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....

[quote Silverdeer]@GravityFalls why don't you give your pupils a subject title for the homework. Be firm - it must be under subject "blah blah" or it may be missed and not marked.[/quote]
Hahaha. Yes, why didn't we all think of that?

ClassDojo is awful, it's like a constant Facebook stream of stuff, you can't search it and you can't archive or delete old stuff. Teams is much better, though it still has its bad points, but at least my kids can operate it by themselves. Dojo on an Amazon tablet is the worst of the worst, as the links to PDFs and YouTube don't work, and you have to type them in manually, or on another machine to find the title of the work/ video then search for it. All while I'm supposed to be working.

LOL! It's a teacher thing innit.

I don't know, mine are on teams face to face teaching etc and it's fine.

Yeah I hate Teams.

Had problems sending links for live events, attendees could log in to the presenter /producer 'room'. Feckin pain in the arse

When teams is set up well it definitely works. We used it in Aus for the first and second lockdowns and it worked for us. Each subject had a team. Within the team were individual channels for each lesson in which the live lesson, which was recorded, was stored. The channels had all resources.

Students were provided with an overview in the overview channel of the coming week which detailed due dates and assignments. We received feedback via Assignments once per week on classwork as well as feedback on forms daily.

When teams is set up well it definitely works.

This is the bottom line with Teams (I use Teams heavily and am currently writing software that integrates with it), it's extremely configurable, the Admin Centre is pretty feature rich.

No two setups will ever be the same and a poorly planned one will be a pain in the arse to use. As with any collaboration tool, the implementation is the key.

It's got to be a bloody nightmare for schools that are using Teams if they are now trying to implement this quickly, and have just been exposed to it.

I suppose it's are being hit hard data usage for residential customers must have shot up this last year.

I wonder if they've been shapping the wfh traffic to prioritise streaming traffic?

@ALightFromTheShadows

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

Plenty of Microsoft product are entirely designed for Mac.

Hate teams. It’s deleted maths answers twice this week. Now having to save everything before clicking off it in case it deletes. DS and I both prefer when he sits with a pencil and workbook doing maths and English the old fashioned way. They have the rest of their adult lives to sit staring miserably at a computer screen. They don’t need this now.

When teams is set up well it definitely works. We used it in Aus for the first and second lockdowns and it worked for us. Each subject had a team. Within the team were individual channels for each lesson in which the live lesson, which was recorded, was stored. The channels had all resources

Also in Oz. I stored all tasks and materials/ resources in the school's central system, which the parents can view and access, which they couldn't on Teams. I ended up using Teams to call meetings/lessons, post links and tell the students where tasks/resources were.

It works perfectly OK on Macs.

The implementation is key. Victorian teachers were given pupil-free days at the start of lockdowns to set up for Teams/whatever.. My school also has dedicated IT tech support. We also set up a Teams group where staff could ask questions and get support from staff who were all over this stuff..

What also made it easier, and is not to to be underestimated is my school as been BYOD for at least four years, so every student has their own laptop.

For people saying teams doesn't work with Macs, the anecdata from DD's class is that it didn't work for some of them on iPads. After checking it turned out they were using an old one (iPad 2 or older) which isn't compatible with teams. Seems to work ok on newer devices.

For us though chat notifications were driving us crazy. They're not easy to turn off either. I mean who thought hiding it under 3 dots where you have to click on just the right place on the correct item was a good idea?!

The thing is not everyone has time to spend ages making sure the setup is perfect, or they have everything perfectly updated. Many parents certainly don't have the money to "just buy a cheap Windows laptop" or make sure we have the latest ipad. And some parents/carers will really struggle with solving confusing tech issues.

I understand that some parents don't like worksheets and have demanded interactivity etc, but that doesn't mean they have to be listened to. But using a complex sharing platform brings difficulties that do discriminate against people who have less time, money and ability and it's probably their kids that need the most help. Plus it adds stress at a time when a lot of people are seriously stressed already.

That wasn't my initial rant I know, but it's occurred to me with things people have been saying "just buy a laptop" etc.

Teams may work well if everything is perfectly set up in all cases. But as we all know, everything is not, and schools don't tend to have dedicated IT support and our school certainly does not have a very organised/unified approach, although they try.

I appreciate them trying. But I think keeping it simple and doable is more important than bells and whistles.

I can run teams fine on my Mac - using the downloaded app version (along with the rest of Office available for Macs - wish they got Publisher though) but it doesn't cope brilliantly with video conferencing software (it's not its fault - it's not what I bought the machine for and circumstances have inflicted themselves on it).

What you DO have to do on a Mac with teams is change the permissions to share your screen:
Click the Security & Privacy settings button. From the Security & Privacy window – click the padlock in the lower-left corner and enter your computer's password (if prompted). From the left menu, select Screen Recording, you should now see Microsoft Teams listed. Make sure Teams is enabled by checking the checkbox.

That one has caught out a few on my course when we've been doing placement work.

I'm getting really sick of uni lectures where we log on to spend 20 out of the 50 minutes watching a staff member fight with the technology in real time.

I dread to think what all of this must be like in a house with limited devices - we've got chromebooks for the kids (it's what the school use), the kids have iPads and Apple Pencils so they can write answers directly on worksheets and send them in - but I still end up having to spend a fair chunk of time on an evening fiddling about to get everything set up for them to work on the following day. I've had to go scrabbling around our pile of old laptops in the shed to wipe several down and pass them onto friends for their kids as well.

My MacBook is 7 years old, as is my iPad. As I say, I’m teaching on Teams with no issue at all and had no problems with the setup. We previously used Zoom, Blackboard Collaborate etc and Teams really is the easiest and most straightforward of the current learning platforms. I got one half hour training session on it, as did my colleagues and we’ve not had a single issue.

It sounds like your school staff don’t know what they are doing. Teams really shouldn’t be this difficult. It IS simple and doable...I don’t understand what your school is doing to complicate things. I really don’t think it’s MS Teams that’s at fault.

Teams is both awesome and hideous in equal measure. But you need four components in place to get the most out of it. You need good modern hardware; good software; tech savvy teacher and tech savvy parent/ child. If just one component is missing teams is a bloody headache!
Ds has a nearly new laptop with great spec in terms of processor, memory etc, it also the latest windows 10 software, his teacher really knows how to get the best of teams, 9/10 it works brilliantly, that 1/10 times when it doesn't work is my less than knowledge of how to use it.
Dd has an android tablet. It's old, running on an older android version, has limited memory and a much slower processor. Downloading teams was a rage inducing then combine with a teacher and parent who are both learning the ropes, has made this the biggest sodding headache I've had since using tech. I was ready to throw the whole sodding tablet out the window.

And herein lies the issue. Not all parents have the tech they need to use teams successfully. Not all teachers have the knowledge they need for how to use it properly and most of all a lot of parents simply won't have the time and skill to run teams successfully. It will be very discriminating forwards a certain cohort of our society.

@scissy I mean who thought hiding it under 3 dots where you have to click on just the right place on the correct item was a good idea?!

There is always a trade off between leaving sufficient clear space for the working area versus space for commands. When I'm looking for more commands, three dots meaning 'more stuff here' is to me the obvious, intuitively right place to look.

Your description makes me realise that other people have other models ...

@pursuedbyablackdog

Very cogently described

very discriminating forwards a certain cohort of our society.

It is such a missed opportunity, where decent resourcing would really have a big impact on future outcomes.

I'm so sorry.

Sorry PP but teams does not work well with my Mac. Maybe because it is older and has an older operating system, maybe because school said I had to log in through office 365 - when I in fact I needed to install a standalone app.
I'm not sure DS will be able to access a live lesson tomorrow - it didn't work the last time. and primary school has no dedicated IT support so the onus is on me to try and find a way for this to work. It's extremely annoying. And I am relatively computer literate

@FinallyHere to be fair my rage over the muting chat notifications was that i had already turned it off as a default setting but apparently that doesn't apply to meeting chats .
I'm prepared to learn interfaces and the 3 dots is pretty intuitive, it's more the fact that if I've said "turn off/mute ALL notifications" in the app settings, I expect it to do what it says, not to have to mute every sodding meeting conversation! (I had to Google it in the end). Although as a PP pointed out, I think setting the status the "Do not Disturb" may also achieve the same thing.

I’m going to give a pep talk for parents. MS Teams isn’t a problem, honestly. Thank God we have it in this dire situation. Dedicate some time this weekend to figuring it out with your secondary aged kids. Follow some YouTube tutorials and get to grips with it and get your teenagers properly on the ball. If the tech isn’t compatible then contact school with urgency and ask for a laptop hire. There’s no harm in asking. It really, honestly is worth getting up to speed with this since school might be shut for some time. Teachers are forging ahead with the curriculum and those with a bit of Microsoft know how are forging ahead with us. Those who won’t or can’t get to grips with it are going to lose out. If you can avoid this by being the parent who gets them up and running, then it will pay massive dividends in the long run. The majority of my students who experienced issues today (not able to chat in chat bar, can’t hear, can’t see) just left the meeting and joined again. Works 9/10 times. Persist and insist with the teens. It will work, or will work to the point that they get something out of it. A couple of hours this weekend might lay the foundations for learning this term rather than stagnating academically.

Wise words @likeafishneedsabike , we have had similar conversations at my work (not a school). Teams is here to stay, for secondary school at least, even when everyone is back in the classroom. It is really worth spending time working it all out for your DCs benefit.

Emailing out a pile of pdf worksheets is a horrific idea. How do chn submit work? how does the feedback process work? Teams puts live lessons and assignments in one place. Most importantly it allows for constant 2-way interaction.

The idea of sending out a week's worth of worksheets is the antithesis of teaching. What happens when there are lots of common misconceptions made on monday? How does a teacher know they need to replan wednesday because of how fast the children got through Tuesday's tasks and can now be extended?

Teams is clunky. We're all new to this: teachers, children, parents. Some schools are doing it a lot better than others. All of this is true but please don't suggest a weeks worth of handouts can replace daily live contact and a two way relationship based on ongoing feedback.

I completely agree with you. However....

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.

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If you go back to last April you will see all the parents complaining about this because 'the teacher's weren't doing anything'.

@ItsLoisSangersFault

What you have described is exactly what both my kids schools are doing - one primary and one seconday.

They have teams but each morning at 9 its emails with the worksheets and power points for the day and.

No feedback
No interactions
No live lessons
No recorded lessons
No check ins
No two way relationship