To be SO CROSS about fecking Microsoft Teams? RANT warning!

[HerselfIndoors]

It doesn't work! It's complicated, confusing and all over the place, then when you finally find some actual content from school, an actual assignment for your child to do or video to watch, it doesn't download or open - presumably because the system is overloaded. It's also not designed for Mac users so there's a whole load more dicking about to get that to work (if it's working at all).

I have my own work to do but just like last time, I'm going to be spending hours struggling with this stupid software. WHY don't school just make up a simple word or PDF document with reading and worksheets/assignments for the week, and email it to us? Then we could email back the completed work once a week. I could organise that myself, it doesn't take a genius. Instead everyone - teachers, parents and kids - is spending vast amounts of time trying to use an unnecessarily complex system.

I mean it's not as if losing hours of my work time every day MATTERS, it's only earning a fucking living in a pandemic! Oh and what a great idea to add a layer of extra stress and hassle to the kids' homeschooling day. FFS.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I'm so pissed off. I emailed school (politely) last time to suggest doing it a simpler way - totally ignored.

Is it just me? It's not that I've done it wrong - both techie ex and techie teen DS cant make it work this morning. But I need to calm down so having a rant here....

Techie Teens can't make school work work on a Monday morning 🤔

I'm not massively techie, I've used Team the last few years at work, never ran into any kind of problem.

Agree. Awful.

Totally disagree, super easy, my 10 year old gets it.

If you have trouble downloading the app, ask the organiser for the weblink. Usually all team invites have a web link so you can join over a browser.

Im a mac user and haven't had any trouble with Teams?

No problems with it here. Our school have been using it since March last year.

I’m grateful every day that my DC is old enough to not need my input with online college - I am seeing your rant posted on Facebook by plenty, in fact pretty much all of my friends, who are home schooling primary age children. YANBU.

A Microsoft product not designed for Macs you say...?

Just about the whole of Scotland has just started using Teams today and I think its overloaded the system. We've been messaged by the school this morning about it.

The world and its wife were logging into Teams at 9am today, it's bound to be a bit glitchy initially

It doesn’t work properly on a Mac- download the app and works slightly better but it won’t download any work to print just on chrome.

But yes it’s a pain- I have to keep logging out to download 2 kids work. They all need stupidly long passwords. I use teams at work and don’t like it then- sometimes it’s intuitive other times totally not

We got this message

You are completely right about Teams being shit, have spent the last few weeks trying to get it on either of our MacBooks. We have ended up getting a different laptop as school tech couldn't help either. School load stuff on different parts too which doesn't help.

I’m not a fan, and I prefer zoom.

However, I’m on a ten year old iMac and with the app it’s been ok, not had any problems. It just a lousy interface and reminds me why I binned most Microsoft stuff years ago!

@dementedpixie

Just about the whole of Scotland has just started using Teams today and I think its overloaded the system. We've been messaged by the school this morning about it.

Absolutely this.

It's bad but not as bad as bloody google classroom which is the most unintuitive, not fit for purpose piece of software that is giving me the fucking rage on a daily basis.

@MissBaskinIfYoureNasty

Im a mac user and haven't had any trouble with Teams?

I've had some issues with sharing my screen on Mac - you need to go into permissions and allow it and that isn't very intuitive - I solved it with Google and then shared it on to most of the mac users on my course.

I'd take Teams any day over the shitty collaborative software my uni uses which is dire.

Hmm a variety of responses so maybe it's something to do with how it's used or set up.

Of course I realise it's overloaded today - but why use something that gets overloaded? Obviously that would happen - but it wouldn't be an issue if they did it a simpler way.

Re macs, a word document on a Mac will just convert to pages. But with teams, it doesn't and you have to go in and sort it out manually (at least IME - which I see might not be the same for everyone).

My techie teen is keen and conscientious, honest! If he can't sort it, it's not working. However we have now had a bit more functionality, so presumably everyone tried and gave up, freeing it up a bit.

We've been on teams since 9am with no issue whatsoever.

Just like the last 2 weeks of term last term and all of the lockdown last year

It's not just Teams itself that is winding me up (though it is!) It's this dumb attitude from schools (and you get the same from government) that everything has to be done with special software, which inevitable takes more time, is harder to do and has much more potential to go wrong. Oh and costs the system more as well.

It's not necessary, and it excludes or discriminates against parents who may struggle with tech or don't have much time because they're working. It adds stress right when we don't need that. It's everything that pisses me right off about the education system.

Although, thanks to those who say they aren't having a problem, because that gives me hope that it can go smoothly at some point.

Teams allows teachers to set work and for students to upload it into a relevant team rather than getting hundreds of emails.

We've been using it since first lockdown without an issue.

School load stuff on different parts too which doesn't help.

YES! Just when you work out where one teachers has decided to randomly put stuff, another has done it totally differently. 10 minutes of training to tell them to all to the same thing wouldn't be that hard!

Here's hoping the glitches caused bt all schools trying to access teams this am doesn't impact on the access nhs need to communicate...