Internet News Blog
June 11th, 2009
As I have been a teacher and now a science technician and so I have a lot to do with health and safety. I understand the need to health and safety, especially in a science laboratory. Even though I understand the need I still don’t like it. A lot of health and safety is just about making sure the school isn’t sued if a pupil decided to misbehave and do something stupid.
It really annoyed me the other week when I needed a new network cable putting into the prep room where I work. When I first started there was only 1 internet socket on the side of the room where our desks are. The others were put on the other side of the room. I didn’t want drape a cable across the floor as someone would trip over and send my computer flying across the room. I decided to use some initiative and put the cable through the ceiling, the ceiling is the normal school one with the panels that lift up so it would be really easy to do.
I went down to network services to get a cat 5 cable only to be told that because of health and safety I wasn’t allowed to do it. The reason: in case I fall off the ladder and sue the school, nothing to do with my own health. Maybe it should be called “covering our backs” instead of H&S.
The whole reason I need to put an internet cable through the ceiling is that I am meant to rely on a wireless connection that at best is rubbish. I work in a technology specialist collage and we don’t have a decent network. Because the whole school relies on it I would have thought that we would have had a pretty fast connection, something like SDSL to give a fast two way connection with decent wireless coverage, instead we have problems most lessons with connection being lost.
With the Government trying to get all the children in the UK on the Internet they better sort out the schools first.
Tags: Health and safety, Internet, school, SDSL, teaching, WiFi, wireless
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