My Work Experience Report.

My Work Experience Report

Introduction

I went to Wyke Manor School in Wyke where I worked in the ICT Helpdesk, where they fix problem computers on the school network. I worked for two weeks at this placement from 29th September till the 10th October 2003. My daily work times were not fixed as when they was more work to be done I would come in earlier and finish later but mostly days I worked from 9.15am to 4.00pm.

I had a pre-placement interview that I had arranged beforehand on the telephone, this was to find out where my placement was, see who my supervisor was and what exactly I would be doing on a daily basis. I also got a chance to ask questions of my own such as the dinner requirements and what equipment I would need to bring with me to enable me to do the job effectively.

My ideas about the placement before I had been to for an interview to see it was that it was going to be like a typical school stereotype that I had in my head and I though it would be like my old middle School. When I approached the building for the first time from the outside it did look just like I had thought a very old Victorian building, but when I went inside I saw that it was state of the art in terms of technology with one of the best ICT centres for both students and the community in Bradford.

What I wanted to learn

What I did during the placement

I was given a wide variety of tasks to do at my work placement dealing with computers and the many problems that can go wrong with them from hardware to software. One of my main tasks that I was given was to eliminate any viruses on all of the computers in the school, college and community centre. This meant that I had to go in a team of three and run a anti-virus software on all of the machines. The task meant that I learnt ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

What I wanted to learn

What I did during the placement

Another task I had to do was fix various computers with both hardware problems and software problems. This meant very hands on work where I dismantled various computers and fitted them with new hard drives and CD drives. I enjoyed this task a lot as I was not repeating the same thing as each computer had a different problem. For instance one computer could have needed a new hard drive and another needed Windows 2000 installing on it.

Workplace Interview

I interviewed John Turford who was the ICT Support Manager of my work placement. I found out that he was very hard working as he didn’t have fixed working times like much of the ICT staff, this meant that when he didn’t finish a particular task he would work extra hours that he wouldn’t be getting paid for. He has a had a wide range of jobs before he got to this particular job ranging from the Royal Navy to working in the Bradford Council.

His job is quite typical as all schools and offices where there are computers an ICT support Manager is needed to look after the computers. I learnt a lot through him, one thing I learnt was that he didn’t do his job solely for the wage that was a factor but also because he learns something new almost every day and he gets job satisfaction from solving problems, this was something that I didn’t know people worked for.

Action Plan

I think that I learnt and put into practice almost everything I had set out to in my action plan. I have learnt a lot about communication within a work placement and that it is vital, at my placement this was mainly through a daily meeting in the morning to discuss tasks that needed dealing with and ones that needed sorting out.

I also learned a great deal about problem solving, as this was the main key skill I did all the way through my work experience. Through this key skill I learned about how working in small groups to solve problems broke the work down.

A key skill that I would like to work on in the future is to improve my learning as I already had background knowledge on computers already; nothing really was new to me.

Conclusions

I felt very pleased overall about my work placement as I did get a lot out of it. My surroundings were very different from school life although still based in a school I got to see a different perspective. Where I enjoyed being treated as an adult but also given a helping hand to make sure I was coping fine by fellow colleagues. The only thing I can say I disliked was that my work experience only lasted a short time and I would have liked to stay.

If I went on work experience again I would make sure to impress my supervisor to show them all that I am capable of so that in return I would be respected as an adult like I did in this placement. To students going to the work placement in the next year I would also tell them to work hard for them to be appreciated as an adult and to show their supervisor that they can work independently so that then they will be seen as an adult.