Why are teachers not teaching live lessons online

[Shouldistayorshouldimove]

This is not a teacher bashing thread.

Talking online with another mum in my son’s class today, both ourDCs are in p1 (Scotland). She is outraged that teachers next term will be posting work online rather than actually teaching using Zoom etc. Her argument is that universities are doing it so why aren’t teachers? And how is she supposed to work from home and educate her children?

Personally I don’t think teaching a bunch of 5 year olds a live lesson using Zoom is going to be all that effective and would probably require quite a lot of supervision anyway. AIBU to think that tasks posted online are quite sufficient given the circumstances? So as not to drip feed, I am also working from home with 2DCs.

Italian - how old are your kids? Mine are secondary aged and there's some subjects where they know more than me- for example I've not had a biology lesson since I was 14 (took Chemistry and Physics) and dc1 is doing A-level Biology.

Zoom doesn’t even have end to end encryption! They’ve ironed out nothing, did you not see the YouTube videos of hacked Zoom lessons?

As I said in my earlier post, these are very real and very frequent concerns. Those of us who actually work in education are very aware of this, and many of us have been victims time and time again of these things. I’d also rather do everything I possibly could to PROTECT my students from seeing/hearing these things online in the first place.

And again, if you’d actually read the thread at all, you’d have seen that I DO work in a private school, and I AM teaching live lessons through Microsoft Teams. Because private school, for reasons I have already written, are a whole different kettle of fish to trying to teach live online lessons to 36 state school students at once.

If I were still in state, there’s no way on earth I would consent to live lesson teaching, and I fully endorse my state school colleagues who are not doing so.

Considering how many teens smoke drugs in their social media photos, I can imagine the odd child smoking a spliff during a video lesson to shock everyone. It's not like there's detentions any more?

But why no marking carousel? That failing is particularly outrageous and incendiary to parents. Why on earth would you not mark children’s work at this time particularly? It’s a basic part of the job, what’s that all about?

If someone says safeguarding I’ll scream.

Nelly no but you have exclusions and other penalties including those of the criminal law which would apply here,

Namechangedforthisreply7, you don't seem to understand that things like the 'law' are not 'surmountable', schools still have to comply with educational law, child protection laws, data protection laws etc. With regards to data protection, a school as a Data Controller should not be signing up for stuff, sharing personal data with third parties and not carry out the due diligence, including data protection risk assessments that are a legal requirement, you can't disregard the law and deal with the fall out later as it would be too late, you have already shared that data!

There are plenty of private sector companies that equally don't have a clue about data protection so state education should certainly not be following their example!

@Namechangedforthisreply7

I wouldn't mind if videos were embarrassing. I would mind if they could lead to criminal charges/investigations.

I've already said my phone camera videos are rubbish. They aren't clear, take hours to edit/prep/upload. Would you be expected to buy tech to do your job in other sectors?

There are pre made videos already out there done by professionals. Why do I need to reinvent an inferior version?

With the rest of my time I'm replying to student emails (had 122 on one day before the break). I also have a list of jobs from my HOD. I'm working more hours now than ever.

Sacha - I use you to mean all teachers, not literally you.

Most schools are moving away from marking now as research shows that it has very little impact. Live marking within the lesson is the most effective form of feedback.

Your friend is a stupid prick.

I'm marking, the amount of marking is far more than it ordinarily would be as you wouldn't normally mark every single piece of written work yourself, after every lesson.
It also takes a lot longer due to issues with the IT system. I've had a pupil email me to ask why their work wasn't marked, even though the due date had not been reached.
I suspect this might be why English unions have said marking is not required.

Marking is not a fundamental part of the job. It's actually a pretty useless part of the job.

Live feedback is the best way for students to make progress. Therefore responding to their emails is of far more benefit than making videos or ticking work they could have self marked.

Yy goldenbear we had an email about this very issue from our GDPR guy yesterday!

That failing is particularly outrageous and incendiary to parents.

lol. This is like the pure spirit of teacher bashing in one sentence, could be applied to anything!

Sacha, the online chinkx have been largely ironed out by zoom and similar. Passwords, waiting rooms etc - private sector has it nailed.
Not all do. The private sector isn’t just one homogeneous group, just like schools aren’t.

The risks you are taking about are so slim, would be dealt with as as by other infraction. It isn’t so great that it renders online/video/audio unusable.

Again, in your opinion. If you had previously had abuse through social media use (and is no one worried about their kids being cyber bullied online) and teens, you wouldn’t think it was slim.

You take the risk and you assess, you minimise (passwords, waiting rooms etc).
You look at the most secure tech available.
See, this shows you don’t fully understand the issue with something like Zoom.
And schools have done this risk assessment and many are using the cloud or VLEs as tech which carry fewer risks.

You get parents and kids to sign up to a code of practice.
That alone isn’t enough otherwise behaviour policies wouldn’t be contravened by pupils as much as they are.

You just don’t down tools and say ‘meh’

No one has. Even your posts highlight you didn’t know what teachers have been doing.

Education is lagging embarrassingly behind everyone else right now.

Again, in your opinion. Thankfully, the vast majority of parents don’t think this.

Sacha, the online chinkx have been largely ironed out by zoom and similar. Passwords, waiting rooms etc - private sector has it nailed.

Wow. So because yet again they have had to issue more bollocks when it comes to reassuring people, everything is ok?

That somehow private schools how somehow got this massive breach sorted because they are somehow excluded.

The point is simple. Anything that has to potential to do what can be done on Zoom and has frequently been done over several years how no fucking place near my kids.

Last time the person was unlucky to only see what they saw.

Imagine the next twisted fuckers who think awesome and fucking airs a rape scene. Ok, the risk is there every time we go online, but why the fuck would anyone want to take that massive risk when it could involve that child seeing that. Why not just cut out Zoom and put on Saw for them to watch. You know it might fuck up their brain, like lots of evidence that is currently being used to support the impracticalities of not adhering to social distancing guidance.

I don’t know how people just can’t understand why video lessons don’t work for young children.

I set lessons via a communication platform that we already used. I communicate with PARENTS daily, NOT children. The work I set is given to the children by their parents.

I can’t post out work, I honestly can’t afford to. Most of my families don’t have a printer - so it’s highly practical stuff - think “find all these shapes in your house and sort them” BUT if I could send out hard copies, I’d still need the parents to give it to them.

We provided the children with paper, pencils, rubbers, rulers, sharpeners, colours, empty text books etc based upon individual needs.

At primary, despite independence further up the school, I can’t see how you could give them a bunch of videos and expect they teach themselves.

White rose maths and twinkl / twinkl go have high quality, visual and interactive work - much better than a teacher’s head speaking. I certainly don’t have the tech to produce anything so shiny.

I wish the unions had explained better when they wrote that sentence about marking. Like so much atm it is being misunderstood, misconstrued , taken out of context and misinterpreted. Feedback , support and marking are not all the same things.

Well we have a major issue in that j have no school laptop. I use my own.

So if I'm teaching on it, and my kids are supposed to be doing live lessons at the same time, I need them to both have access to a decent sized screen.

So I need to buy more tech? No.

I probably can afford it. Lots of parents can't afford it, certainly not for each child.

There's huge safeguarding issues around live lessons.

I teach a media based subject. Ironically, it is one of the hardest subjects to teach remotely and online , since nearly all the films are copyright protected!!

@namechangedforthisreply7

You get the kids and their parents to sign a code of practice - I can't get the parents of my year 9s to even sign their diaries or return reply slips on time!

You look at the most secure tech available - in comprehensive schools where we don't have money to buy enough exercise books to last us the year?

And stop saying we down our tools. I'm spending hours and hours in front of my laptop, adapting and creating new resources, marking the work that is sent back, chasing students via email and phone...

you have no idea what you're talking about!!!

Anyway, Namechanged, I’ve given you all the information, and been added to marvellously by many of my colleagues on this thread, and I will now simply suggest that you apply your comprehension and critical thinking skills, and I’m sure you’ll eventually reach the right conclusion.

One would hope.

I’m off to read and sleep in the garden, since it’s Saturday, and I only got three hours’ sleep last night... yes, due to marking work for my students. Couldn’t do it during the day in the Easter holidays, as I’ve been volunteering at a doctors’ surgery.

But don’t let shit like this get in the way of your impression of teachers “downing tools”.

Best of luck to all my fellow teachers in the coming week. And good luck, also, with continuing to sew scrubs and make visors. If you have any spare time left, please feel free to join me in my “Reinventing the Wheel” workshop later this week. I quite enjoy reinventing wheels... I think I’ll stick fireworks to mine next time, see what happens...

For fellow teachers we have found the assignment part of Teams so useful. You can set self marking quizzes with immediate feedback and also set longer exam questions too. It has meant I can see my students engaging and send them individual feedback really easily. Plus I am starting to put videoed lessons on, so me talking through a PowerPoint to explain. This means no safeguarding as my face doesn't appear. I am then online to answer questions.

So far I know of 3 willies that have appeared in lessons and those students are now banned from videos. I am very sure I will appear on some social media meme before this is all done but I don't really care. Some of my younger colleagues do though and so on line teaching is optional.

@SachaStark 🤝😘

I am coming to think that the reason people are pushing so hard for video lessons despite teachers explaining why they are not advisable or suitable is precisely because teachers are saying no and we must be wrong at all times