sledgehammer nuts
I have discussed low-tech solutions before in this blog. There was some debate recently on the QSITE lists about dedicated software for schools to schedule maintenance tasks for computer technicians and another to organise photo archives. At our school we briefly flirted with these a couple of years ago and settled with these two approaches.
My technician Mike uses a separate e-mail account for his tasks and sorts the jobs by changing the e-mail priority. I can post jobs or updates directly to this e-mail address, adding details or alerts as needed. At the end of the week, we return a brief e-mail for any jobs that are going to be held over. Competed tasks are automatically archived. We also have a formal, search-able maintenance log that is completed rather like a blog to record tasks completed and problems reported. We built this with Moodle, using a simple flat file database and is a snap to customise and use. The form page is launched from a Novell NAL shortcut on any technicians desktop or it is just browsed on the web.
Staff all save their photographs to a shared teacher or T: network drive, a space that is divided up into staff directories that can be viewed by all staff. When staff return a loan camera to the library or general office, the images are copied to this location. Hard disk drives are now quite cheap that it has been easy enough to buy progressively larger and larger storage solutions. We don't encourage staff to remove their images to make more room, these tend to disappear forever. Whilst there are no space limits, staff are generally happy to manage and prune rubbish when asked.
These low-tech solutions work surprisingly well, probably because we cracked the nut with something smaller than a sledgehammer.
My technician Mike uses a separate e-mail account for his tasks and sorts the jobs by changing the e-mail priority. I can post jobs or updates directly to this e-mail address, adding details or alerts as needed. At the end of the week, we return a brief e-mail for any jobs that are going to be held over. Competed tasks are automatically archived. We also have a formal, search-able maintenance log that is completed rather like a blog to record tasks completed and problems reported. We built this with Moodle, using a simple flat file database and is a snap to customise and use. The form page is launched from a Novell NAL shortcut on any technicians desktop or it is just browsed on the web.
Staff all save their photographs to a shared teacher or T: network drive, a space that is divided up into staff directories that can be viewed by all staff. When staff return a loan camera to the library or general office, the images are copied to this location. Hard disk drives are now quite cheap that it has been easy enough to buy progressively larger and larger storage solutions. We don't encourage staff to remove their images to make more room, these tend to disappear forever. Whilst there are no space limits, staff are generally happy to manage and prune rubbish when asked.
These low-tech solutions work surprisingly well, probably because we cracked the nut with something smaller than a sledgehammer.