A2 Computing Interview

What does the music department do at the school?

Apart from the academic teaching of music, it provides instrumental tuition for 360 students, provided by 22 outside teachers. And it runs the concert band, the jazz band, the chapel choir, King’s Voices, and any other small music group in the school.

What is your role in the music department, Mrs Thompson?

I am the music administrator, so i mainly run the music lessons and the music roster for students, but I also run the lockers, the hire of music instruments. We have 3000 bits of music at the moment and the rest is not on the computer yet, so there are millions to go.

What tasks that you currently perform in the music department are time consuming and in need of a new system?

The lockers. As well as the bass, amps and the leads.

Of these tasks, which could be sped up with the aid of a computer system?

Absolutely. Actually i am using the same program as the library to manage the sheet music for the choir and to manage all the instruments, it is a huge job but that is actually quite helpful, the lockers - I also use synergetic a lot to manage the groups, the glee club, the bagpipes, but the lockers do not fit into those. If the lockers could be integrated either synergetic or into the school library system that would be better than having an extra system on top of it.

What is the worst part of the task?

It takes me usually 30 minutes to explain how to use a lock to a Year 9 boy, but the other sort of step that gets left out in the process is that somebody gives up a lesson but I don’t get their hired instrument back, and it sits in the locker all day and so my lesson rosters, I need a way of knowing that the student who has dropped the lesson has a locker and a hired instrument, so I can free that locker up and give it to somebody else, or someone else will be missing out, so a tag system would be good.

Who is involved in the process?

Me. Just me, but it used to be Mr Sherwood and the other staff.

How are you involved?

In the whole process.

How much IT experience do you have?

Enough for the job, so, I’ve known the library program since it was invented, about 12 years ago, and synergetic. We’ve developed a few new extra things for the music department.

Are you familiar with Microsoft Access?

No, I’ve been using Mac since I started here.

What types of data are in the process?

I collect their name, their house, and whether they are in a band. So sometimes a person has got an instrument hired and they are in the concert or jazz band, but I haven’t realised that they have left the bands in which case I don’t take any steps to cancel their locker and retrieve their instrument, so thats the biggest sort of gap in the tagging.

Would you introduce recording the serial number, or year group?

I suppose you could use the student number, but I don’t need that. Certainly when I’m using synergetic or the library program, that would be using the student number, so that would be a way of integrating the new system with those.

Where do you get the information from?

From the students themselves. Although I get the information for which band they are in from synergetic because I’ve logged that information there, but often I don’t know when they have left the band that they are in.

How do you store this information currently?

In a Word Document and a folder. I’ve had a breakthrough, so I keep the number of the lock and the code in a document so I can still get in even if the lock is moved. I’ve tried numbering them but that didn’t work.

Are you comfortable with a computer system being used to process these tasks?

Absolutely, I’d look forward to it.

What operating system do you run and what version?

No. Well I will let you have a look. Version 10.5.8.

Do you have Microsoft Office, and if so, which version?

Version 11.4.2 Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac.

How many lockers are there in the system at the moment?

I’ve never counted them because I’ve never numbered them. But there are one hundred and one.

Is the locker system full?

Not quite, but some boys were supposed to see me today to get lockers.

If a priority system was to be introduced, how would priority be decided, for example year group?

At the moment the boarders are given priority over day boys and the day boys would use the day storeroom, and take their instruments home, but the year group priority would be obsolete.

What about cost of instrument?

Actually that makes sense, and the other consideration is size, and we don’t have many cello lockers, and also height, and they have to be given to a specific locker.