HappyAdmin

Quite interesting, this. I'm term time + 5 days, and I love that, as it means I get some time with my children, and I'm not about to give it up - but if I'm being honest, I could do with more time here in the holidays, for all of the reasons stated above. (Don't tell my bursar!) If they are really looking to cut you down, a left field suggestion might be that you ask to do the PAT testing - I think you just need a 1 day course and a piece of equipment for a couple of £100s. That might let you keep your full year contract, but give the school the ability to get that disruptive job done during the holidays, with some flexibility in when you do it, and when you work on other things being an advantage to the business manager also. Just an idea in case it is useful. Good luck!

Very interesting to hear people's varied experiences. I've worked in a small IT support company (working for schools and businesses) and as a teacher (both secondary and primary at different times) and I'm LOVING being in school IT. I feel I have enough interest and autonomy to keep me stimulated, but expectations are that I will do my best with what is available, rather than that I will work every hour God sends. And I'm appreciated as teachers know I do work hard for them, and that they couldn't do what I do (just as I wasn't great at what they do...) As George of the Jungle puts it, "Just lucky I guess!"

I've had a similar letter regarding this piece of software on behalf of another authority. Personally, I'm pretty happy to install it as: * the provider are a Capita Premier Partner (one of only 3, I think - and I have checked on the Capita site, not just read the letter) so hopefully won't mess up SIMS * when I rang the technical contact given in our letter the phone was answered immediately by a person who could answer my question (another very good sign) * this is going to save one of our staff a little time every day reporting some data over the phone. I've checked with SLT and they are happy from a data/child protection viewpoint. I'm going to install it next week. Ben

I've got a couple of Zoostorm laptops here (bought by my predecessor.) They haven't lasted well - mine had pretty light use and died totally at about 2 years old (I think that age is about right.) The ones I have don't "feel" right, either. I'm perfectly happy with their desktops, but I wouldn't buy more of their laptops in a hurry. Just my 2p worth.

Given that it is a Windows server, it probably wasn't - they do things in unexpected ways, or not at all, or repeatedly. If it is any consolation, it too me seemingly endless messing about to get them installed. Worth it in the end, though :-)

For me they seem to show up under Computer Configuration - Policies - Administrative Templates: Policy defnitions (ADMX files) retrieved from the local machine - Google - Google Chrome Does that help at all? I've certainly found them quite useful - setting home page, blacklisting some proxy apps, and a couple of other tweaks. Ben

There are a set of Google Chrome group policies which you can download from Google and install on your server, one of which is to make it take over as the default browser - this won't work until it is run for the first time, however. This is good enough for my needs at the moment. Ben

Thanks everyone - some really helpful ideas. Mako, especially appreciate what you have there as those external "cables and connectors" problems are so common, are super-easy to set up, yet require being methodical in your problem solving. And the prioritisation talk-through is a great idea, too.

@kennysarmy - hopefully we'll be interviewing more than 1. @ Patrick - sounds like a good start (there will be a formal interview as well), but I do like the idea of a real task, too. Some people shine at doing something who don't interview so well, if nothing else. (And others can talk the talk, but...) Thanks for such quick responses!

Hi, I'm shortly going to have to set a technical task for an interview for an IT Technician (who will be my number 2 in a small high school.) I've never had to do this before - does anyone with any experience of this have an suggestions? I'm more interested in technical aptitude and general attitude than whether they know lots of Windows server procedures. Any thoughts? Thanks, Ben

FULL TIME – ICT TECHNICIAN 37 Hours per week term time + 5 days inset + 5 days to be agreed Hours – 7.45am – 4.00pm (Mon – Thursday) 7.45am – 3.30pm (Friday) Grade 4 scp 13-17 (£15941 - £17372 pro rata) To support the use of ICT, maintain ICT software, hardware and related equipment to ensure learning outcomes are maximised. Further details and application forms are available by visiting our website at http://wchs.co/information/current-vacancies

Having taken over here about 6 months ago, and having been fortunate enough to have a short overlap with my predecessor during which I was able to ask many questions and make copious notes, I'd say that the most important things are passwords (which you clearly have covered) and "foibles." All those weird, non-standard things that resulted from a peculiar set of circumstances requiring something weird to be done - like the licence manager for a piece of software that requires a certain server to have a user logged in for that software to work anywhere in the school because it won't run as a service... For all the standard stuff the documentation is helpful, for the weird, site-specific things it is a lifesaver! Good for you for doing this!

Hi, I haven't used FOG yet (strongly considering it as the current WDS solution seems very broken) but I have lots of past experience with Linux servers, and the issue you have "smells" like permissions on the folder that FOG is trying to write to. I may well be barking up the wrong tree, but it might be worth checking out. Ben

Hi, Did you get anywhere with this? I'm in a similar position. I can push the Pixlr Editor app out to Chromebooks and signed-in Chrome, but not automatically link it to Drive, which is somewhat frustrating. Ben