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....

I have 2 dc, p5 and p7. I’m tearing my hair out. I don't understand the work set (wtf does tessellate mean?!?) or the platform it's set on (theres 40 different ways to open a piece of work and they're all different but you have to use a process of elimination because it doesn't tell you which one to use), I can't print anything that doesn't come out red (it’s an oldish printer which wasn’t used much before last year.
I keep thinking it's going to say all work and no play makes Onit a dull girl) And not from DS’s pc at all (he’s upstairs and wifi appears not to work between his pc and the printer) They've got no jotters to write in (can't bring school stuff home) so I’ve stapled them 3 different makeshift ones from plain, lined and graph paper), the teams app keeps crashing (because every child in the UK is on it at once), there has already been tears (DS and me) and I've been up and down stairs about 20 times already.
They've both done one piece of work at least and we've taken a break now but I don't want to go back. DD can’t get anything to open and though the teacher has said the work is in files, it’s not.
I’m so grateful that school are trying so hard to keep the kids learning. But I’m neither a teacher (2 at the same time actually), or an IT support. And the sad fact is my ineptitude will impact on my dc’s learning.

@LadyFlumpalot

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.

You need to add the school email address to his Google account. Then when he logs on he decides from the drop down which one to log on with.

I’m teaching (University) on Teams as are my colleagues and friends at other universities. I’m on a Mac. We’ve genuinely had absolutely no issues since we starting teaching online back in March 2020. That being said, we put all documents in one place and follow up via email.

Primary or secondary makes a huge difference here but for secondary the problem with email is the responses.

From a student perspective they would receive 5 or 6 emails for the day explaining the work. They might send a couple of queries. Reasonably straight forward.

From a teacher perspective the would send out the 5/6 emails and then a flurry of queries, often asking the same/similar questions. Which have to answered individually, as opposed to the chat section where the question can be cleared up for everyone much quicker.

Then start the incoming emails with work attached. For 6 period days with 30 in a class that would be 180 emails to keep track off, save the work somewhere to mark etc... that would not be effective or manageable, children will slip through without completing work, or very low quality of work.

Plus at the end of last lockdown there were a huge number of complains of death by twinkle worksheets. Yes there will be teething issues, and sometimes compatibility issues.

I live teach all my lessons via teams, work is completed via OneNote, students on laptops, Mac, iPads or phones (discouraged but still happens) we make it work.

@HerselfIndoors I am soooooooooo with you.
We’ve all been reduced to tears today. Thank god for dd.
She is a bit smug though because she’s on google classrooms.
Teams is painful.

And we have to download 365 or something

365 is just the new fangled Office. It's great that it's available for free because of the pandemic.

One of the problem with Teams is that it was never created to be used as it is being.

So bits of 'functionality' have been added as they've gone along (the opposite to Zoom for example, which was set up with the end product in mind) which makes it very clunky unless you're a confident user.

There are also approx 80 zillion different ways to do pretty much everything in Teams. The instructional videos only show you one or two and the rest are like the search for the Golden Fleece.

TheLetterZ yes absolutely re: the tsunami of responses to the simplest instruction via email.

It will all bed down in some shape or form.

Thank you @SOLINVICTUS
can’t seem to manage it anyway
Oh well. It’s just everybody comes to me like I’m ruler of the universe and the internet, I can barely send an email. Everybody’s melting. I’m hiding in my bedroom.

But YANBU to be cross with Teams. It's brought me to tears a number of times (work not schooling).

It's crap you've had a bad time with it but it's not universal
Our 12yo DS has had no problems accessing a full timetable of content - he does lessons to his normal timetable logging in for content for each lesson by himself. Only problem was one lesson which used another app that the teacher forgot to set up the passwords properly.
We've run it on both PC and Mac without problems. I think it helps to have good broadband though, as his friend who's on the side of the village that doesn't have fibre has found it more tricky to connect.

Of course I realise it's overloaded today - but why use something that gets overloaded?

There isn't an alternative that won't get overloaded in this way.

@Handsnotwands

Teams is intuitive and functional

i offer you Class Dojo as the most useless platform

I am so with you!!

DDs 2&3 use Google Classroom. It is beautifully intuitive, all their classes are listed, they have a to do list, they have an attached assignment, then they simply turn in or attach their work. To access a live lesson, they just click the link in the banner.

DD1 (15, SN) uses Class Dojo. It is awful. Just a list of links, Microsoft SharePoint is clunky and slow.

Her school just has folders for the lessons, so you have to remember which class you are in for each subject, which lesson you last did, where you got to, etc., because the journal doesn't link with the tasks. The journal system is truly horrible.

There were scores of threads here complaining about the lack of live lessons last time. Poor teachers - damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Honestly live lessons is not something I ever expected or asked for. Of course in a dream world that would be lovely, but all I want is some basic written-down tasks for each subject (write an essay about blah, do these maths questions, make a roman mosaic, do this experiment, watch this history video, read this article) that I don't have to spend all day trying to find, download and upload.

I can't understand why that can't at least all be emailed to us even if teachers don't want emails back. I'm not suggesting kids should be allowed to email the teacher all day long and expect replies explaining everything.

@TheAirbender
That's not the point. It’s not teachers, it’s the tech. It’s shit. I’m not blaming the teachers!

You think all the “...why can’t they just” comments aren’t blaming teachers? Really?

For the first two weeks of the previous homeschool period, our school emailed a grid of lessons and activities. It was a disaster. Everything was so much better once we had live lessons. Give me teams over an emailed pdf any damn day.

I am bald after today. 5 kids/5 schools and teams and I've sent dh to buy vodka

You think all the “...why can’t they just” comments aren’t blaming teachers? Really?

Yes, and I've made lots of those comments. I know it's not each individual teachers' decision.

And again, we are not getting live lessons. That might indeed be easier. We have to use Teams to get assignments in a jumbled, random way.

And while I'm sorry for teachers, teaching is their job. Yes it's harder now and that must be awful, but at least they still only have the one job to do. If school use a system that gives parents a load of unnecessary extra work to do, when they also have to do their own job, it's reasonable for parents to be unhappy.

How about school sets up their own youtube channel with a list of videos to watch each day, that relate to the already printed out worksheets?

Google Meet/Classroom all the the way!

I’m a Luddite and even I can use it! It was laggy today because everyone is on it. I told my boss we need to swap and just set work sometimes, but all I heard from some parents last lockdown was how shit just getting work set was!

It’s been fine for us and DS uses a Mac.

meringue - how do you get the "already printed out" worksheets to the students? For a whole half term? YOu know many schools do very little printing these days due to cost / environmental concerns? Kids NEED interaction. In any given lesson with top set y9 I will be asked a minimum of 4 times each what the title is, do they have to copy the stuff on the board, what page we are on, etc - we haven't even got to the CONTENT yet. They need massive hand holding - which is a whole other issue true, but uploading pre-recorded video with no opportunity to interact or explain would just end up with blank faces and kids not being able to do the work or doing it totally wrong. And that doiesn't even address the issue of staff having the tech to do that and being happy to be recorded in that way. Teams isn't perfect and users at both ends get it wrong but the level of interactivity it offers really is the best option in the present circumstances.

We started to use it just over a year ago. I went to the training & nodded in the right places but found it really hard in the first lockdown, mostly because our wifi at home is dire. My DDs' hour-long lectures take 2.5 hours to watch. But I was able to upload work. As a (small) department we tried to work in the same way; most colleagues do similar things.

Since September we have done more training and we were using it in normal lessons to set homework as Assignments. Actually for that, it's so much better than emails or books. I love the Quiz function in Forms. It's less clunky than Google Classroom.

Today I have taught 4 live lessons using Teams. It passes the safeguarding tests the school sets. Kids were using Chat to send messages to me. I was able to play extracts of music and ask them questions about it, choose a student to answer and see their face on the screen as they answered. I'm in no way an expert on it, but it works for me and I am a dyed in the wool Mac user. The school has given everyone a windows laptop so I use that for all school stuff.

Teams does have other add-ons, such as Insights which are great. I can see what each student has been up to. If someone has not been online, I can message them/their parents to see what is going on. We have set Teams up as an organisation, so each class has its own team for each subject. Each one has 3 folders in Files: one of which is the materials that they will need for a lesson and which they cannot edit. They know where to go to find work. They know how to find their Assignments and how to join live lessons. It works for us.

We do have a team for staff to ask questions like: how do you do x? or did you know that if you click y, z happens. We are a staff team and work that way. Our kids seem to have bought in to it too.