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Ordering (establishing good procedures) It is very unlikely your school has in place the kind of ordering procedures you will need in (i) First acquiring and installing everything for a good, functional lab, and (ii) Continued purchasing of supplies, additional equipment and additional software throughout every school year. Most school budgets are composed largely of staff salaries, handled by accounting. Once classrooms are equipped with furniture, ordering is mainly textbooks (ordered in May for the following school year) and expendable supplies such as workbooks, paper, art supplies.

The computer lab will need its prorata share of these types of supplies. Other things typically forgotten for the computer lab are storage (disk cabinets and boxes, shelving, lockable large cabinets for tools, spares, paper, ink and toner cartridges) shelving (for software boxes, manuals, disk boxes, books). In general, you will be ordering small amounts of these types of things throughout any school year, as needed, and as your budget permits. You will be conferring with subject-matter or elementary classroom teachers, scanning catalogs and reviews, and ordering new software throughout the school year--some for evaluation for site license or quantity purchase, and some just as single items or 5-copy lab packs.

Unlike other types of school purchasing, you may quite often find shipments are defective in various ways. Items arrive broken. Software is defective on its disks and will not load or has some other problem. Manuals are missing. Some tiny part is not in the packing boxes, though you searched the packing material very careffully. Items on an order are not in the box, and you see they are marked BO (back-order) on the packing slip--or you don't see it, you're being billed as if they were shipped, but they aren't there. You will be getting evaluation software, to try out with the students for 30 or 45 days, intending perhaps to buy it on next year's budget, if liked--and this generally will be shipped with an invoice, for which you receive a credit memo after the evaluation materials are returned. If you don't get good procedures in place from the git-go, you will wind up having no recourse for missing or broken things, paying for some things more than once, paying for things you never received, paying for evaluation ware you didn't want after all, and not paying for things so your school's credit record suffers

. Without a purchasing procedure that relates directly to your budget--whatever it is--you will inevitably overrun that budget, for you cannot plan your purchasing--adjust your wishes for the best for the kids--to the reality of what money is budgeted for the computer-lab this year. There will also be budget situations such as "no money was included for repairs" as well as the cost of shipping items in for repair. These procedures should provide your school with solid data that is a handle on budgeting for other years. You can only get a feel for real operating expenses if you have some system in place that lets you examine actual costs.

The first few years costs will be high--but they will never drop to just replacement of expendable supplies. The reason is that software (and hardware) are constantly evolving. Newer--and much better--products are constantly being developed. You will want some of these every year. Some software--though this isn't routine for small educational packages--is routinely upgraded each year. Cost of upgrades is typically about 1/3 to 1/2 the original cost of the software. You won't be eligible for these upgrades--or even notified about them--unless you've registered your software. A reason to write the registration number on the disks is that many software install procedures require you to enter that number at some point. Software does become corrupted in spite of all the protections we try to give it in the student lab (and elsewhere) and you must re-install. You will have to re-install if hard drives required any kind of major surgery, including the kind you do yourself by running disk repair software utilities.

Another aspect of purchasing is software itself, a different type of object than hardware. Though it seems as if you are buying it, actually you are only licensing it, and there are generally some specific conditions for its use (how many copies may be installed for a site license, for example). In every software package, however inexpensive, you will find a registration postcard. Some software--usually not inexpensive kidware--comes serial-numbered, too. Always fill out the registration card, and always keep a record of serial numbers. If a serial number isn't printed on the #1 disk in the set of originals, write it on that disk, as well as in your working lab log. Serial numbers, purchase dates should be recorded for all hardware, and taped conspicuously to the back of it. This info will be required for warranty service and for your school's insurance. When you make calls to technical support, especially about software, they often want to know your serial number, even if you have mailed in the registration postcard. They will generally also want to know the version number of software, especially of device driver software for printers, scanners, cameras and other attachments, but kidware and major applications have bugs in earlier versions, too, that are fixed in later ones. If you are registered, and have trouble caused by bugs, tech support can tell you this and send you the bug fix upgrade (which, annoyingly, you sometimes have to pay for).

Since much kidware isn't serial-numbered, you should enter its purchase date on your budget lab management spreadsheet, so it is tied to purchase order number, invoice or packing slip number, and date, in a way that will let you retrieve this info easily. You cannot count on your school's bookkeeping or accounting people to be able to do this. It is quite unlikely they are using the right kinds of software for it, and their paper procedures were not created with the idea of any kind of inventory management in mind.

For hardware, it is also a good idea to record "connectivity info" about cables and ports by each port and tape that to the machine. School computers tend to get moved around a lot, especially during summers when buildings get a major cleaning and sometimes some remodeling or painting, and some computers may travel into classrooms for parts of the school year. Networking computers--reconnecting a device to an existing network--is a time-consuming nightmare if you don't have the info right on the machines themselves.

If you don't set up good paper and spreadsheet lab management procedures, purchasing will soon be a nightmare, as almost no orders will be complete or exactly the total bottom line they quoted you, plus the idea of certified checks laying around in somebody's desk for weeks is fundamentally a bad idea. So is credit card purchase, for a school or business. So the rather bureaucratic business of setting up good procedures for purchasing--ordering, recording, checking it off, registering and marking it, certifying invoices as OK to pay, and writing down your operating budget as you place the orders (correcting it afterwards) is quite essential.

The basics are:

1. Do all ordering using a budget spreadsheet, even if your budget is very small.
2. Prepare your order list--even if only 1 or 2 items--on that spreadsheet.
3. Have a printout of your list in hand, complete with catalog order number, unit price and extended price, subtract for any quantity discounts. Add shipping cost if you can estimate it from catalog info.
4. Call the vendor's order number--generally an 800 number. ID yourself, school name. You do/don't yet have an established account there. You are a school. Yes, you are a public school, it is a little different for Indians, we are a federal public school which is also accredited to our state's system. This is not the time to politically educate some order clerk. Get the order clerk's name. Have your PO paper pad in hand so you can tell her/him what will be the followup PO number. Find out where it should be FAXed or mailed, even if it says in the catalog. (Educational materials vendors tend to be very screwed up on order processing.)
5. Go over your list with the order clerk. Make sure each item's prices are still current, and inquire if there are any sales or discounts in force. Ask if it is in stock, if expected when, get expected shipdate. Specify "2nd Day Air" If there is a choice of delivery services, choose Federal Express over any other, and United Parcel last of all, no matter what small price differences there may be. Get vendor's order number from the order person. Write this both on your own list-record and on your PO. Get estimated shipping date (today, tomorrow, 3 business days from now, 2 weeks, etc.).
6. Thank the clerk for his/her help with your relatively small order, espeically if you have found good price deals from large vendors who ordinarily deal in hundreds or thousands of items. Get the phone number of Customer Service, in case there are any problems with this order. The number in the catalog, if given, may be changed.
7. Hangup. Make any price changes, deletions or additions to your list, that are necessary. Now write this up on your paper PO. If your PO's provide no space for it, still put your own name/department/project budget on it somewhere. Put name of the clerk who took the order as well as the vendor's order number there somewhere. Write estimated shipdate and estimated arrival date on there somewhere. Write on it someplace "Please send original invoice att'n:ME." Ideally nothing should go to Accounts Payable until you have okayed it. Invoices do not usually come with shipments. Sometimes there is no invoice, only a packing list is all you ever get. Write "Followup hardcopy P.O. for telephone order placed on (date) with (clerkname)." If you don't do that, they likely send you 2 of everything. If there is terms--COD, NET 30 (almost universal), NET 15 (becoming more common) write that on there somewhere too, and try to get your school to design better PO forms with spaces for all this necessary info.
8. Look over the carbon copies; are there at least 2? Are all of them legible? If not, make photocopies, clip clear photocopy to the pink or yellow or blue blur, give it to whoever is supposed to get them. If you are mailing the "original" PO, keep a photocopy even if your PO carbon appears to be legible.If you are FAXing, keep the original yourself. If you give the PO to someone who pays invoices, mark it in very big red letters DO NOT PAY ANY INVOICE FOR THIS ORDER UNTIL I HAVE OKAYED IT, even if your school has a voucher or request for issuance of check system. Do not file any such request until you in fact received and checked and final-okayed your order: that it is all there, that nothing is broken, etc. If one single item is on BO of an invoice, NET 30 does not start to run until those items have been received. Do not pay an incomplete order. Do not pay any invoice for which you are not 100% satisfied everything is there, nothing was broken in shipment, no small parts were left out, they didn't forget to pack the manuals with it, etc. Sometimes it is a few small things; negotiate a discount on price (rather than returning it) if so. Vendors will try to get shippers to pay for anything broken in shipment. When complaining of breakage, you have no idea if it was broken when packed or in shipment, and you aren't going to pay the vendor until a working replacement is in hand. If you have already paid, and they tell you to collect for breakage from the shipper, it will be years (if ever) before you see a replacement.

9. FAX (preferably) or mail the PO.
10. Put your own copy in a "current" folder of such orders in a handy place, so you can check off the items when it arrives.
11. Arrival: Remove the packing list from the outside of the box. Keep this and photocopy if there isn't 2 clear ones included. Open the box with your PO in hand. Check off all items, both from packing list and actually there.
12. Items on BO: put big red dash by it, note estimated shipdate if any is given. Can the device run/be connected/operate without these missing items? Are setup manuals among the missing items? Let's say it's OK, everything is there or only a few things you can wait for. You're not going to OK an invoice for payment until you have them, but for now, the next step is test, make sure the device is not broken.
13. Look over any special setup "unpacking" instructions such as to take out little pieces of plastic and cardboard that prevent vibration damage during shipment. Put your checklists and PO's back in the current orders folder, and set up the device following the ssetup manual's instructions both the hardware part and the installation of any driver software. If there is a "self test" run just by turning it on (printers, some scanners) do this. Then connect it, install drivers, etc.
14. Keep driver software in a separate and very carefully secured space that is handy to your lab, where all software driver, all system and all repairs, network and special utilities disks such as "repair" disks are also kept. YOUR DEVICE WILL NOT OPERATE WITHOUT IT. You may want or need to receive upgrades. Register that software, so you will receive bug and upgrade noticves. Technical support by phone to manufacacturers will go much easier if you know the driver software's version number and date. This is not user software and should not be available to users--students, other teachers, people around your school who think they are computer experts, because they use a computer. Secure that software! Its absence can mess you up in many ways if gets lost. Its use by idiots who encounter some problem when you are not around and try to fix it can mess you up much worse.

    Of course all original disks of application and educational and game software should be secured too, but that's just school property security, this other is essential (and sometimes dangerous to the system) tools.

15. For all computer hardware whatsoever: It is just so many big useless lumps, without the appropriate software correctly installed.
16. So you are upset by this list! Somebody else takes care of all that, you are just the computer teacher, ay? They don't. They don't know about it. There probably are some purchasing procedures at your school, but those are based on buying furniture, on comparatively small regular or one large order of supplies, books, etc. Your school is not large enough to support a regular, full-time qualified purchasing agent. You know or are hastily learning more about how to make the school's new computers an educationally valuable experience for all. And this--purchasing, budgets, becoming hip with screwdrivers, packing crates, etc., is something else you have to learn even if your friendly authorized Apple representative dealer is right around the corner, much less 200 miles away. Record-keeping is extremely important. When you get smooth, workable procedures set up for yourself, write them down. And follow them, even if in a hurry. Regardless what it says in your job description, this is part of your job, no one else is doing it (unless your school is a large public school, or is so wonderfully unusual that I expect to see huge beams of light from above pointing it out in gleaming light--I don't see any from here). It's not that good in rich public schools either. They have big bureaucracies that deal with this sort of thing, generally all screwed up. Vendors who specialize in educational markets tend to be pretty screwy too in comparison to vendors who deal with businesses.

17. Software check: Whether it's disks or CDROMs, you must install and test it. This can take quite a while. Big software packages make take almost an hour to copy/install to a hard drive. If you have ordered a lab pack or site license, you can do the test by installing only one copy and insuring there are no defective disks--but only if the software does not physically prohibit installing more than one copy of itself (so that if you got 5 copies, you have to install from each of the 5 different sets of disks, rather than re-installing the one you know is OK). Never purchase copy-protected software for any reason, no matter how good you heard it was. Not only is it a nightmare if you have any trouble, but many of the schemes used on kidware can damage hard disks, especially in networked situations. Even so, there are kidwares and netwares that are "aware" of one another and will allow only one of themselves to be installed on a network, observing that "Hey, you already installed me on some other computer, you can't install me again." For these wares, you should record on the disks the workstation number of the machine it is installed in.

    How much time does all this take? About 20-30 hours/week will be spent in the type of tasks described above during the first year the computer lab is functional--that is, you walk in the door, and computers are sitting on workstations, wiring is in, someone has networked them (sort of) and supposedly everything is all ready to go. I hope in fact you have a budget, because there won't be much software, and if someone other than the computer teacher did the ordering it wont be what you want for the students, and most of it won't be installed anyway; a bunch of packages in shrink wrap will be lurking somewhere. If that's your situation, don't expect to be presented with a neat log detailing system setup; you'll have to figure that out by experiment. The first time something goes wrong, it will be many hours before you can figure it out. In staffing the computer lab, school administrative people must take account of these time-and-task facts. If there is just one computer teacher responsible for all this, that person will either be putting in 60-70 hour weeks or will be available for teaching only half-time. Administrative tasks--paperwork, tinkering, repairs, purchasing--will never occupy less than 10 hours/week in the functioning all-school computer lab that is running smoothly.

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The whole summer will be required for wiring, getting and assembling the furniture, putting the computers together, networking them, installing software--with all the checkoffs, complaints to vendors, and final paper OK's suggested above in the purchasing procedures. The last stage--the summer setup of the lab--is really a full-time job for 2 people, assisted by the building's maintenance staff who help unpack, assemble, carry, and carry out junk. To assemble an allegedly EZ-to-assemble workstation of the recommended dropped-keyboard-tray type takes a handy person about 45 minutes if there are no serious mismatches in pre-drilled holes. Usually there is. Assembly goes faster if 2 people can do it, one holding pieces together, the other putting in the screws. Chair assembly is also required, but usually goes faster, because seats and backs are usually wood, so screws can be forced through pre-drilled metal frames into mismatched holes in seats and backs, where in metal-to-metal mismatches, you have to use a metal drill to ream out matching holes. Return of such defective workstations or chairs--the defects are very common--is such a hassle that you should instead prepare to fix those mismatches. Assuming you have more than 2 nasties, complain bitterly to Customer Service, mention how many extra work-hours it was for maintenance to fix them, and try to negotiate a discount on the invoice.

Unpacking tip: Try to stash at least one complete set of boxes with internal foam packing materials for each type of machine. These will be required (forever) if you have to send them off for repairs. Unless there is a large lockable closet in your lab where you can hide this packing box stash forever, you won't find the box you need when you need it. Most warranties on hardware specify in the fine print that the original packing must be used on items returned for warranty service or other repairs. Of course you don't have to keep 20 of them! What you do have to (try to) keep is one of each kind. This is quite hard if they're somewhere that you can't keep an eye on them.

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