Report for StGeorges School computer system Essays

Report for StGeorges School computer system Essays Report for StGeorges School computer system Essay Report for StGeorges School computer system Essay I chose to research into a local primary school (St Georges) which is located in Littleover, the first task that undertook into researching the systems in place at the school was to gain their permission and to send them a questionnaire to fill which was done by the school secretary and sent back to me. I then setup an interview with the head teacher of the school which would provide me with greater information on the school and how it operates and if they have any IT infrastructure in place already.The investigation was carried out via two different ways which were by a paper based questionnaire and a interview with the head teacher of the school Mr. J F Honey. From the feedback obtained through the questionnaire and interview I was able to complete a presentation on the organisation. The schools budget for a totally new system or for upgrading their current system is i? 15,000 2 THE CURRENT SYSTEM St Georges primary school has many business needs and requirements I have listed them below in bullet point form and then will analyse the schools needs and then research into suitable combinations.The school have had a system in place for just under a year now and have only just had internet installed on their network. The network is used for several business functions which I have listed in the business needs section. However I will now expand on what they use the computer system for and what they still do manually which could easily be implemented on a computerised system Information or data stored by St Georges school are: Pupil data for example their name, age, address, religion, D. O. B, Employee Data for example this could include all employee information about the staff ie. Their name, address, NI number, rate of pay, tax etc.Accounts, Finance, Human Resources this would include all data to do with the schools budget and accounts and also information on human resources. Student Reports There is no current online system for filling out students reports as they are all done manually by their class teachers the reason why they havent yet computerised this part of the businesses functions is because they dont have the available funds for purchasing computer software to allow them write reports nor do they have many pupils to write reports for, compared to a secondary school where they have 2500 pupils so the school has been happy with manually writing reports.Letters Any letters sent from the school are word processed on the computer system and they are printed onto a letterhead that the school has printed for them from a local printing firm, one solution that I wou ld suggest to improve this would be to get the school to print their own letterheads saving money which could be better spent. However if the letter is to a parent of the school the name of the child it is concerning is written on manually.School News Letter The schools newsletter is published every month and given to every pupil in the school however some pupils may have brothers and sisters in the school as well would it be more efficient and save money if only one was given to one family? As the school has many young pupils they may loose them or leave them on the bus or even drop them on the playground. Attendance RegisterThe school uses both electronic and paper based registers to analyse and report on attendance this seems to be a waist of resources to the school and a waste of time for the secretary as the teaching staff will mark the register on paper and then the schools secretary enters this data into a database. Perhaps this could be changed so that the school can comput erise all there attendance data which could save time so that the administrative staff can work on something more important. OutputsWhen all of the information is stored or processed the output can be in a form of an email, letter, phone call, report, memo, fax or student assessment report. Problems with current system Problems associated with the schools current IT infrastructure are that it frequently crashes hence why the school wants a quick upgrade or implementation of a new system. There are also many other problems with the current system which I have listed below with a description on why this is a problem to the users or for the system in generalThe school has to be able to process information that it receives in the forms that have been identified in the report and fairly fast. They process the information that is collected in the form of phone, letter, email, invoices, etc. They also need to process this information some by entering information into their current system i n the way of word processing or working out costs in a spreadsheet package. Output Needs Output needs of the organisation are that they need to output relevant information to paper, or to email, memo etc.The organisations major output need is information being printed on paper and distributing this to either employees internally or externally to parents, the public requiring information about the school, or to the pupils themselves via test results or equivalent. Storage Needs The organisation also has storage needs by this the school has keep copies of all its financial, administration, educational documentation in a manual filing system, this could be implemented onto hard disk which would take up less space and provide more efficiency on more complex tasks the organisation needs to carry out.However this data would have to be backed up encase of any problems that may cause the data to be lost. At present the school keeps all their paperwork in a conventional filing cabinets which takes up a lot of room in there only one office and are looking for ways to reduce this problem. Communication Needs The organisation still communicates with pupils, parents and their members of staff via any of the following methods. Telephone, verbally and Memos.However parents and some teaching staff have expressed an interest in communicating more efficiently by via Email and the mobile telephone SMS this would be used for monitoring attendance levels at the school 4 POTENTIAL SOLUTION USING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY I will now identify and list potential solutions using software and hardware in information technology. I would suggest to the school that they would invest in the following software for the reasons listedSoftware (Package Name, Purpose, Cost) Reason for purchase Sage Payroll, Computerise Human Resources information along with Payroll for all employees working in the organisation as no current system is in place within the organisation Office 2003 Suite Offers all the software applications that the users will need to operate the system will also be used by administration for spreadsheets and databasesWindows XP Pro, to be installed/used on each machine on the network allows the users to perform various tasks, Dependent upon a Volume License is purchased from a Microsoft dealer. With a volume license agreement from Microsoft the school can install the latest Operating system without having individual license for each machine this could also include a server license. From analysing the system in place at the school Im going to recommend the following hardware devices in order for the system to work cooperatively with each other among the network.