I thought I would create a page for this area, not only to say what we do roughly throughout the year but to go more in to detail.
The top topic I want to touch on is "Non IT Support" requests we can also deal with. This tends to be a touchy subject in education, because staff are used to employing ex Students they are generally treated more like assistants than professional IT support members.
From a personal point of view, I joined this profession to do IT. Not to do admin, site team, cleaning nor teaching assistant. Unfortunately there is an attitude from teachers "I am too busy so you do it". This isn't based in every School but I have personally seen it and felt it.
This is certainly a discussion that should be dealt with your line manager and the head teacher. If they see your role as a general support staff I simply can't recommend staying at that School unless you are happy with that. This profession to me is a career choice - I have had this personal discussion with head teachers and the last time I had to talk about this the head completely agreed with me. Once staff get in to the "knack" of not asking you to do tasks like this, it forces them to do their jobs and you to do yours.
So what tasks have I been asked to do over the Years?
- Photographer.
- Film recording.
- Teaching Students - how to use IT/Film software.
- Looking after a class.
- Powerpoint presentations.
- Spreadsheets.
- Mass printing.
- Downloading YouTube videos.
- VHS recording.
- Fix a TV.
- Downloading BBC iPlayer to permanently store it.
- Install illegal software not licensed.
- Fix the local area electricity supply (when the entire tower shut off several times in a month).
Now without sounding too offensive the guilty ones are teachers. You can even receive the "your attitude isn't right, you should be wanted to help and play ball" even though you can say it as polite as possible.
So the good stuff,
It's a great career starting point. You will need to know as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. The job is very good for progression and experience gaining. In my view the best way to work is to allow the entire team to know how to perform every tasks that may pop up. This will be simple jobs of fixing equipment to replacing switches and creating VLANs. I always involve my team in projects and even assign them large tasks to perform as part of the Performance Management Review. A key part to always remember is, be pro-active not reactive. This means anticipate problems or possible problems instead of waiting for them to fail.
I care for my job, I look after the School as if it was my own child. I really do believe IT should work and stay working. This allows a teacher and 30 Students to have zero issues in that week let alone a day. Keep classrooms tidy, properly cabled and trunked with power/networking near by. Remember to work with teachers to remind them that the desk being moved will cause issues for cabling. Work with them to tell you when they have problems no matter how small.
We currently don't have a help desk instead, we use email - everyone has it and everyone can use it. We are able to reply to all to say "on our way" or simply "job done". Our office is relatively tidy and much better than it was a few Years ago.
So now that I have five minutes let's see what our day to day work is:
- Maintaining 600+ PCs (Students, 100 classrooms, teachers, support staff)
- Maintaining projectors (we have around 120)
- Maintaining IWBs (we have round 80)
- Servers (about a dozen)
- Networking switches (around 2000 points; divide that by 48 ports/24 ports)
- Site wide wireless with 2 SSIDs - one for secure, one for Students
- Setup Main Hall + Event sessions 5-15 times a week (at times even offering Duty Support) with Projectors, clickers etc.
- Software management (we have around 100 packages)
- Password/account management (we have around a dozen, SLG, RealSmart, Kerboodle to name a few).
- BYOD Scheme although being scrapped, it will take a few years to fully filter this out. See other posts for more details.
- Parents - from SLG x2/Parent Pay x1 Accounts and BYOD issues on insurance/warranty - queries/complaints.
- Budgeting
- Planning (any new tech, improvements)
- Classrooms (layouts, improving cables, replacements)
- Filtering (from banning, unblocking, reports and major issues)
- Cabling
- Printers about 2 dozen (including Papercut funds for users, toner replacements, ordering, improvements and alterations)
- Paper (keeping max stock, ordering for the fleet etc.)
- SIMs (register system) we install, update and maintain the software side.
- School website from maintaining, updating and posting news.
- XiBo, this setup we maintain and run. Keeping our TV screens updated with news.
- Phone system, maintaining and updating - currently under massive review.
Want other examples of what we do? The below is a typical few months for me:
Windows 10
Printing System
Virtualisation
Cloud or Not
BYOD Scheme
Mac or Windows
April Tasks
Obviously this doesn't completely cover everything. At times we can create DVDs to be shipped off to the invigilators for exams and spend hours trying to find out why certain parts of certain websites don't work.
What really does niggle me, for those who use EduGeek will soon realise that IT support staff can at times feel utterly unappreciated. Some of the below has already been covered in other posts.
- Moved offices to smaller areas (even though we need space to prep any equipment).
- Given no budgets but expected to keep everything in top condition.
- No one understands IT but automatically assume a 15 year old Student can do it.
- Employ under qualified or inexperienced staff and wonder why the basics are not done correctly.
- Lack of planning, no thinking ahead (even though teachers should be).
- Always our fault
I know what a GPU is - I can do IT Support
Remember, just because you can pull out a hard drive from a tower and place a new one or update a GPU driver - doesn't make you a quality technician. Supporting your own pc with a few games, is very different to supporting 100s to 1000s of users with all sorts of cables, equipment and software packages. While also being concerned at the infrastructure - which at your house doesn't matter so much if you lose the internet. With day to day support you deal with a lot of unknowns, I've been working in Schools for well over a decade and I still learn new things. At home, you will never worry about the technical side of new broadband because all you would worry about is the costs and speed/up time available. In the job you have to worry about filtering for PCs, laptops, mobile devices and that special extra kit like printers or catering systems that need unfiltered access. You have to worry about client software for that filtering system so it detects who is logged on to what. You have to make sure that the mobile devices can not only log on to a secure Wi-Fi but doesn't bypass the logon screen for the filtering system. You have to deal with damages, alterations to areas and future proofing. While supporting areas that you can't even gain access to for the majority of the year e.g. classrooms being used all day every day. You have staff arrive as early as possible, students shortly following and staff will leave as late as possible. Even during holidays, more and more Schools are open and have some staff and even Students on site. Meaning down time during those holidays has to be carefully planned.
Don't agree? Suffer the same? don't be afraid to comment!
No comments:
Post a Comment