Department of Technology in Education - Primary Sector - Admin

Support Initiatives

Circulars / Memos

Problems

Staff Development

Technical Problems

The following information is also available in the ICT Administrative Policies document distributed to Primary State School head teachers in May 2003. A copy of the full document is available in PDF format in the Documents for download section.

Printer cartridges	Peripherals
Floppy disks	MITTS maintenance
MITTS visits

Refer also to

Printer cartridges

A. It is well known that most original printer cartridges are very expensive, but re-filled cartridges or clones are not as reliable and there have been many incidents where these caused damage to the printers. As a general rule, avoid re-filled or cloned cartridges.

i. RE-FILLED CARTRIDGES can be identified by smeared ink on the surface as well as a very low price. Even if the trademark is the same as the printer's, avoid these at all costs.
ii. CLONED CARTRIDGES are brand-new (not re-filled) cartridges, but are made by a company different from that of the printer.

B. It is the administration's responsibility to re-adjust the school budget in order to cater for the running costs of printers (cartridges and paper). Control over the quantity of paper distributed among classes throughout the year is left to the administration's discretion. However four cartridges per class (2 black and 2 colour cartridges) are recommended per scholastic year.

Peripherals and electronic accessories

A. When damaged, these will have to be replaced at the school's expense.

i. PERIPHERALS include monitors, video players/recorders and converters, speakers, microphones (where applicable), keyboards, remote controls, mice and mouse mats.
ii. ELECTRIC ACCESSORIES include cables, adapters, plugs, etc.

Floppy disks

A. Each pupil in school should have at least one floppy disk to save some of their computer-generated work. The school administration should include a floppy disk in place of part of the copybook quota distributed to pupils at the start of the scholastic year. As in the case of copybooks, further floppy disks additional to the initial quota will have to be provided by the parents.

Computer faults and MITTS maintenance

A. Problems related to educational software installed in classrooms should be reported to the peripatetic teachers.

B. Problems related to networking, hardware and the Windows operating system, both in classrooms and offices and on teachers’ laptops, should be reported to the MITTS Helpline as follows:

i. Teachers (or administrators in the case of office equipment) should log in the call personally, explaining the fault. The MITTS helpline will provide a Log Number for reference;
ii. MITTS technicians will call at the school (usually within 24 to 48 hours). Job sheets will be given to the teachers to sign (Appendix 3). Before signing, teachers should check time in and time out entries;

The school administration is responsible for storing these job sheets for any future reference. The administration should advise the teachers to hand over these sheets to the office.

C. The school administration may consider collecting various faults over a number of days and make one single call to MITTS. In this case, the best way to go about this is as follows:

i. Collect a number of faults over two or three days;
ii. For every separate fault, include the class, year group, the MITTS label number of the computer that has the fault (only in case of desktop computes), teacher’s name and ID number;
iii. Give a brief description of the fault;
iv. E-mail the information to the Call Centre e-mail address (see Appendix 2 – Contacts). Avoid sending by fax as this is not as reliable as e-mail;
v. You will shortly receive an e-mail reply by the MITTS Call Centre. This should include a Log Number for each separate fault listed.
vi. Print and file the e-mail reply for future reference.

Visits by MITTS technical staff

A. Advise MITTS technical staff to always call at the school office and inform someone of their visit before going to the classrooms and after they are ready with their jobs.

B. MITTS technical staff should always leave a Job Sheet for every single job tackled, either with the class teacher concerned or with someone from the administrative staff.

C. Advise teachers to verify any claimed repair by testing the hardware before the MITTS technical staff leave the premises. This may avoid having to call them back some other time.

D. If a teacher is unable to do this, it is recommended that whenever possible a member of the administrative staff should do this in the presence of the MITTS technicians.

E. The class teacher or a member of the administrative staff should always check the Job Sheet thoroughly before signing, and to take note especially of the Time In and Time Out entries. If these do not tally with the technician’s duration of stay for that particular job, teachers are advised to inform the school administration.

In case of a technician’s misconduct or unsatisfactory service, the school administration should e-mail Mr. N. Borg (EO, Primary ICT) at the ICT Learning Centre, detailing the case. A cc of the e-mail should also be sent to Mr. L. Zammit, Director Technology in Education.