The Forty First Republic - Gav encourages parents to report schools to OFSTED

[SantaAssociationRepresentitve]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

You can play here if you are a member of one the following groups-

-ABBA - anti bashers and baiting association
-SWAB - school workers against bashers
-SWOT - school workers opposing teacherbashers
-STARS - schoolworkers together against ranting + slurs

Do not give the staffroom password just in case it attracts the wrong sort

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

If you come with a stick to goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom and you will receive a detention

Scarily interesting...

[quote MrsHamlet]@Cracklefraggle have a look in the files section in the team - mine have suddenly started appearing in there as recordings.[/quote]
Thanks MrsH no such luck! I'm managing to download them (eventually) and put them into classroom. Kids can access them easier from there

@noblegiraffe

When Gove ditched ICT he said that kids knew how to use Word and stuff and just could pick it up in their other lessons.

Narrator: They did not pick it up in their other lessons.

Just picking it up in lessons is definitely not knowledge based curriculum.

Don’t suppose it occurred to him that kids knew how to use it because they were being taught how to use it.

Also asking for a friend - do you just know when a parent has written an email for a pupil, or do you assume they are genuine?
Thinking doing some of ds' work for him would be easier than getting him to!
Thanks for the Brie have used it

no I can normally tell if it is mum/dad/elder sibling

Well, a friend once wrote NONSENSE in big red caps on a bit of work and crossed the NONSENSE bit out... and then got an irate email from a parent complaining that their ideas were very good, thank you very much.
Does that help?! 🤣

Sorry still catching up but -

sansa - you, like me, are thinking deeply into this. However in reality there's probably just someone going fuck, what do I do with the trainee... hmm they could observe some live lessons.

I sincerely doubt that you'll be expected to do any follow up.

@Appuskidu

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9138373/Rapid-lateral-flow-Covid-tests-No10-using-inaccurate-scientist-warns.html

Yep-they’re still shit!

Secondary bods who have started testing -the different lateral flow tests and their ‘accuracy’ are listed at the bottom of this article-which one have you been given in schools?

I will try and actually look tomorrow (in school) and work out what we have!

As to IT skills... Personally, and I'm willing to be slated by ICT teachers, I think they should just do a basic qualification in microsoft package similar to what used to be called the european IT driving license or some such OR they should do what I had to do (born 1975) which was learn and prove competence in generic rather than ms word processing, database functionality and spreadsheets. That was IT in the early 90's.

It seems to me that employers don't give a flying fuck about pseudo important IT skills they want to know that you can confidently work with word, excel and publisher (publisher totally outdated now but you know what I mean).

Everyone thinks kids today are totally confident with IT because they can play fruit ninja and angry birds on a touch screen device. What they need to know is how to use email software, how to use spreadsheets, how to produce word documents etc and most of them don't

@TheHoneyBadger

Sorry still catching up but -

sansa - you, like me, are thinking deeply into this. However in reality there's probably just someone going fuck, what do I do with the trainee... hmm they could observe some live lessons.

I sincerely doubt that you'll be expected to do any follow up.

I'm sure you're right! I had a trainee in tutor time with me last term, which was fine!

I've said yes now, anyway!

ps spreadsheets are the bane of my life but essential in all of the sectors I've worked in so it does seem like maybe that would be a helpful thing to teach in IT rather than pretending your teaching them coding.

I have no heating or hot water still and the engineer can't fix it so we have to wait for the manufacturers to come because it's still under warranty and the landlady seems to think it's fine that we haven't been able to have a shower etc for two days during a lockdown that means we can't access washing facilities elsewhere. Not all that amused currently.

Gutted about the hot water honey good luck getting it fixed

Guardian reporting on special schools: www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/12/we-feel-forgotten-special-needs-teachers-on-helping-englands-vulnerable-children

I do a lot of university application stuff in my school, as they apply all over the world. Ours have chrome books from y7, and they do have It lessons, but they still have no idea about email, googling things, finding info on a website etc. I spend my life scrolling down for them, or showing them how to search email. Inspirational stuff!

@TheHoneyBadger the nuclear option is to check into a hotel and tell the landlady you'll pay for it out of this month's rent...

@TheHoneyBadger

ps spreadsheets are the bane of my life but essential in all of the sectors I've worked in so it does seem like maybe that would be a helpful thing to teach in IT rather than pretending your teaching them coding.

I can do basic spreadsheeting, but I do like to take my 6th form into the ICT room when teaching large data set. So how to filter, sort, find sums, averages, counts etc.

It's funny, I didn't learn how to use Excel until well after school (it would have been useful for some of my Engineering homeworks at university). But you're right, everyone I know in an office role at least, uses it in some form at work.

Oh honey, that's horrible! I now have a functioning lounge light fitting and am waiting to hear when B&Q are going to deliver my second replacement heater, then we'll see when my lovely electrician can fit it. When's the snow supposed to be coming?!

HoneyBadger
I completely agree with you. They are very savvy with gaming and so on but the basics are a mystery. It makes me feel good though!

Yep. They can't email. Type. Use shift key to get a capital. Use word or excel. Create folders and save work. Save files. Open files in different programmes. Search (within files/folders/emails/the www).

They can: play Fortnite. Make a (rubbish) ppt or poster. That's it.

Oh goodness, mine can't make a PowerPoint! Think yourself lucky!!

I have no idea how to use a spreadsheet or why I would want to

A really bad one though!! 😂

(I also can only use basic functions on Excel like sort and add up 😂)

So glad you are all talking about their lack of tech skills.

I feel like tech support for my year 7s and 8s.

Had one swear blind he couldn’t get Office Lens to work. Took 15 minutes of a 1 to 1 chat to get him to fix it I made and extremely clear video, he sent me a screen shot of the “broken” bit and all he needed to do was click OneNote, as explained in the video

God I hope they all get better at this soon.