GrumbleDook

Afternoon all. As part of my shortlisting for the Naace ICT Impact Award for Technical Support Service Impact (a heck of a lot of which is down to stuff through EduGeek), I am on a blatant trawl through threads which show where my advice / guidance / instruction has been beneficial to others, and where possible it has had an impact of the tech used for learning. If I could plead with members to wrack their brains with anything they would like to contribute it would be appreciated. Oh yes ... and the deadline is CoP tomorrow. One illustrious person has already said, "Tony, he's a tiger, nuff said!" ... so I think we can consider that aspect covered

No, but have a feeling I will need to pick up some basics. Managed to avoid it when spending time with friends in N Wales over the years though ....

Retention of any information is based not on a specific policy for a system, but on the retention schedule for that information (eg HR, finance, SEN, etc). Some companies / bodies will archive / retain data based on that (eg retain all emails for 15 years) but others will ask staff to manually archive the data (eg save a copy of mail messages into particular folders on their network shares, print off hard copies of mail messages), or to ensure that it is put into a different system which also records the origin of the data. This allows them to instruct staff to delete emails which are no longer required as they are not required for retention and / or retained elsewhere. Also remember that the data you retain is also available for FoI requests ... and if you have a mass of emails then it can take a significant to to process the request for data ... and you are legally obliged to do so. It can even be the case that you miss the allocated deadlines and a complaint is made. Not an explicit "you must do x" answer ... but probably as close as you are going to get.

Only a few sarcastic tweets.

Strangely enough, I feel the same way about having schools contact me about Change Requests ... no more having to explain how stupid it is to do certain things, no more poor documentation, no more having to correct errors on the paperwork and no more having to explain to an incoming NM about the changes a previous one did and didn't tell anyone. Bliss I tell you, bliss!

I have to give a massive thank you to @Domino ... without him the tiger would be a faint memory instead of the annoying person who likes to make presenters corpse on the Microsoft / Google / LearnLive stands.

Before anyone asks what the salary is, here are some more details (taken from the advert linked above).

I would be another advocate for SIF and Shibboleth ... the more that make use of them the better the options for them being ubiquitous.

I'm still going to be here, but as with my last job change I'll have to work out the best way of contributing.

14, but it should have been 13 as I clicked on the wrong button and got a question right instead of the wrong answer I thought I was selecting (best to be honest in these things).

Living in Gosport / Fareham and working remotely, with trips to Wales and London. It won't be too bad actually ...

Well, it is all change in the Sheppard household over the next few months. My wife has a new job in Gosport in September (I'll drop the relevant member a PM shortly to give proper warning !!!!) and so we are moving down to the area. I am also moving on from Northants County Council ... No longer a publicly paid servant but still working in the education sector. It will come as no shock to some but I am joining Learning Possibilities (aka LP+) at the end of March to take on a sizeable chunk of the work of the HWB project for Wales. It is going to be an interesting challenge but a fun project. I will still be active on EG, and working on a number of other national (UK-wide) agendas aimed at eSafety, raising the profile of support staff in schools and DNA sequencing of the coconut to give it a chocolate shell (hmmmmm .... Choooocolate!) I'll give a longer thank you post to the various folk at the end of March but this is a general thanks to you all for making my time at the LA fun ....

I've had confirmation from the school that it is indeed because the techie has moved on to greater things. Also, because of the change of status of the school (now an academy) they had a recruitment freeze ... and one of those positions is the HR / personnel post ... so that has slowed things down meaning there are a lot of posts available at the same time. Good luck to all those who apply. A great place to get a lot more experience.

I would strongly suggest you have a look at the work that the Computers @ School group (C@S) are doing in this area ... well worth the effort. I am also looking forward to some write-ups of the stuff that went on at BETT on the Learning Together stand where they did a fair bit of coding.

Got it down now ... see how it goes over the next few days.

I was interested in what Dell, Samsung and Lightspeed were doing for MDM ... but I really loved the stuff happening on the Learning Together stand (Heppell.net / Netgear) with the Raspberry Pi ... I was also really impressed with a bit of software, as demonstrated on Friday night at the TeachMeet. Publisher ... naff for DTP but brilliant for creating clipart ;-)

Everything that has been said (positively) so far and more. Access to notes / agendas and minutes from previous meetings (saves me from carrying a rather full portfolio case which I had to do previously ... carefully selecting the right documents before going to meetings as well). Notes are taken in Evernote (generally) and I also do a fair few mind maps / diagrams / etc ... again, pen and paper would work here but I can now save different versions (as project progress) and share them around so much easier. Between my work phone (Palm Treo) and the calendar on my iPad (connected to personal / private calendars) I can manage my time and tasks far easier. Remote access to files Remote access to key systems Skype & Lync (both well used) A fair chunk of the above I could do on other tablet devices too ... so it is not just an iPad thing ... I just find doing it via an iPad is easier atm, as it also ties in with the existing systems I use for personal stuff as well. I still use a desktop when needed, partly because I am not happy with the functionality of some tools on a tablet. Once I get my hands on a Surface Pro that might change ... I don't know.

The Fine Burger Co did do a nice breakfast roll though ... sausage, egg and mushrooms ... shame I only discovered it on Saturday morning.

As always ... can discussion about the suitability of the suitability of the salary go to another thread so we can keep this one for those seeking information about the post. There is no BSF within Northants, though this school was built under PFI without IT being part of the program, and this is a replacement for an existing member of staff, from career progression from what I can gather. There is a fair bit of staff churn in general across the county as we have a large number of schools moving to Academy status, and both teachers and associate staff are moving around. If you need more information please contact the school directly, and the NM (Rob) is a good bloke and generally happy to chat with people.

Is this the time to say you only found one of the two mistakes? #lovesgivingpedantswork

You were noticed ... and deemed to cute / innocent / small to eat. It was probably waiting for a tempting morsel such as a purple pony or some chocolate.

There were tigers? Darn it ... I must have missed them!

Just had this one sent over to me for sharing around. A good team to work with.

Not knowing the full story behind how things are at the LA, it is possible that changes in funding / politics / etc have meant a rapid change of how the funds are allocated to schools to pay for things like this. Although Northants did give a lot of notice about the natural end of the existing embc contract, we did have a sticky point when the Gov't changed and we had significant grant and funding cuts, meaning that schools had to pay. It is not a nice position to be in. If your LA is giving you the choice of where to look and helping you to do so then you might want to have a look at the toolkit we wrote with our schools to help make that decision (feel free to pass it on to the folks at the LA too). Schools Broadband Working Group - A Toolkit | Duston School Also feel free to give them my contact details as well if they want a chat with someone who went through the same thing they did. Personally, due to lead times mainly, I would recommend you stick with what you have for the next year at least, to allow you time to look around and plan for what you need, before going out to the market. Don't make a quick jump for something cheap only to find it doesn't work how you thought it would, it doesn't give you the same (or better) functionality and/or the connectivity is not quite what you thought it would be.

For some reason I gained 0 on my stealth stat on Friday. I blame @Domino ... not for the above, but just for things in general