I want to book lesson 2 on Tuesday, is it free?

September 27, 2009 1:52 PM

How can the teachers at my school book a lesson in our ICT suite online? Does anyone know of a simple app or anything that will allow us to do this? At the moment staff have to lug themselves across the school to check if it's free, sometimes it is and sometimes it's not.

For example, Mrs. Hawking wants to book it for lesson 3 on a Wednesday. She goes on the site, puts her name there and that's it. She's booked.

Hope you guys can help.

posted by mooreeasyvibe to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Could you be less specific?
posted by torquemaniac at 2:11 PM on September 27, 2009

For a small number of cooperative people, a shared google calendar would work.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:28 PM on September 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I'm not sure if your post is helpful. Though it's Sunday night here in the UK and I could be mistaken as I'm tired.
posted by mooreeasyvibe at 2:28 PM on September 27, 2009

Are you talking about a tool to let people check out a book? A room?

What email or intranet system do you use? Are there shared calendars?
posted by k8t at 2:48 PM on September 27, 2009

Response by poster: To book rooms.
posted by mooreeasyvibe at 2:56 PM on September 27, 2009

http://mrbs.sourceforge.net/

Very flexible configuration, you can integrate it with your login system if you have the technical know-how. You can run it on a web server on your network or offsite.
posted by bullox at 3:27 PM on September 27, 2009

Conference rooms at my office are set up with e-mail addresses on our system (Novell Groupwise). You can view the room's calendar to see if it's free, and if it is, you can send it an appointment like you would with anyone else you invite to a meeting.
posted by LolaGeek at 3:32 PM on September 27, 2009

If you go with the email address idea and the shared calendar, I know that if you use Outlook you can set the calendar to "open" visibility. This way, when you look to see if the room is free, you can also see WHO has it booked if it's not free. Which then allows you to contact that teacher to possibly negotiate access to the room at the booked time.

Likely other calendar systems have this option too.
posted by CathyG at 3:38 PM on September 27, 2009

We use a program at our school that is exactly what you are after. SOBS - School Online Booking System allows us to book computer rooms, library lessons, resources such as cameras, TV and DVD players from the comfort of our staffroom or even home. Here is the link - it is an Australian site however, so I don't know if they have a UK version. It is incredibly useful, as our secondary school is large and computers are in very high demand, booked out weeks in advance. Hope this helps!
posted by Pippi Longstocking at 3:40 PM on September 27, 2009

We have a test suite of computers, and user time is controlled by signing up on an excel spreadsheet saved on a shared drive (Google docs could work here...). Each column gets a date, and users highlight the block of time they want and stick their name in one of those cells. Someone does have to maintain it every few months (extend out the sheet etc), but it's quick and simple, and easy to see who has it and for how long.
posted by lemonade at 4:54 PM on September 27, 2009

At my Massachusetts school, we go to a website called Lab Scheduler that does exactly that.

Although sometimes people forget to use it, it's a pretty good system.
posted by dzaz at 6:23 PM on September 27, 2009

Does your school use Microsoft Exchange? If it uses Exchange 2003, you want the Auto-Accept Agent and a "mailbox" for the room to receive calendar requests. If it uses Exchange 2007, look into resource scheduling mailboxes. This is similar to what LolaGeek describes under Groupwise and an automated way of handling calendar requests like CathyG suggests.

Note that the first couple of links should be given to your Exchange admin, if you have one. Accounts without Exchange administrative privileges can't accomplish this.
posted by fireoyster at 10:23 PM on September 27, 2009