Jiser

I see many forms of wasting money every day at school. Why not start in your work place?

Some of my opinions: My school we have a manager and two technicians. One who has a different role. Manager links in with SMT and is line managed (or we as a team) by assistant head teacher who is part of the SMT. Though as in most organizations? we can approach anyone in the SMT if we need to (and so should be able to) for whatever reason. We have autonomy as a separate team/unit as such. Which works well IMO if you have people in the team who actually are creative, innovative, know their stuff and work hard. No point of being micro managed by senior leaders unless concerns are had. We also operate separately from the I.C.T Teaching department. In previous jobs In I.T. I was never micro managed either and again works well. Previous schools I worked directly with for example headteacher when big choices needed to be made but this was a junior school - so not exactly big with 45 comps. Every organization needs a leader, a single person. So within a network support team one should have a manager to make the decisions and then the minions to carry out the work. Easy. The more levels of people you have, the more titles and bs, the less effective it gets. Why not look at other schools for best practice? Employ someone who has taken I.T. forward in schools. In terms of software, schools should be at the forefront of technology (Within reason) as we are providing a service to the public who will be going in to the workforce. They should be aware of all whats available. Open source software - Why not utilize it? For example Windows 7/ Office 2007 might be in business in a few years time, students should have access to this as they could be using it when they leave. Of course though budgets and circumstances don't always allow for that.

How have those who have sharepoint intergrated email in sharepoint for students?

Just keep looking every day! Imagine its quite hard in Devon if your in the more rural of locations. Get some I.T. certs under your belt to make you look better.

Back to pay issues again on edugeek !! End of the day not everyone can do an I.T. technical job, this isn't going to change any time soon. Yet this isn't reflect in schools pay towards technical staff - This won't change either. There still seems to be a large difference in places all over the country paying different levels. Unfortunately people are gonna just hop about which it seems you need to do nowa days anyway to get anywhere in life, even in the economic climate of doom and gloom. So surely like it or lump it? This is my opinion: Trainee techs shud be on 15-18k depending on prior qualifications/experience? Surely they should be on slightly more than the average Tesco worker or bar worker. A tech with experience/knows what their doing should be on at least the same level of pay as an NQT 20k with pay going up every year to a certain level - 25k ? based on responsibilities. Network Managers 25k - 40k depending on responsibilities, scale of network, staff managed + experience. Generally speaking, how does a highly trained technical member of staff, one with experience or good technical knowledge come under a fresh graduate who came str8 from uni and then back to school and yet is earning more than them?

Do an appren if you can. At 22 or w/e when you finish you can do a degree if you want or w/e with over like 6 years potential experiance and industry standard quals.

Thats what I was on at one point. Its a joke! Considering you get people str8 out of college who go to 1st line on 18k. Why are you doing this job? Unless there was nothing else or you have a specific reason? Put it this way - People during my placement year at Uni were on 15k and that was with no experience at all apart from 2 years at uni which in most cases amounts to buger all.

It does suck bad for us youngens. I seriously recommend you try to get into a graduate scheme - why? Decent money, career opportunities and generally most offer a good all round package + a change of scenery/social life. It seems to be alot of peopLe I know have had great social lives just simply renting with a bunch of other people and meeting their mates etc. Anyway I barely survive on what I am on and I live with my parents. You need to be on at least 20 k + to be able to rent and live a basic level of existence. No way would you get a mortgage on 20 k either.

Join RM and you will get a much better deal on everything if your single and can move about that is. All you gotta do is look on their career section. Don't think it will be enforced witch in the other schools which they haven't mentioned for a while longer yet. Once they finished with the rubbish schools they will move on to everyone else. But be time that happens BSF will be cancelled - no doubt.

I didn't know up there BSF was happening? I thought it was just the bad schools around Poole and Bournemouth - well for this wave anyway .

MM had a problem with no clients showing. Deleted susid key in registry. Seemed to work then. Might have 'old' one still..

Two full time and me term time only. Manage fine. about 650 computer/laptop

Yeh quite alot like me tbh. Same situation, although my colleagues sound a bit more 'fun' than yours. Have you not looked at some sort of graduate scheme? There are plenty out there. Good money, good prospects and I imagine generally a good social life. There are also foreign work you could do such as internships in NYC, Aus, Europe. Working in a school as a techy or even a teacher in alot of places there won't always be chances for good progression/social life. Ideally you want somewhere where there will be people of similar age and experience + opportunities/money - schools, thats not gonna happen.

I would definately do it. Not to far north tho as in Dorset.

Perhaps. Still get a monkey though. Degree is for life and there are nice grad schemes about which pay hell of alot and have defined career structure. I agree with the apprenticeship scheme g0ood idea. Should include professional I.T. quals training with it though.

Do it on the cheap, easy labour to do the rubbish jobs - like toner changes and imaging. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

Qualification/training Ideas: 1) MCSE or 2008 stuff 2) ITIL 3) SWIS Level 3 Diploma 4) A+ / N+ 5) Relevant MIS qualification/study

Yey just above 3.50 an hour. Still I bet it has loads of applications.

Lol that wud be nice. Would actually keep me around in eduaction if scales were like that - same for other techs as well I imagine. A good idea also to keep around trained techs rather than them leaving for new places/industry.

Sound qualified to me, good luck. Just make sure you read up on the forums about common questions in Interview - for example, prioritisation of jobs/what would you do if child did a/b/c and so on. Also be aware of BSF in your local area and how any job might change soon. Also the lack of career development/future progession in many schools for I.T. support staff unless your working for a big outsourcing company like RM.

Lilly allan makes bad music. They make enough music as it is. Should be charging way less specially on Itunes. End of the day due to file sharing they made more money than they wud have without it.

Yeh just looking at actual windows 7, playing about etc and looking at technet.

Nice that would be good for me with a few more years experience under the belt. Cr*p website.

3 techs and 1 network manager for a school with 635 students. Seems a bit to much. Though as you say Witch some took on the teaching.

IMO you don't need more than 1 tech per 250-300 comps. Though that depends on how well run the network is and what other duties may be required e.g. Website/Intranet/VLE