To be annoyed about parents being set homework

[Snowfire]

Over half term my DD was set homework to take 2 photos per day (18 in all) of things she did over half term and take them in for a project to be done over the next couple of weeks. So, each day when we did something I would snap a pic on my phone or she would take a pic with my camera on days I had to work. It seemed like a nice variation on writing about what they did in the holidays and was quite fun.
However, on Sunday when I came to printing them out, it seemed like a rather unfair expense (18 sheets of photo paper plus ink) and wondered about how some less well off families would feel about it. On Monday after school, DD said that the teacher actually wanted the photos to still be in digital format so needed them to be either on a memory stick or disc (wasted photo paper!) and as I don't have a spare memory stick I tried to put them on disc, having never done this before I wasted a couple of discs before managing to put the relevent photos in an album and transfer to a disc (quite chuffed with myself for that). yesterday DD said that the photos had come up as a slide show and this wasn't what he wanted so could I do it again? AIBU??

I always dread ICT based homework, especially when we 'need' to print it out at 9pm the night before and the printer is playing up or the DC have yet again lost their memory sticks.

When necessary I just write an explanatory note and we have never had a problem.

It gets better when the get the are at Secondary School as they can fix the problems themselves

If you don't have the equipment, then you ask the school what they have as an alternative suggestion. They are not telepathic and will not know if you are having difficulty if you don't ask,
It is now an era of technology, I started teaching before schools had PCs in classrooms. I think you will find that a memory stick is almost as necessary and pencil and protractor now.

You are not being at all U, in my humble opinion. I firmly believe that homework should NOT be for parents to do and that the school has a cheek to expect something to be done that is so time consuming and impractical.

Unfortunately there are always parents who love an opportunity to show off their skills and the rest of us have no choice but to be dragged along!!

Snowfire - is your name after that green herbal balm that you put on chapped fingers?

I find this thread a bit alarming. I know that's stupid but I am a bit of a white elephant and am simply not that interested in technology even if it is only photos, memory sticks, etc.. I am hoping that I won't be a liability for my dd (6) when she starts having homework like this.

Most of the homework she gets now is simple and easy (exercise book and pencil). But I do find already that I get garbled messages from dd about stuff she is supposed to do for school. It often doesn't make any sense to me. Last time I attempted to speak to the teacher about it, she was very brusque, looked at me blankly like I was from Mars, and told to speak to the TA because she was 'too busy with the ones doing SATs'. I wish they would send written notes home instead of relying on the children to pass on messages.

Anyway, got that off my chest...sorry for the mini-hijack...

Get them to use their VLE and post homework on it, then you can log in and check for yourself. I have little patience with any teacher that gives verbal homework, my DS has Aspergers's and needs to have a written record. He's old enough to do it himself now, but in primary I insisted it was given to him written down.

What is a VLE?

Virtual Learning Environment. You can usually get to it through the school's website and every child has their own login password.
Teachers can post homework, links and materials to show what the class is doing on it.

My 9 year old would not have a clue how to do this ,he has never uploaded photos let alone saved them to a disk or stick ,my 14year old (spLd) would have a go and probably either lose or crash something s
and my 17 year old would do it but would definately ask for assistance,not to do it but to get confirmation of his method.

My kids school use something called espresso, is that it?

Sadly we don't have anything fancy like that in our school, we mainly rely on satchel post!
Skyatnight, I hadn't heard of the green balm, just made snowfire out of 2 of my favourite books. I remember year 2 sats, I complained when dd had'nt read to a teacher in months (age 6) and was told they were concentrating in the children who needed more input before the tests! Grrr to sats.

Grrr SATs indeed.

snowfire

It reminds me of my Dad as he used to use it.

I don't even know what a trebuchet is.

Well it's always nice to learn something- thank you.

We make them in school with spoons and rubber bands and thick cardboard and tape.
Ticks boxes for science, history, DT, maths and collaborative activities.

Well, it's a lot of fun and arguing and then you get to choose what makes the best missile.
I don't let them set fire to balls of newspaper, whatever the pleading.

We if we are lucky get told about homework via a text message. So I get these weird little messages of less than 100 characters trying to tell me what the homework is.

Wish the school would either do a letter, even if they just posted it to the website, and sent a text saying 'check the website'.

Depends on the age of the children and their abilities BTP.
Y2 it's experimentation.
Y6 it is more about weights, trajectory, thickness of the band, distance...and using the results to predict patterns and theorise about what improvements you could make and what the effect would be.

We set fire to the houses we made for the Great Fire of London, and we had firefighters visit too, to talk about Elf and Safety.
But flaming balls with uncertain trajectories? Nope.

seriously, a 14 year old cant upload photos and save to disk? that is not riht?

I rather thought schools couldn't assume pupils had computers at home, or indeed other such equipment.

Last set of data released by the Department of Statistics in 2009 shows this:

The percentage of households with an Internet connection rose from 66 per cent in 2008 to 71 per cent in 2009

Households with children were more likely to have Internet access at home than those without: 93 per cent of households with two adults and two or more children had Internet access at home

That doesn't necessarily mean a home PC though, could mean connected via mobile phones/xbox etc.