What Stationary Bits will my Son need for year 7?

[Julezboo]

Seems a long time since I had to buy for myself!!!! I have hit a brick wall. Its so worrying this year 7 stuff!

i dont give a shit what number school it is - they wil lost it ALL before they need it. Eton or bloody Grange hill.

they shouldnt need a USB if they use dropbox

they NEED at least one USB

geeky parent here
too many chances of software crashes the night before deadlines
ALWAYS
ALWAYS
ALWAYS
have your data in 3 places

and as 4gb are now £5 at maplins there is NO excuse

more likely to lose USB
but hey I dont really give a shit

they shouldnt need a USB if they use dropbox

Lots of schools operate a very wide-ranging internet filter system which blocks lots of useful sites including Dropbox.

Even more of a pain for us teachers

LadyMilfordHaven - maybe for some schools, but clearly not for DD's school as this is the required list we have been given.

DD doesn't need a USB as they have a school portal they use.

ladymilford
a couple of years back, DCs school had a fire
it was only a small fire, in one room
but that fire happened to take out the fuse boxes for the whole school (1500 pupils)
they were shut for nearly a term, but with good use of technology the GCSEs held up
memory sticks were essential as kids (who may not have internet at home) had to log on where they could

even further back, I was network manager for a company that had EVERY SINGLE computer stolen one night

dropbox is great if you have a computer and the right access

give me memory stick backup any day
GF : f : S
look it up if you do not know

Please, please, I beg of you and all other parents: please make them take calculators, protractors, pencils and rulers to science lessons too. We do all kinds of mathsy things at the drop of a hat, and so rarely do they have... anything.

Actually, if I'm honest, turning up with their own exercise book and a pen would be progress.

As staff I had to fight with LEA to get dropbox reinstated! We are now allowed it at my school - phew!

DD is used to having to have her own pencil case of stuff inc coloured pencils, glue, scissors, ink pen and cartridges, etc for primary. Not lost much, if any, so far.

Oh, and re: Dropbox (which I cannot function without), another option I recommend is a google drive account (can set up with school email) which syncs in to things like Edmodo.com, if your school uses it.

Google drive also allows kids to work collaborately on group work without actually having to be together. It's brilliant!

(School blockage issues notwithstanding)

"LEA" : what about academy schools

"google drive" : how many of your kids have to log on at the public library?
in DCs school its around 6-10% which is 80 to 100 kids
and there are only 5 terminals at the two libraries
please
please
think about resilience
one big solar storm in the runup to a project deadline and the internet could be running at 10% for two days

Ds hasn't lost a single thing (though he has used up plenty of pens and his cheap stapler broke) and has used all of his equipment. Can't see how he could have done the work in many subjects without that much equipment, including a proper calculator (a basic one doesn't even have pi on it?)

"one big solar storm in the runup to a project deadline and the internet could be running at 10% for two days"

Wait, I thought we were talking about new year 7s, not NASA

underwater
get your new year 7 to read more of the science press
I am not in the teeeniest bit joking

(At Uncaged Monkeys a few years back, Simon Singh was talking about how we warn future civilisations not to use/live on/farm on areas where nuclear waste had been 'disposed of', he recommended carving stone tablets with some decipherable hieroglyphs - since digital media, paper, and even currently extant languages would not persist long enough.

Should we buy them chisels?)

I read the science press. You need to relax, we are still only talking about children, and children's lovely work.

If the whole Internet is knocked out, teachers won't be worrying about the kids homework.

Oh, and can we remember "science press" is as reliable as the daily fail much of the time.

DS1 (starting Y8) and DS2 (starting Y7) have the following each:

Scientific calculator
Fountain pen
Spare cartridges
Spare handwriting pen
HB pencils
Colouring pencils
Eraser
15cm ruler
Sharpener
Ink eraser
Maths set (protractor, compasses etc)
30cm ruler

Also:
Padlock (for locker)
USB stick

DS1 saves his work in a designated folder on the laptop which gets backed up automatically to the PC daily (via home network) and to the external hard drive weekly.

Also glue sticks, but DS1 rarely uses them to stick any of the countless pieces of paper into any of his exercise books.

My ds has only done three bits of homework on the pc all year (IT x 2 and science x 1). He has got through about 36 pens though (at almost £2 each!)

DS1 needed the extra functions on the calculator from the beginning of Y7: there are calculator papers in the school's internal assessments and most basic calculators don't have buttons for powers/indices, roots etc.

Ds (now going into Y10) needed a scientific calculator pretty much from the start of Y7. They needed some of the functions almost from the start. He has used it almost daily for the past 3 years.

Other than that he has managed to get by with a decent set of pens (although he will write with anything and in both black and blue, both are allowed at his school), a handful of standard pencils, sharpener, eraser, compass set for maths, ruler and some coloured pencils.

And yy, get sticky back plastic, ds's first set of homeworks in Y7 was to decorate his exercise books (which were supplied by the school) with topic-appropriate pictures and then to sticky back them.
Funnily enough this was not a requirement in Y8 and Y9 but it is obviously a task they enjoy setting the Y7s

That's what I was thinking, too, indices etc...(but kept calling them 'powers' in my head - overfried brain!)

Good to know the casio calulator is standard, as I bought DS one yesterday - solar powered so no excuse for dead batteries.

Have all the bits but cannot find a pencil case. Ds wants one that has elastic loops for all the pens etc, but the only ones I can find are baby-ish character sets. Any suggestions?