School I.T Technicians

dmpoole said:
I'm starting a new job next week as an airplane pilot but I've never flown one before.
Can somebody tell me what plane I might be flying and what books I can read so I'll be ready for my first flight to Tenerife?
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:D I so lol'd at this too! well this is what IT is like a great impression there. So many threads I see on here with "I got a job :D IT Technician!...what software will I use, what hardware will I use".

Nobody knows what kit people use find out for yourself when you go in your first day!

Andr3w1984
 
I wouldn't worry so much about the software side of things., but...Microsoft is trusted within school, so expect lots of it. Depending on the exam board, will depend on the other applications. Possibilities.. Adobe suite, Swish, Audacity, Coral Draw, Visual Basic.

Most of the time, I imagine you will be installing apps, looking after the server and user accounts. And running round like a headless chicken fixing interactive whiteboards, scanners and printers!

I also disagree with the comment that the government is getting rid of it techs. They will become more and more important, IT is expanding, within a few years it will become compulsary for GCSE.

Am an IT teacher.
 
First, get over to Edugeek, it's the second best forum on the net.

If you're unlucky you'll be using RM's network management tools (or some other comedy product dating back from when 9x was on the desktop).

You'll almost certainly being using Microsoft products. The school I work also use Serif and where I was before have Macromedia suite. You'd also have to deal with a lot of poorly written specialist educational software (try an talk people out of buying anything by Nelson Thornes). There will also be some sort of school management system in place, possibly SIMS.

A lot of the support burden is hardware based, simple stuff like changing printer carts and pointing out that electrical equipment needs to be switched on at the mains.

Make sure you know clearly what your duties are, some teachers will assume your responsible for anything with a plug. One teacher sent a student to get me because they were having trouble working the lights in there class room.

Pay wise, in my part of the world technicians usualy work on a pay scales starting at about £14k. Some schools pay more but they are usualy aiming to recruit experienced techs.
 
Oh learn to do batch scripting and something a little more powerful like VBs or Autoit. You will often need to carry out the same task on many machines. If you can automate it you'll save time. Also fiddling with a script and the hitting enter and making a change to 50 odd pcs is much more rewarding them wandering round IT suites and changing the same setting 50 times.

Oh and join edugeek, second best forum on the net.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
This isn't always the case, we've just had a new Cisco Aironet wireless infrastructure installed on top of Cisco switches, we also have dual quad core Dell servers with 8GB of RAM. :)
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Same :)

Schlumberger installed the wireless for us, Cisco A link from one site, and for the other 2 sites we invested in some very pricey wireless kit. We are talking about 5 mile range.
It's my job to administer a 3 site network pretty much by myself (we have an IT dept of 6, but I'm the only one based up north)

Our main site consists of a full rack of Dell 20950 Poweredge servers. Two of them are brand new Quad Core 8gig RAM jobs, one of which is a dedicated terminal server (maybe overkill) Dell supply awesome kit, and their Switches are superb!
Our network throughput went through the roof when we installed them.

Currently working on an offsite SAN for our two main sites with server virtualisation for redundancy. IT's all go.

Quite lucky with my IT Tech job. Work as part of a great team, with constant training offers :)

Good luck in your new job
 
To make your life easier, make it hard for the students to cause you headaches.
If i were you i would format every PC and get a fresh copy of Windows you currently own in the school. Set an administrative password with a 26 digit code on it :D In addition add a password on the bios cause you don't want people changing stuff in there and messing things up. Install required programs like an AV which can't be disabled by the user but only if you are the administrator.
That will make your life easier since the job can be a blast if those pesky.....i mean the students don't cause a lot of problems :)
Bah "omne" beat me to it!!!!!! :P
It can be a nice and relaxing job depending on how big of a volume of PC's are you going to be responsible of and how evil the students in the school are :P
 
Sinque said:
The technicians at our school just sit in one room, drink cups of tea and say they'll fix it later :o
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Lol so true. All I ever hear is the sound of teaspoons clanging against mugs from our IT office.


For any of you people that work in schools, is there anyway to find out a schools IT budget on a lea website or the like? Our school is outrageously cheap when it comes to anything. They get something like £30k pa from donations, so the least they could do is replace the duron computers ffs. I calculated the prices myself, and it would cost £50 per new pc, so there really is no excuse for it.
 
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Energize said:
For any of you people that work in schools, is there anyway to find out a schools IT budget on a lea website or the like? Our school is outrageously cheap when it comes to anything. They get something like £30k pa from donations, so the least they could do is replace the duron computers ffs. I calculated the prices myself, and it would cost £50 per new pc, so there really is no excuse for it.
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Freedom of Information request?

And Durons? They're brilliant! Some of the PCs we had to use when I was a teaching assistant in a Techology college :rolleyes: were stone aged! They took 5 minutes to boot up and another 5 to log in and some were slower than others. Woe betide the student who arrives late! They get the PC no-one else wants. :D
 
I used to work as tech support for a software company who provided various applications to schools.

It was common knowledge in the office that most of their "Techs" were totally stupid.

Some didnt even know how to set permissions on folders :eek:
 
I want to know how the OP has got an IT Technicians job when he knows bugger all about it?
He either told massive lies at the interview or he's been taken on as an assistant with full training given.
 
K.C. Leblanc said:
Some schools don't pay very well, net result they can only get people who are looking for their very first IT job.
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I'm not having it unless he is an assistant.

Imagine the interview :

What do you know about servers?
Nothing
What do you know about the software we use?
Nothing
Have you got a computer?
Yes
Ok, we'll take you on.

Also notice he hasn't been in the thread since he started it.
 
mrk said:
the BACT org (sp?) is forwarding a motion have all schools use open source and free software due to microsoft costs of licensing!
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I like it. I can't see any reason why schools HAVE to use MS or other proprietary software. The Upper school I worked in just needed an operating system and a suite of office programs. In other words Ubuntu or something and OpenOffice. :)
 
Microsoft give ridiculous discounts to schools to keep them on Windows, I doubt there will ever be a move to Linux desktops in schools. Besides, what's the point in teaching kids to use something they will probably never see again once they leave school?

The cost in retraining teachers to use open-source office suite flavour of the month will far outweigh the small costs of licensing Windows + Office to education.
 
Caged said:
Microsoft give ridiculous discounts to schools to keep them on Windows, I doubt there will ever be a move to Linux desktops in schools. Besides, what's the point in teaching kids to use something they will probably never see again once they leave school?
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I'm sure Microsoft give out massive discounts. But why? Perhaps because they know that if schools had a free choice.....?

And I don't think that students need to know how to use Windows or Excel or Access, they need to know how to use an operating system and understand what it does and how it works. And instead of Excel or Access, just a generic spreadsheet or database program could suffice. Aren't the principles the same?
 
I have read this and have a good laugh :)

My wife is a TA at a School and last term she was also made Joint-Head ITC Co-ordinator !

It wasn't the fact she was qualified, or knew anything about hardware of software (she have never installed an O/S or would know how to, her hardware experience is about as much as plugging in an iPod! ) but the people at the school know less than her, so she got the role!

Thats seems how it works in schools

Diddy
 
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