How petty can you get?

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

We have ten IT rooms in the school, and when they don't have timetabled lessons in them, they're available for the teachers to book for themselves. It's a fairly low-tech Excel spreadsheet that until two weeks ago was solely my responsibility. TPTB wanted to make it available for all staff to be able to update, so after loudly voicing our concerns, we relented. One such concern was that teachers would overwrite existing bookings in their favour. "No they won't!" we were told. Luckily, shortly after, I discovered the "track changes" option, so I've been doing that.

To date, there've been three instances where a member of staff has removed a timetabled lesson in whichever IT room and booked themselves in. For Christ's sake, you'd think they were the kids!

Comments

[snow-leopard.livejournal.com]

Simple HTML/PHP booking calender? Means you'd be able to add functionailty to only book a room once/not overwrite!

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

It's been hard enough training the teachers to use an Excel spreadsheet...we can't complicate things any more :)

[pleaseremove.livejournal.com]

I have yet to come across a member of staff I didn’t think was capable of such a thing. We use a good old paper form, and I have placed a nice thick black pen next to it. The only pain is we have to print off a new one each week, but it’s a small price to pay. That said, it will be shifting to a php one soon when it finish it.

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

We used to have the paper based system...the same thing happened, which was why we dumped it last year. They weren't even subtle about it! They'd just cross out whatever was there and put their own booking in. I must say though, the languages department are the worst culprits. Damn them!

[sketchydave.livejournal.com]

"If it ain't broken, don't fix it"

Smaller scale, but all of our AV / Computer equipment is kept in my office. If someone needs something they book it with me and it goes on my Outlook calendar. I thought of doing a database for it...but this works so why waste time.

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

The thing that annoys me most is with only me and a couple of others having write access to it, it worked perfectly! There were no issues other than some of the teachers were too bloody lazy to come and find me to book rooms (I don't have a phone in my office, but that's another argument entirely). God alone knows why they suddenly "needed" write access to it.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

All-teacher meeting after the first week. "We know exactly what bookings have been changed. We know exactly when they were changed, and most importantly, we know WHO changed it.

We expect you to organise the rooms as responsible adults. If you CAN'T MANAGE THAT, all room bookings will be done through the headmaster/admin/secretary."

But yeah, a technical solution would be easier. I don't suppose there's any chance of coding up a script to monitor the spreadsheet bookings and reverse any booking changes after the first booking? Ideally, of course, it would allow people to remove their own bookings etc.

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

To be honest, most of them are so technically incompetant that even an Excel spreadsheet is too much for some of them - you've no idea how many times I've had teachers only seeing the Monday on the spreadsheet and complaining to me because they need to book rooms the other days of the week. Scrolling to the right is just too much for them. Unfortunately, this includes certain of the IT teachers, but I digres.

The best solution is to go back to the way it was. But that would mean someone admitting that I was in the right again, so it's pretty unlikely to happen.

[lions-tambua.livejournal.com]

"I told you"
and
"i've so seen that coming"
would be the two phrases the boss would have heard from me the same day *G*

[jcaswell.livejournal.com]

I emailed her and said "we've already had three instances where timetabled lessons have been removed so that someone can put their own booking in". She's not replied yet, I'm looking forward to it :)