Useful concepts for the head of computing/edtech co-ordinator: keeping computer rooms locked, and having a time-consuming means of booking them
a busy station, by Terry Freedman
That was the situation in a school I joined as head of computing. The computer rooms were kept locked at all times, but staff could access them any time they liked. All they had to do was get the keys.
Fairly reasonable especially as the keys were kept in the deputy heads’ office, which was open all the time. Except when it wasn’t, which was when the deputy heads were having a meeting, or teaching. In those circumstances, you were kept locked out of the computer rooms for an hour or so. I asked the school office stay if the keys could be kept with them instead, and they agreed. It made sense: there is someone in the school office every day.
That was one problem solved, but there was another one. If you wanted to take a class into a computer room you had to book it first. Again, that makes sense, otherwise two classes might try to use the same room at the same time.
The problem was that each room’s booking timetable was kept in the room itself — and there were three computer rooms (at the time: I later expanded the number to four, plus a computer area for staff only).
Thus a teacher would have to check the booking sheets for each room separately. So think about how much time this would take out of a teacher’s “free” period or their lunch break. They would have to get the keys from the deputy heads’ office (if it was unlocked), check the sheets in each of three rooms (potentially) and then return the keys.
I changed the booking sheets in two ways: I put the timetable for the three rooms on one sheet per week; I put the collection of sheets for the half-term ahead on the staffroom noticeboard.
Hopefully, this is an issue that wouldn’t arise today — at least it shouldn’t, given the (I hope) ubiquity of digital booking systems. Having said that, if the booking system is complicated enough, it could reproduce the same sort of difficulties, just in digital form.
Disincentives
It should hardly need pointing out that this sort of thing can easily put some teachers off using computers in their lessons at all. If you would like to read about an example of what I’m talking about, read this article:
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