This cartoon recently caught my eye, and made me chuckle. I do think that nowadays we expect so much from our ICT staff that they do indeed need to have superpowers to fulfil all our expectations!
Let's consider how things have changed over recent years: a decade ago, there was a small, simple network serving the administrative side of the school, and perhaps a couple of ICT classrooms equipped with specially configured computers for delivering ICT lessons.
Nowadays, the network extends to every area of the school. Pupils and staff alike are connecting all kinds of different devices to the network through Wi-Fi, and ICT services have become the bedrock of delivering most, if not every, lesson.
Whilst network managers and IT technicians are sometimes much maligned (especially, in my experience, when the network goes down!), their role has in fact changed beyond recognition in recent years.
No longer is it sufficient to have a network that runs OK most of the time. Nowadays it needs to be an "industrial strength" network that is at the top of its game every minute of the school day. We expect our network managers to have the network design skills to put together such a system (despite typically never having done this before!), not to mention the strategic vision to "back the right horse" by investing in the right technologies that will future-proof the school network and provide the best learning environment for children.
Naturally, we also expect them to be technical geniuses, able to fix any problem from the most mundane password reset through to a complete reconfiguration of the network. Then during school holidays, we also expect them to don their superhero capes and become “project managers extraordinaire”, in order to smoothly, without disruption and within budget, implement technically complex upgrade projects!
Come the start of term, it's back into the phone box for our ICT folks, to metamorphose themselves into the role of hand holder, support giver, mentor and trainer.
Of course, in today's digital world, we also expect our ICT team to be cyber security experts, abreast of a constant stream of new threats and coming up with ways to mitigate the risk and safeguard our pupils, staff and data.
So next time you write a job advertisement for a Network Manager, don't forget to include "Super Powers" in the essential skills section!
Failing that, you could perhaps consider engaging an experienced Independent Schools ICT provider to work in partnership with your Network Manager, so that he or she doesn’t need to have quite so many superpowers!
