICT Manager's anyway... Hope this helps!

I have done that but in WGM we are only managing workstations themselves and not user groups. Do we have to be managing user groups for the preference file to apply?

Trying to set default printer settings, I have saved them on one machine as a preset and noticed there is a preference file saved for these settings. I want to roll this out to all clients as default.

Managed to resolve it, strangely enough it just picked up the drivers automatically after a few days. As a side issue, does anyone know if I create a preset for printer settings, if its possible to have it select automatically for all users that log on? Thanks.

Hi, We currently have a suite of 30+ Macs that we manage using WGM. We only manage the clients on a per machine basis and not per user. We have recently had some Xerox photocopiers installed and we would like to share the print queue with our clients so that they may print. It is critical for accounting reasons that we use the Xerox drivers with the printers on all clients as users need to be able to change some settings when they print. We have installed the drivers on all client machines and have added the printers to our management station and allocated the printers out. The printers show up correctly on the management client as we have manually selected the driver that will be used. When the printers are allocated they default to the Generic printer driver (Generic.ppd) I would like to change this and have the clients pick up the correct driver which is stored in Library/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources. I have altered the com.apple.mcxprinting preference file and updated the PPDURL to reflect this but they still pick up Generic.ppd. The only thing I can see which is confusing me is the Xerox drivers are in .gz format?? We are using Snow Leopard 10.6.8, any help would be fantastic. Cheers

To be honest, I think this is how a NM post should be advertised. After all a NM is an IT Technician first and foremost with supervisory and developmental duties. I have been to far too many NM interviews where they overlook the technical side of the position which is about 80% of the job tbh.

Thanks for all your help, I can confirm that it was a faulty SC9 module. I have replaced this with one from another board and problem solved You were right through after speaking to a few members of staff it would appear that the board was not fully tested from day one as it has "never" worked. Nice of them to wait so long to report it, it's about 3 years old lol.

Hi, We are currently experiencing a very odd problem with one of our Smartboards. I have ran through the elimination process with SMARTtech and nothing seems to add up. I'm wondering if anyone has had a similar issue. Here is what I have checked: 1. Light on the smartboard is a steady green light but the board does not respond to any touch from the pens or a finger 2. Pen tray seems to be operational, as when each pen is lifted the IR sensor lights up, if I reset the board the IR sensors on all trays light up as expected 3. USB cable seems to be functioning correctly, device manager and smart control panel both say the board is connected and working properly Buuuuuuuuuuuuut the board does not respond to any kind of touch at all. Got me completely stumped this one! Any help would be fantastic. Cheers Adam.

They are not completely phased out though yet as you can still sit the exams and certify as MCSA and MCSE aswell as the MCDST if you want it. The MCDST exam sets expire June 2011, the MCSA and MCSE exams are not currently due to expire.