| Digital - teacher | Education in a technological world

How hard it is to do a job properly?

Don't you just hate it when someone can't do the most simple part of their job, and as a result it puts you out ? I do! It happened to me today with City Link delivery service, so I've decided to send them a message about it, rather than ignore it;

What have we learnt today?

Today I have learnt two very important lessons. Lessons that I will not be forgetting in a hurry.

As I have previously mentioned, I am incapacitated at the moment. I'm off work, i can't walk far, I can't drive anywhere, and I can't do a thing it feels like!

Stand Up. Be Proud. Celebrate.

Not long ago I was bombarded with emails / TV adverts and bus shelter adverts telling me to celebrate with a pint of Guiness because "March 17th is St Patrick's day". That's great, lovely, nice idea. Except I live in England. I am English, and my patron saint isn't St Patrick - it's St. George.

Today is April 23rd, St George's Day, and how many emails / TV ads and bus shelter ads have I seen telling me it's time to celebrate with a pint of Pedigree, or Spitfire? Exactly 0. Nil. Zilch. Zip. None. Not a single advert anywhere.

Why are we so crap at being proud of being English? We should have a national holiday today in England. We should be flying flags. We should be eating a roast dinner and drinking English ale. We should be celebrating all things English, but do we? Of course not.

If I was in school today I would be making sure that the children knew exactly who St George was. I'd have use the foam javelins for a jousting event in PE. I'd have had themed lessons related to St George and Dragons. (I've done it before in schools and the kids love it). 

Stand Up. Be Proud. Celebrate. It's St. George's Day. It's England Day.

Link for schools:

• Dragonsville

• Info on St George

• More on St George

Don't rush - take your time

So I rang my insurance company yesterday to ask about how my critical illness cover will be affected by recent events. Today a claims advisor rang me back to "have a chat" about what had happened. Apparently they don't send out claim forms anymore. Oh no - they have a much better system!!

I tell them what happened, and they write it all down in a letter that they then post to me. I read it, and see if I agree with what I said (??). I sign it, and give permission for them to then get medical details from the hospital and doctor. They then sit down and decide whether or not I am covered. This last bit will take them 7 weeks apparently. 

Are they hoping that I'll have another attack and not continue with a claim? Is this why it takes them so long? Why can't they just ring my doctor and ask one question - "Did he have a heart attack?" When the doctor says yes, hand over the money. Simple. Surely?

{Calm thoughts - deep breath - calm thoughts}

Why am I paying for my tablets?

I've been to the doctors today to get a check up following the last two weeks. There was good news, and there was bad news.

The good news is that I seem to be through the worst of it. The doctor is pleased with my blood pressure and my pulse - both are as they should be. I have passed through the "dangerzone" of a repeat attack that could have happened over the first 10 days too.

The bad news is the cost of the monthly medication I am prescribed. £30 each and every month from now until the year dot. Apparently, if I was an unemployed layabout who had never paid taxes, I could have been given it all for free, but as I paid my taxes, and worked myself ill I have to now pay for the medicines I need to take to keep me alive.

Fair? Absolutely not, but then this is the New Britain and those that work hard don't get anything as a reward, because it all gets given to the loafers.

Don't wanna Play no more

I've just finished a phone call with Play.com that has helped me save a fortune in future expenses, because I won't be spending another penny with them ever again.

I ordered a digital download from them back in February for my daughter (she was seeking the music score from the film "Twilight" and no shops stocked it). I placed the order and waited for the email confirming it was ready. 

It arrived, and so did the frustation. 

Everytime we attempted to download the album we were given an error message saying that Play was undergoing maintenace. This went on for a week before my first phone call. They promised to look into it and email me a response. 

Guess what - no email, no response, no download. 

Today I phoned them to see what was going on. There was (apparently) a note on their system saying everything was fixed. Not according to my, or my daughters, computer when we tried downloading earlier today.

I've asked for a refund (wonder how long before that gets sorted), and found another download site that, as I write, is downloading the tracks successfully.

Well done play. A customer lost through the inability to communicate with your customers.

Oh what a day

Today the Headteacher and I began our Learning Platform training. We went their with apprehension - I had already heard lots of teachers berate the service we are being "provided with", and the Headteacher had to decide whether to justify a £900 cost each year for the service.

Well we were quickly told that by using it we could (and I quote) 

"show your staff the wonders of fronter"!!

These are some of the wonders that we were being offered. We can have the ability to...

• make rooms - well, our website already lets us post work / articles in categories (we could rename them rooms if we wanted 
• showcase pupils work, (but only to those are allowed to access the LP) - we showcase work to the world, and receive comments from as far as New Zealand 
• store resources centrally - we can load files onto our website and link to them already
• upload pictures quickly - not as quick as we can to the website, even via a mobile phone whilst on a field trip
• have a forum, that is completely unmoderated - mmmm can you see the issues there? 
• have different pages for different classes - we already have on the website. We call them "class areas"
• create topic resource links - have you seen our weblinks page on the website?
• load audio to a "room" - we can put audio on a page, in an RSS feed, and we send them to iTunes too
• message each other, (with no log support to check conversations) - our wiki records all comments passed (including those later removed)
• make tests - damn it. Something we can't do;  but surveymonkey does 

So there you - we can pay £900 for the ability to make tests, votes and quizzes and have unmoderated conversations, or stick to our current solution (costing us around £100 a year). What would you do? We've got to make a decision as to whether or not to go with it.

As you can imagine I was not impressed with the day, as my flurry of tweets throughout the day will show if you read back through them. I know that some schools are not pushing tech like we are doing in some areas, I know that some schools don't have staff who can build websites, and I know that in some schools they don't yet have a website but please - the LP creates websites that look like something that was designed in the mid 1990's as the internet permeated into everyday life and comic sans, blocky clipart and jumbled sections filled pages. The LP doesn't allow creativity in the design of "rooms". Everything has to sit in a box, automatically sized by the system, not the user.

I want to be able to choose HOW the LP looks and HOW it works. I know what works with children - I teach them - so I want to be able to put my ideas in, not choose from a list that some faceless business website designer has dreamt up. Am I asking too much?

So there you go - day one of the training, and I *should* be back for more on Monday, but will I be there? 

Do teachers have rights?

In the current credit crunch everyone is watching the pennies, and that is what makes Leicestershire County Councils recent letter to teachers even more infuriating. With the weather causing schools to close - often because teachers cannot physically get to the school from their homes - the county council has seen it justifiable to send out a letter stating that "failure to attend work without making reasonable efforts should result in employees being expected to take unpaid leave or make the time up". 

So now staff are forced into the situation of putting their own health and safety second, because they are concerned about having a paycut.

What happens then when the teacher crashes their car on the way to work? Will the County Council pay the cost of repair? I bet not. And what if a teacher ends up with a broken limb and off work for weeks because of a fall trying to get to work. The County Council would then be paying for supply cover whilst the teacher recovers. 

Just why do us teachers get treated like this? 

BBC report here

More typepad woes

I'm still unable to access some of my category archives since being migrated. It's extremely frustrating because the posts are actually still around, and what makes me really scratch my head is that I can access them directly, by clicking back through each and every post, or access them through the monthly archive sections. It's only when I try to access a category archive that I get a 404 page.

Why? I've reverted from an advanced template design to a pre-designed theme (which I thought would have been bug free), so can't blame my coding on the problem. Sixapart support currently says "we're working on it" when I look at my help ticket, but how long before it's sorted and I can get back everything properly?

Updated: All seems well again!

The Power of Twitter

Wow. Twitter is VERY powerful when you want it to be. I'm locked in a battle of wills with the support desk at SixApart regarding the non arrival of my migration to the new platform.
I've blogged about it often enough, but that hasn't made much difference (there have been a few comments left from other Typepad users who are not happy, but nothing official from the company).

However, tonight I posted a tweet in twitter (suprisingly still about the lack of migration). Within 6 minutes I had received a Direct Message from SixApart, giving an email address to speak directly to them. Let's see what it brings...

The power of twitter!