It’s always the simple things that take the longest: A Learning Platform summary

It seemed such a simple thing: the head asked me to write a quick summary of the Learning Platform today. Page of A4 or less.

Shouldn’t take that long? Absolute nightmare. It didn’t help when a few websites I looked at had the opening lines of “A Learning Platform is very difficult to define simply”. No kidding.

In the end it took three drafts at work and then another two drafts at home. The final draft, and the first I feel happy with was just finished, mind awake and off the back of Gin #3. This will be the one I hand to the head tomorrow and ask her to check over. I imagine we’ll be on draft 7 plus by the time I leave tomorrow.

Learning Platforms and falling asleep in training sessions

I couldn’t help it. We’d done a long morning in the ICT suite on the Learning Platform. Back from lunch at the local pub who do an excellent buffet spread for us on training days so we thought we’d have the lunch out for a change. And the ICT suite is boiling hot, yet some of the trainees are moaning it’s cold and can we leave the air con off. I’ve got a throbbing headache and then my eyes start going.

I did the falling asleep in my seat thing for a few minutes until I decided I needed a break and went and looked in on the Year 1 class doing some word processing in another (cooler) room. That seemed to clear my head enough to get through the rest of the session.

The Learning Platform is still a huge thing hanging round my neck, but we’re going to try and encourage (railroad) some of the teachers to take on responsibilities for certain sections. That makes it a little easier in the long term. but short term is still the complete set up of all the architecture. And by short term I mean all of summer term at least. Because I’m determined to get the new website absolutely sorted and finished by the end of March. Seems so far away but technically it’s just 37 days away and I’ve got an awful lot to get done. But at least it’s not something ridiculously laborious and longwinded (like the Learning Platform for example).

After school it was a quick dash across to Beverley for the Orthodontist. Molly will need braces at some point but today was just a preliminary thing where he looked at her mouth for 5 minutes and told us to come back in 18 months. Strange dentist though. The actual room had four dentist’s chairs in it, all in a row with no partitions at all. We were the only people in there but I imagine when they have the place full it’s even stranger. With the harsh lights and dental apparatus around it looked like some high tech spacelab of some sort. very strange.

Tomorrow it’s back to normal at school and that’s my week done. I’ve got Friday as a work from home day again – NHBC are coming round to look at the roof and agree with us that it’s a shit job and the builder deserves shooting. Although I imagine the bloke wont quite phrase it that way…

Of Learning Platforms, Battlestars and Lost

Battling another cold (combination of the weather, working with lots of small germ carrying children and being absolutely worn out – sleep worse than ever recently. Tonight I may be in bed before 4am; a definite improvement) so blogging has been sporadic at best. Forgive me all of the reposting of reviews. They’ve rather build up in my “to be posted” pile. I may as well fire them all off in one go.

To add to the misery of another cold, today was another one of those Learning Platform Training Days. Except this one was, if anything, even worse than the rest; as it was just a recap for the teaching staff of various schools on the stuff I did a while back. The idea was that we’d host it and put in several staff over the two days. Unfortunately it seems every other training course in the world decided to clash with these days so we had one of our teachers for half a day today and two tomorrow. The day didn’t start out well either as the trainer couldn’t log into the RM site and for a few minutes of early morning panic we thought it was our network that had gone down. Luckily we found out it was a general east Riding thing – they’d upgraded their connection overnight and thins had rather messed up.

After that it was a day of mind crushing boredom. At one point this afternoon I was nearly asleep; head doing the lolling thing so much that I had to excuse myself and head off for fresh air.

And as is the way with these things, come the end of the day I actually found myself a lot more tired than if I’d actually been at work properly all day. So tonights been a rest night. No reviews, no blogging (until now), no website work for school. Instead it was Battlestar Galactica and the repeat of the double episode opener for the new season of Lost. Now, having not watched anything of Lost since season one and the occasional accidental viewing of a couple of season finales, I thought I might have trouble getting into it and was perfectly prepared to head for bed early. Except I found a You Tube summary of the last 4 seasons in 8 minutes that did the trick and I really rather enjoyed the two hours spent watching the new season.

The summary video is here. I may continue with the rest of the series. Maybe Tuesday will become my night off. There’s a novel idea.

Oh what a horrible week that was, tales of insomnia continued:

Well, not really insomnia. That’s technically a problem getting to sleep. I have a problem getting to bed recently. Even more than usual my brain has decided to zombie out on me until very late and I’m finding myself up until 3am, sometimes 4am. Not good at all.
And then I find myself feeling like absolute crap at 6pm and have that horrible sick with tiredness feeling for a couple of hours. Yes, I know that this is not normal. Yes, I know I really should do something about it. Must try harder I suppose.

On top of that we’re still having various problems with this bloody roof and the never-ending leaks. After having the builder tell us that he’d had to lay his men off and wasn’t going to be able to help us (even though he’s meant to under the NHBC guarantee because all the leaks are ones that we reported 18 months ago, during the initial 2 years of the house) we got in touch with the NHBC and they sent people out, who reported back, giving the builder 14 days each time to reply. Eventually it went out to the NHBC’s external contractors who came and investigated and gave the builder 14 weeks to get in touch again.

At each stage we made it clear we thought it was stupid. Builder was never that good at communicating and after saying he definitely wasn’t going to help, we somehow doubted he’d have a change of heart now.

Of course, eventually the contractor/investigator did hear from the builder who told them that he’d had to lay his men off and couldn’t finish the works. Nearly 3 months for the contractor to find out what Louise had told them on the phone in the very first instance. So it’s back to the NHBC and hopefully a date for them to come round and assess what work needs doing.

The thing that really gets me about this is that our twat of a builder is just playing the system. Now, as far as I understand it he’s either a builder, operating under the NHBC standard or he isn’t. But our idiot thinks he can just turn round and stop being a builder for a bit it seems. He likes to have the NHBC mark since it proves how good and professional he is.

Next time he does start trading I swear I’m finding out where he’s building and I’m staging my own little demo with banners, sign, flyers and plenty of chanting.

Okay, rant over.

School was horrible for some of this week as well. It was the training days for the next stage of the Learning Platform training. Two days, mind-numbing. And at the back of it all was the realisation that it’s going to involve so much bloody work. Even the best estimate says 4 hours admin time per week to get it set up over at least two years. That’s going to work isn’t it?

Apart from the Learning Platform my week, indeed my entire term is going to be involved in setting up and populating the new school website before we stop paying for the old on in April. It sounded so far away when we decided this last June. Not so bloody far away now though, oh no.

Okay, back to the other main thing that’s keeping me up at night; reviews. You may remember me mentioning that I was going to try to reduce the amount of books to review on the reading shelf. Well, that hasn’t really worked. So far this month I’ve managed a pitiful 6 reviews written and now have 30 things to review on the shelf. Ouch.

Back to work, back to work. Aiming for a 3am bedtime tonight, which would be better than the 4 or 5am I’ve managed so far. It’s like zombie dawn around here at 7am when Molly tries to wake me. And then it’s night of the living dead around 6pm when I crash completely. But I’m determined to change.
No really. Stop laughing at the back.

This bodes well for when we actually might start using it ……..

Yep, that’s how I think of the Learning Platform as well. From what I hear – it’s certainly not because we’re all using the bloody thing. In fact, I doubt I’ll even log in before the next training course.

Another learning platform training day, another all day headache…..

Today was Learning Platform training day 2.

Oh it was such fun. Or maybe not. We at least got to have a play this time and discovered what we had thought all along. It may be functionally quite easy to use, but the sheer scale of administering the Learning Platform and all of the users on it is massive. Cue headache.

Not made any better by being in a room almost guaranteed to make me ill. Small, cramped, full of noisy computers. Too hot with the windows closed. Freezing with fans on and windows open. Hot, cold, tired, bored, hot, cold, bored, tired, headache, headache, headache, headache……

The only good thing about it was realising I don’t actually have to even think about it until January again now. Have lots and lots and lots of other things to be getting on with. The funniest thing is that I know I haven’t got a hope in hell of getting it sorted properly given the amount of time I would need to spend on it. But I also know that I’m much better off for available time than any of the teachers who were there at the meeting today.

The Learning Platform. It may or may not be a good idea. But it’s most certainly not been thought out properly. We get told that it’s at least 3-4 hours administration work a week and they wonder why we’re all slightly reluctant to play along. Oh, wait. Hold on. I’ve just realised, I actually loaf off at work for 3 hours each week. I just pretend to be busy. Of course I’ll have the time spare to do the LP admin.

No, no, no, no, no, no.
Headache, headache, headache…..

Typing up notes from a Learning Platform Vision Day – now that’s exciting!

If ever I need a cure for my insomnia, I should try doing what I’m doing right now.

A few weeks ago we went to the local secondary school for the Learning Platform Vision Day. Never has something been so mis-named. Vision: inspiring, interesting and pronising great things. Learning Platform Vision: seeing mountains of work for potentially very little gain stretching out for years in front of me.

So I sit and I type up hastily scrawled notes. You know what it’s like, when you leave transcribing notes for so long – that sense of what the hell does that mean, is this squiggle important or just a doodle? Why don’t I just bin the lot and ask the same crappy questions all over again at the second Learning Platform Vision day next week?

Tired already. I’ve done one whole page and already I’m bored. Already I’m doing something else just to put off going back to the dullness that is my notes. Enough already. Back to it.

Hideously huge work project # 1: Learning Platform

Last week we had a training day about the Learning Platform we’re getting as part of the governement initiative to have an online presence for all children. Basically it’s an education intranet. Each school gets their own learning platform and I get to sort ours out.

It shall be hell.

We were at a meeting a while back when one of the primary heads who’s become a bit of a Learning Platform poster boy was quizzed on it. He and his deputy have been working on it pretty much 50% of their week for a year.

They’ve got the staff onto it. And the governors. They’re hoping to get the children on later in year 2. And the parents? Year 3 they think.

3 years to get an ICT project off the ground?
3 years in ICT is a lifetime.
Bloody ridiculous.
And I get to be the fool trying to do it at our school.
Can you feel the enthusiasm?

Oh my god, welcome to the Learning Platform

One of the most important things, I always thought, about a great idea was that it was usually pretty easy to get the concept over to people…. The wheel, Fire, Printing Press, Radio, Automobile, Aeroplanes, the Internet. Make your own list. Easy to understand the concept, simple to see the benefits. Yes?

This crossed my mind 20 minutes into a meeting today about the Learning Platform that the East Riding (and all other authorities) are rolling out across all of their schools over the next few years. Today was an “awareness session”. The alarm bells should be ringing at this point. After all, if it’s so bloody great, so revolutionary, so beneficial to the educational process shouldn’t we all be aware of it already?

The Learning Platform is: _______________________________

And that’s the problem. No-one can really nail it. Becta take an entire webpage to sort of, kind of, explain it. It’s described using vagaries and double-speak. Lots of positive phrases from a marketing man’s spiel. Lots of buzz words but nothing that actually nails down a definition or a concise description.

Worse yet, no-one’s really willing to do what you should really do with any wonderful new product – show it to us. I was talking with another ICT bod at the meeting and we worked out that we’d had about 10 hours of meetings, seminars, get-togethers and awareness sessions before anyone actually showed us a Learning Platform in operation.

And do you know what it is? It’s a big intranet web-space with social networking integrated. Controlled entry, makes lots of user information from the register system available to staff and authorised users, has a storage area to put resources for lessons, planning, homework etc, instant messaging betweeen pupils and staff. This sort of thing:

I know what you’re thinking. That’s basically a good website, Facebook, MSN, and a host of other new social networking stuff stuck together in one place and given a new name. Yep. That’s what I thought as well.

Except the added kicker is that the Learning Platform is administered by RM from afar but it’s the techs and teachers who get to decide what goes on the individual school’s Learning Platform. In all of the meetings, seminars and awareness sessions this has been completely skated over in a “that’s easy, a couple of hours work at most” kind of way. The only time someone actually gave a good, realistic, reasoned answer to the important question of what’s actually involved in setting the thing up happened at an ICT conference in July 08.

It was a presentation from a couple of secondary schools and the feeder primary school. The secondary deputy head told us how he’d been working on his Learning Platform for the last year and he’d got the Staff and the governers onto it. He was expecting to get the pupils on withing year 2 and maybe the parents on in early year 3. THREE years. Bloody hell.

So someone asked the important question, figuring as a Deputy Head he’d probably not have that much time per week to devote to the project and the three year timescale was because of this. “Oh no” says he. “I’m actually on a reduced timetable to do this. I’m spending at least two-thirds of my week exclusively on the Learning Platform”.

A hush filled the room.

You could hear all of these ICT co-ordinators working out how truly awful their lives were going to be over this.

Our Learning Platform gets installed October or November 2008.
I’m going to start buying gin in bulk and store it in a custom built 100 gallon tank out in the garden with a pump going straight to my room.