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....

Slight derail, does anyone know how to get Google Classroom to let you change the email address? We don't have a laptop DS can use so he's trying to use his Samsung tablet, but Google Classroom is logging in by default using his gmail account we set the tablet up with. I can't find out how to change it to the email address his school have given us.

It says "can't see your work, try a different account" but when I click that it just takes us to the settings page on his actual tablet with no option to input a different email address.

@NichyNoo

You think Teams is bad? Our primary school uses Google Classroom which is the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever had the misfortune to try and use.

It's crap - but it's nowhere near in the same league of crapness as is the horror of Blackboard Collaborate which uni uses and which is shite.

Teams is usually really good but this morning it just isn't working for my year 10 daughter and has caused a mini meltdown. Everything seems to be glitching, she can see slides properly and the teachers voice is dropping in and out. It isn't our end as my other daughter is using it fine.
Hoping tomorrow is a better day.

I’ve got a Mac and use Teams all day every day. There are some permissions I can’t change (I’m a teacher) but apparently I could solve that issue by using Chrome as my browser instead of safari. I did a presentation to a whole year group (200+) this morning and seemed to work okay.

As others have said parents moaned long and loud about not enough live teaching last year, and now they’re moaning about too much!! I think it’s an insight into the relentless pressure of a school day for both students and staff!

Teams works far better than the other platforms available.

Last lockdown I was in my final year of a course which was using a mix of a local platform and zoom, and my 3 children were all full on homeschooling (abroad) using different platforms and nothing worked properly.

This year the primary is using the same crap local platform as before plus big blue button for video classes. Complete crap.

The secondary switchwd to Teams in the interim and used it during the phase of alternate week school and classes in quarantine etc. Its working perfectly now for homeschooling and all the secondary kids csn use it.

There are four of us here today all working on Teams and it's fab. It's much more secure than Zoom hence being the platform of choice for schools, local authorities, and police forces. It's not just for meetings and the joy of editing documents as a team without endless emails is wonderful. It's not perfect, it falls over sometimes, that's tech.

On the positive side, even if they struggle a bit, it’s great that kids are learning to use IT skills as it will help them so much when they get outside school. So many diverse jobs rely heavily on these systems now and I expect it will only increase. A lot of offices are paper free. It’s a really positive thing I think.

@LemonSquirtInTheEyeOfLife

Our school use Google Classroom. We've been unable to log in. DH & I, several hours each, both tried all our devices. No luck. Absolutely infuriating.

Double check the icon at the top right to see if it is the right account.

If you have a normal google account, what I find often happens is that you enter your user name and password, and then google classroom somehow decides that you don't want to sign in to the account you have just input, and defaults to a different account.

To rectify it, click on the circle with a profile pic or initials, and then you will have the option to sign in with a different account.

This might help? It caused lots of problems for my class when I was using it last year!

@HollyBollyBooBoo

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

@HollyBollyBooBoo

Some real McSmuggypants on this thread.

If you are using a Mac, do you have Chrome? Teams works much better through Chrome than Safari.

In WFH and not had any issues with it at all. I'm not using a Mac so can't comment about that.

@HerselfIndoors

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.

Could you suggest a platform for remote learning that isn't going to be overloaded today?

Not using for school, but took a few attempts to log onto a work teams meeting this morning. A few others had the same

I personally think they have added to many features in, and they are adding more features even now.

Would be better as a streamlined product.

I couldn't log in to Teams at all. Hate it. I tried using a personal email account and saying I wanted it for personal use, it redirected me to Skype with no option to do anything else. I tried using a university email account and saying I wanted it for school or college, it says my university haven't updated their Teams account so I can't use it. I tried using a professional email account and saying I wanted it for work, it said my organisation wasn't signed up for Teams. Eventually it let me in to the university one, but only to contact other people with an email address at my university, which is no bloody use when it's for secondary admissions interviews and exams for dc.

Apparently there is a wide issue affecting more than just the OPs school, which Microsoft are aware of.

Though of course no-one could have predicted the first Monday of a school week would be busy!

I've been teaching 5 live lessons a day since Sept using Teams. There's no perfect system but it has worked well. I imagine the teachers are self training & it will take a week or so for them to get used to it. I don't imagine many have had to use it like this before.
If every child uploaded a folder with a week of work in it then it wouldn't be possible to mark it all & then parents would moan about that.
As you say, everyone is just trying to do their best at a difficult time.

My daughter couldnt get onto Teams through Mac's Safari but she can using Google Chrome. It seems to work no problem then. Couldn't open stuff via Safari.

At the primary school I work at we were initially doing what you suggest... Parents wanted Google classroom. We trained ourselves in how to use it and have started rolling it out in most year groups... Parents don't understand how to use it/dont have appropriate devices for it.
Schools/teachers can't win no matter what they do!

@peak2021

Apparently there is a wide issue affecting more than just the OPs school, which Microsoft are aware of.

Though of course no-one could have predicted the first Monday of a school week would be busy!

Lots of universities using it too, some are back this week.

Our school uses Teams and Seesaw for the lower school. Luckily we are on seesaw, it is fab and so easy but doesnt have the live learning functionality. Zoom has privacy concerns. Most local authorities dont use it because of that. When Teams works it is great and very user friendly. Unfortunately there is a national outage at Microsofts end. This is not the fault of the local authority. An organisation like microsoft should have servers big enough to cope with the demand that they advertise!

Not just you. Us too.

Problem is Teams is a Microsoft product so doesn't work with Apple computers very well if at all. Got so far with log in details / instructions from school but couldn't get on Teams. Only got it working via installing Teams app.

It's really unsatisfactory because schools don't seem to realise some homes don't use PCs and do not provide us with alternatives or a simpler system that can be used by all. Why they couldn't put the PDF on the school blog and let us email the completed assignment directly to the teacher is beyond me.

Teams seems a bit hit and miss here over the last week. For some reason if we log out and log in again it helps. Though by this time you may have missed the session start. Then it won’t let you in until you can access and save the recording. Which the iPad does not like. So we have A few missed lessons which are hard to catch up on.

I use Teams at work and have never had any problems. It could be how it's configured that is causing the problem.

I’m guessing 9 months wasn’t long enough to identify the software and train teachers and parents on how to use it...

Having said that some of it is working fine.

Agree comments on the multiple streams of info, I mean wtf?!