DrBeaker

As per this though... if SLT don't give you full backing and make the staff responsible, there's no accountability and punishment and therefore no point in that policy existing.... at all. If they forget their ID card, they can't get into areas of the school, use the copier, lunch machines etc. If they forget their keys, they can't get into the building, classroom etc. THAT ... affects teaching and learning. Why 'because it has a plug on it' attitude does the above end up being an IT problem and not a line management problem same as the first two are? THAT ... affects teaching and learning as well, but the attitude (generally) is O.h....IT will have a 'spare' in this case. As said - There is no such thing as a "spare" laptop charger, every laptop comes with one charger.

This - 110%. How does this end up an IT problem?

It is slightly humorous there seems to be a big dichotomy between the use of tech and wanting to use it e.g. "kids are on their phones all the time, we need to lock them away so they can concentrate in school" and "technology is the future, we need to embrace it" It seems like the education sector is kind of confused itself at the moment with all this.

£20,000 of taxpayers money on what is essentially a parenting and discipline problem? Salary for a TA or a good investment in some up-to-date IT kit otherwise.

Never seen problems with the IT caused by "classroom management" ever sorted, they're always swept under the rug. But what else would they waste the taxpayers money on then?

+ for PC's, tried low-power solutions before and they just didn't work properly. A Windows PC worked fine. Would you be willing to share any other details on how you've set them up in your comms cabs/cabling etc please?. That sounds like a great idea. +1 for cloud hosting, we've had ZERO issues with it and fast helpful UK-based support as well.

My 2-cents....from years of experience, trying different things, asking for help from SLT etc. Waste of time, you won't sort this sadly. CCTV - waste of time, waste of money. Even when found, culprits never punished. Time IT spent we could have put to better use. Eventually ripped out and chucked away. IT Checksheets - waste of time. Teachers never complete them. Information never accurate recorded as teachers can't be bothered. IT are always playing catch-up then delaying other vital work and support. Daily checks by IT - waste of limited and valuable IT time, even when issues found, staff/student culprits never punished. Time IT spent we could have put to better use. Rules list - waste of time, seen food in IT rooms, water on desk, keyboards etc. I've seen teachers let kids in an IT room whilst I was in there move stuff around, unplug, lean over and disconnect things. With aghast I told them this was THEIR JOB to make sure this didn't happen. Shoulders shrugged. This is 100% a classroom management problem under the 'professional standards' teachers are supposed to uphold. Ask yourselves WHY you don't this problem in the world of business - because they have to explain why that employee has done no work all day after deliberately vandalising equipment required to do their job. So in short - May the odds be ever in your favor and if you find a solution, bottle it and sell it to other schools!

Problem is this is a minefield: Liability of something happening to the devices - dodgy lead, charger, it blows up etc. Safeguarding issues right off the bat. Wider societal issues currently of they legitimately might not be able to / not allowed to charge it at home by their family due to the cost of electric (that was an eye-opener) IMO FWIT IT simply aren't trained to deal with these issues, which means we'll get it wrong. and this should be down to Pastoral/SLT which is why I guess ours look the other way for this and let them charge them in IT suites etc.

With all respect ... Off your nut. It was a fantastic product - over 5x years ago. Now it's clunky and unreliable. Their hardware = their problem. Your hardware = your problem. And they will MORE than happy to pass the buck to you/your IT team as soon as there is a SINGLE issue. We got told years ago - "you can install your own antivirus system on it". No dude, that's YOUR problem, it;s YOUR kit. That was years ago. It's gotten a lot worse now with them. Go with someone else who has a modern system. Which is one of many reasons why we left.

So when (I guess we all have) come across have staff (teaching, non-teaching etc) who don't or refuse to listen to IT advice, IT training etc - are those staff not causing inefficiencies in operations? e.g. constantly logging the same issue when it's down to a user problem/user issue? Those staff are costing us money in lost time, lost productivity etc Seeing IT as only a cost-centre is a fallacy, and very short-sighted thinking. Especially so when done by SLT and other school leadership staff such as SBM's who should know a lot better. IT is a force-multiplier - VoIP phone systems, parent comms apps, email, scan-to-email, faster systems, redundant systems with RAID, failover, UPS etc that keeps the school going despite a failure. I've yet to meet many people in education, even business who understand this - or that in 2025 if they have no IT they HAVE no (core) business functionality.

But the reality of a workplace when the students start in a workplace....is sitting at a computer/bank of computers all day if they're office-based

The ironic thing is with the 'progession' in tech in classrooms....some schools used to have an amp with multiple inputs, wired speakers and a socket for a 6.35mm jack for a microphone. So via the amp you could talk loudly to the whole room using the microphone. So subsequent "improvements" have removed this functionality. 🫤 In reality I think they were hardly used but still... Always thought what a good idea in case.

In which case raise it with SLT and they can sort it out with the company. That's why get they paid the big bucks, not IT.

Good point about the use of personal devices for 2FA for work accounts and then saying they can't use personal devices...to access work stuff. Schools can't have it both ways. Buy staff a device and have done with it. We see enough waste in education through damage and the latest trend. Spending money on a device for staff for work is a no-brainer for me in comparison

The unfortunate reality is the first time it fails (and there WILL be a first time) for anything IT have put in place, the blame game will start.

This is a buildings/BMS issue/estates issue by it's very nature ... I'm sure a lot of us see asked of IT time and time and time again. Yet again management teams looking for a technical solution to what is a non-technical problem. What about machines out of order, slow logins, users who haven't logged onto a computer yet? Why does the fire engine have bright lights and noisy sirens? Or does it email people to tell them get out the way. There are solutions but even when in full working order people are now conditioned to dismiss notifications straight away, then e.g .IT would potentially get blamed for that as well [emoji23]

True and I've found THIS... The biggest stumbling block to any digital signage system. E.g. But there's a bit of technical side to cooking too, to understand the fundamentals to actually understand the more complex things. Back to topic...Otherwise we found exporting/savings files as JPGs and MP4s was the easiest way of doing it. But again not to be that person...but it's nearly 2025, so 30x years of the start menu in windows. So the excuse from staff of not having basic computer skills is wearing a bit thin after all these years when a lot of complexity behind the systems has been dumbed down. E.g. these people can take a photo on a phone and upload it to socials media etc but "can't do this (upload and image) as it's too complex". Come on dudes, 🫤 [emoji849]

They do charge for hosted, of course. It's NOTHING compared to the money I see wasted in schools and delivers a high quality service. You can self-host but there's no support apart from yourself.

For years and years we were able to purchase the same standard and brand of various IT bits, cables etc from one supplier. They were cheap enough, good quality and readily available so most times I went with them for cost, reliability etc and ordered quite a few of everything every time. Did the same again and again and again. It worked...and so yeah made perfect sense to me. Change in policies and processes etc means we can't do that anymore ... So now everytime a random supplier or random type of cable is purchased.... Thereby affecting the quality control and standards we'd worked soooo hard to establish in the first place. But as you say.... "No trust in IT personnel".

To me the logic is you've provided the tool (the computer) for them to do their job. If the system isn't working for you (IT support) as a system/function, then you should have the power to change it. E.g. you now require scheduling on your system and the current solution is no longer meeting your needs. So say you need to change it otherwise they can update it themselves. So they should update it otherwise do you end up doing THEIR job for them? Would you stick up an old fashioned hand made poster or would that be them? A lot of IT involves computers being used for previous manual processes to make things faster, more efficient, more reliable and easier to do. NOT for IT support ending up doing the work for them. THIS is often the cause of lots of problems, confusion and issues in this sector. I have no vested interest in this but spent a LOT of time researching into digital signage and every time it came back to Xibo because of the power and relative flexibility of the platform compared to others (and lower cost) The GUI is not the easiest. But set it up with scheduling and forget it. You can have windows players or android units etc. We went with the hosted cloud and have not regretted it once.

Setup a layout for the catering manager to update and done. Their content, their responsibility. That task shouldn't ever become an IT job. Xibo is excellent for this. Although their GUI still needs a lot of work but their cloud CMS has been brilliant and yet to fail me.

Never really had a positive experience with Cunninghams and their reval units were a horrible mess you didn't want to touch. LiveRegister once setup actually works quite well and their support is pretty good in my book. However they'll try to pass the buck at times back to local IT support to sort out issues which are clearly issues with their machines, especially their reval units. In reality we have to face that there's no money in this for any company to make a profit so a lot of systems and support are pretty basic or pretty rubbish implementations by the companies to save money.

Anti-stalking laws for one I'd guess. How do you know someone at the school is all above board and not potentially misusing the tracking technology? Company property; tracking only exists to the point of legitimate use not tracking it all over the country etc. E.g. employers already take the mick with expecting staff to use their personal mobile phones for MFA for work purposes for example.

1) There's an issue with the legality of tracking something and not telling anyone though. 2) Slippery slope again with IT being "helpful" but something that's not our job, eventually BECOMES part of your job.

Not IT related, not really an IT problem. Tell them they're working with adults who should be responsible and look after things, especially teachers ... who've had the 5.5% payrise. Otherwise it'll be zero trust and you invest in massive expensive lockers with tags, barcodes etc to log stuff in and out. Or people could you know...just be responsible. However I've found loans when I lockout your AD account until you return my equipment worked fairly reliably and quickly lol