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’m a teacher and have been using Teams since last March with very few problems. The program allows me to teach live, communicate using a chat function (unlike Zoom), set up meetings for multiple classes every day easily, store resources for them in a files section and it links with all of our pre-existing school software.

I have only had a handful of teenagers in 10 months who’ve had any problems at all and my own 7 and 10 yr olds can use it independently whilst I work. In a nutshell, YABU.

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!

But that’s a user issue, not a problem with Teams or whatever. Also there’s only a certain number of places they’ll put stuff.
Lots of these problems seem to be user related or possibly internet issues.
Also, I do think some people never wanted homeschool to work, there are some people we know who my partner can see are moaning on Facebook, but the kids who our kids know are saying everything is fine.

but why use something that gets overloaded?

It's not Teams that is overloaded. It's the infrastructure which is available to run teams. It's as if you are blaming your BMW for being so slow getting through a traffic jam.

I hope whoever provides the platform you are using gets the infrastructure sorted out.
I work for a large corporate, use Teams all day every day. Once you get the hang of it, It's much better than fiddling around emailing files around.

They did spend most of February last year beefing up the capacity of the infrastructure and only then sent us all to use it from home.

Good luck

You're not alone I work in IT and it has boiled my piss this week!

YANBU

MS teams is crap, full of glitches

Compared to all the other ones, it's over complicated, full of blockages and needs rewriting or binning IMO.

I don’t mind Teams, but Tapestry.... piece of crap.

I agree — email out a word doc with links to all the different things they have to watch, set out like a time table. Then the kids can work through it clicking the links.
I spend half my day fiddling about trying to find oak/whiterose/bitesize/iplayer/tapestry powerpoint about ww1/war horse/chemicals 1/rhythms/whatever — just put in a link

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

This makes no sense. I think it's worked really well considering how quickly it's had to ramp up. DS uses it for school with no issues.
I use it for work and I love it. I find it easier working with colleagues on Teams than in person.

I feel frustrated with it atm , yes it’s slow and takes forever to load which wouldn’t be so much of an issue if I wasn’t working full time, so it’s either trying to fit in school work during the working day or after I’ve finished for the day it’s just exhausting! Teachers are not at fault, but working parents will be under so much stress it’s a little overwhelming

Erm because they did that first lockdown and the parents of the nation whinged to death about the lack of interaction

Google classroom have given me the rage today. A lot of my son's teacher's use a secondary website such as Seneca for their lessons. So just when you've managed to log in and get to the right subject you have to follow a link to a new website. As we found this morning there was a different log in page that wouldn't accept the correct password etc or started asking for subscription to allow us to continue to assignment!!! Ended up calling it quits and finding something else to do!! Gotta love technology!

Teams is pretty much as simple as it gets - you’re likely to find your kids will know more than you within days though because they pick things up so quickly!

I can not fucking stand it. Youre right it's all over the place, going back and forth between different files to get to certain bit you need for different assignments. Its utter crap.

Half our day is spent dealing with the problems resulting from technical issues. I hear you OP. It’s the time and unnecessary frustration. Don’t get me started on how only Microsoft Word will work with the school’s lessons- I’ve just bought a laptop and headset so they can go to online lessons- now I have to buy Word as well. YADNBU!

We have issue with teams logging on and finding work you are not alone!! It's the ping ping pinging when the kids type in the chat that gets me...
I know I'm bad but we muted the other day and just got in with the PowerPoint that had been up loaded I just couldn't cope with the pinging and the high pitched voice of the the teacher - sorry she does a great job but her voice just got to me last week first week in too. I really can't wait for this to be over! It's like torture I click watch to 3pm everyday until we can push that little end call button 🤣

It's the ping ping pinging when the kids type in the chat that gets me...

You can just turn that off.

and the high pitched voice of the the teacher - sorry she does a great job but her voice just got to me last week first week in too.

I guess there’s just no pleasing some people.

Yes, I had to help kids with the chat notifications, they were going mad.
In the main team click on your profile pic at the top, then set status to do not disturb is probably the easiest way. Or from there settings and then notifications.

My oldest DD (reception) uses zoom for morning 'hello'. Then the work is uploaded to a system called tapestry. Tapestry has also been hit and miss, but totally failed yesterday. They emailed out the first of her 4 lessons yesterday as they knew there was a problem. Couldn't email out the others. Second lesson didn't come up till almost bedtime so being doing catch up today. The problem is these systems just don't have the capacity for what they are being used for. And yes it is frustrating, but these are difficult times for everyone.

Yep last 2 days has been awful, lessons just closing, cant log back, school said they are struggling. I'm not far from london so a hugely over populated area with the world and how wife on!

@Handsnotwands

Teams is intuitive and functional

i offer you Class Dojo as the most useless platform

Did you not use suffer Moodle?

All of the above are far, far better than that monstrosity ever was.

To anyone saying use emails...absolute nightmare for teachers. Teams isn't perfect but keeps everything in one place snd has a level of transparency and security for everyone. Yes it can be glitchy, yes, there are some super obvious fixes to be made, but it's about the best thing for doing what's a really hard thing to do at the moment, and I say that as a teacher snd a parent of a teams using child.

• make sure your operating system is up to date
• download the client version.
• go into system preferences and allow screen sharing

Haven’t heard that it doesn’t work on Mac
It’s super easy my almost 10 and 11 year olds use it

Still lots of differing opinions about Teams itself, and obviously there are multiple variables and settings and ways to use it that could partly account for that. And I suppose I'm not blaming the software itself, although I think it could be better - it's just having to use any software that isn't automatically easy for us all to use (and clearly many people are having problems for whatever reasons).

@Deidre21

Haven’t heard that it doesn’t work on Mac It’s super easy my almost 10 and 11 year olds use it

It might depend whether you have the Macbook version of Microsoft Office already, or how up to date your Macbook is. DD's Macbook is several years old and isn't compatible with her university's software. However, she was entitled to a Windows laptop through DSA.

Sometimes it is speed and amount of internet package you have. Very proud of SN child today who rescued his teachers lesson as she kept loosing connectivity and kids were getting frustrated. Don't worry Miss, I will open PowerPoint for you and click it onwards from my computer. Teacher oh X you are so good at ICT. Child, no Miss we have a better internet package with fast and unlimited data. Ha ha 🤣