About
Who is Craig Emmott?
| Information Table | |
| Craig Emmott | |
| Name | Craig Emmott |
| Age | 22 |
| Occupation | I.T. Officer |
| Location | Alice Springs |
| Gender | Male |
| Race | Caucasian |
I am 22 year old Caucasian male living in Alice Springs. Work for me is being the IT Officer for a large catholic school. I've strived to be a professional in my career in I.T. My plan is to continue developing my skills as a professional and not just technically. Over the course of my life I have been in many I.T. related courses and jobs. The list includes :
- Computer club in primary school.
- 1 year work experience at an I.T. company during my 2 years at middle school.
- An I.T. Apprenticeship during high school.
- Cert I in Information Technology.
- Cert II in Information Technology.
- Cert III in Information Technology.
- I.T administrator for small a local high school.
- Computer technician at local apple store.
- I.T officer at large high school. (current)
- Studying for a degree in Information Technology. (current)
My current job as the I.T. Officer for a large k-12 school is very enjoyable. It is a complicated setup with a lot of flexibility and benefits with the job. The network itself is comprised of 2 separate networks spread over 3 campuses around town linked with fibre. There are 15 servers and roughly 660 computers including 151 laptops. Each campus has complete wireless coverage with 3 advanced wireless controllers to manage over 40 Access Points. Thousands of dollars worth of user monitoring software and computer inventory/maintenance/deployment software and servers. All computers are replaced every 4 years thanks to a quarter of a million+ computer replacement plan.
I have a passion for developing the professional side of my career. I knew that my technical expertise in computers will also way grow, through my hobbies alone if it came to it. There is still an idea that a lot of I.T. work and departments work behind the scenes and try to stay out of the way, fixing computers somewhere. In nearly all the different I.T. jobs I have, your technical skills are of smaller importance than other traits like being able to not only talk to people, but understanding what they mean and want. Most people don't care about how the computer is broken or how it was fixed. What people really want is for the problem to be fixed, in the least possible matter, and more importantly, for computers and technology to make their lives easier. My job now, even as the "technical guru", basically never involves physically fixing a computer. If it's a simple fix, it's done remotely quickly, or the computer gets completely reinstalled automatically remotely. If it's a complicated, time consuming fix, the user is given a new one straight away. The old one gets simply reinstalled automatically in the it office, or if physically broken, a technician is called out to "do the dirty work". This allows me to continue on with my work.
A lot of being an I.T. professional is being proactive about what people want out of the technology. Developing effective use out of the equipment, even if it involves deploying, or taking away more equipment, is one of the main focuses of I.T. An example is after a program to give every teacher a laptop, and another program to deploy smartboards with short-throw projectors and speakers into every room, a project to have laptop docking stations installed and cabled in every room was started. This now allows a teacher to simply walk into a class room and put the laptop onto the dock. This then connects up the projector, sound, and network automatically. The whole process takes less than 5 seconds at the dock, allowing teachers to focus more time on teaching, rather than the technology. When class is done, the teacher then just presses the eject button and the laptop pops off. The state of the laptop (on/off/standby) at any stage doesn't effect the procedure meaning no concern or any real training is needed. These are the kind of thoughts that a I.T. professional should have, leaving the more technical jobs to a technician.