online booking programs?
Answer reviewed 24/01/2023
There are a number of commercial, online booking systems to choose from. Some may be more user friendly than others. Below are some booking systems used by other schools for you to review.
BOOKITLAB
Provides science equipment and laboratory scheduling and inventory management: www.bookit-lab.com
CaRob Computing
Provides software for schools including booking systems and science stock management: www.carobcom.com
SOBS
Provides an online booking service for educational use, for rooming and resources: https://sobs.com.au
Riskassess
Provides a digital system for risk assessments, up-to-date safety information, and allows your team to book equipment and schedule experiments. There are two versions:
Secondary school - https://www.riskassess.com.au/
Primary school - https://www.riskassess.com.au/info/primary_about
Note: Science ASSIST provides these links as a service and does not specifically endorse these products or companies. The companies have now been added to and can be found in our list of School science suppliers.
An alternative is to develop an in-house electronic booking system. Schools have sometimes developed this in conjunction with their school IT staff, although paper request forms still seem to be very popular.
We use Riskassess which is designed for schools and am very happy with it. For a lab assistant, the scheduling page is really useful. Makes it easy to see what needs to be put together each day. The risk assessments are time stamped when the teachers submit them, so no arguments about when they requested equipment/materials. I also use the program to prepare my own risk assessments for the prep room.