On the staffing side, I'll get blunter: knowing how to use MS at home, or
Blunt, but true.
even in a business context does not qualify or even prepare you for
Indeed knowing how to operate MS stuff at home as a self administered system can lead to staff who are a positive menace. I'll excuse the students, they are after all kids.
implementing MS solutions in a school environment. Believing that it does is the biggest source of problems for moving IT forwards in schools. Schools collectively need to accept that an ICT environment with 300+ PCs and 1200 users need to be supported by professionals and that those professionals
The most important fact is that any of the 1200 users may need to use any of the 300 machines with changes several times a day. The only similar environments are in universities. Though AFAICT the local university runs a less varied software mix on most of their workstaions than we do.
will need to be paid 2 or 3 times what is currently offered. At these more
That would be nice :)
realistic salaries, recruiting replacements will not be so difficult. Teachers (current company excepted) are not the right people to make IT decisions as they do not have the depth of knowledge required. IT management
Quite often the people who can do this would do a lousy job at teaching children too. Most schools wouldn't have teachers staffing their office/reception or running finances in their spare time...
is not a part-time occupation, and your IT manager needs to be involved in school strategy for the best, most cost-effective and education-effective IT
At that point he or she needs input from teachers, about what they want the technology to do. Preferably something a little more useful than "we must have XYZ piece of shelfware"...
strategies. And don't get me wrong, this isn't personal; I'm one of the lucky ones :-)
-- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763