One more day to go until the Easter break.
It’s been a helluva term, particularly the last few weeks. I was struck down with the obligatory ‘end-of-term-virus’ about halfway through this half-term and it’s knocked the bejeezus out of me frankly. I’ve just been constantly knackered. Having 4 exam classes, all with piles of coursework to get through hasn’t helped (technically I have 5 but I can’t whinge too much about my solitary Computing student, bless).
My first week off I’m away to sunny Skegness (luckily I have a carefully crafted pseudonym that none of the readers of this blog should know about, so I’m comfortable that my posessions will remain safe until my return). No laptop, no coursework, exactly what I need.
Of course the second week I’m back in school for 2 days running booster sessions and coursework catchup, not to mention that gargantuan pile of coursework to be trawled through in time for the exam boards’ deadlines.
Still, I wouldn’t change jobs for the world. There must be something seriously wong with me 
I’m still here, I promise. I’ve just found it incfredibly hard to post lately.
Well, actually no, I’ve just found it incredibly easy not to post. I’ve certainly been busy between the parents’ evenings, the GCSE and A-level coursework deadlines and turnarounds as well as the KS3 testing regime we’re currently running through. Oh, and ther’s a crumb stuck under my ‘r’ key, so apologies if parts of this don’t make sense.
Anyway, I am still here and I do still have stuff to talk about.
I had a class use my room today! For the first time in a long time. It seems that people are afraid of booking the Mac suite for their lessons (and I’m planning on running some INSET to help change opinions on that) and so I very rarely have to share my room with anyone else.
When I do I always like to stick around (with permission, of course) and help out in order to make sure that the pupils, who are often seeing a Mac for the first time, have as positive an experience as possible. My crowning achievement was, as a load of kids moaned about how it ‘isn’t Windows’, a few of them were trying to figure out how to copy and paste an image from Safari into PowerPoint. Upon being shown how to simply drag and drop the image straight from the web page they were in awe!
Of course it all went awry when we had to try and copy their work from their machines onto the network space (something we can’t get fully integrated until our whopping new server arrives) and most of them left the room swearing never to touch a Mac again. Still, it was nice to have some fresh blood in here…
I was going to have a moan about parents’ evenings today but actually last night wasn’t that bad. We only do meetings with tutors here which keeps the attendance up and means we don’t need the whole staff in 8 times a year.
I don’t hate parents’ evening but it does sometimes feel al little pointless. I inevitably feel like I’m wasting the time of certain parents as there’s very little to say that isn’t in the pupils’ report. And then you get the parents who say “Well that was a pretty good report” which was most definitely not the idea they were supposed to get.
Well, one more night to go and I’m done for another year (I’m just grateful I don’t have to talk to the parents of all 200 odd pupils that I teach ofr ICT).
I give up, I really do. At KS4 and 5 there is a scheme called OSCA (I have no idea what it stands for, but the point is that you moderate some sample coursework from the exam board and if your marks are close enough to theirs then you are unlikely to be called for moderation on your own students’ work).
So I’ve spent most of the day (from 7am) looking through exemplar work, moderators’ comments, mark schemes, checklists and eportfolios. I have a blinding headache but I’m done. I’ve written my feedback, totted up the scores, I just need to copy and paste it into the exam board’s system. So I log on to the exam board’s website, or try to, and I see a message that the website shuts down overnight. Every night.
Stop a minute and read that last bit again. I don’t think I’m making this up, but it sounds like it. This website shuts down every night at 10pm prompt. The coursework expects the students to point out the advantages of transactional websites over traditional ‘bricks & mortar’ business models (one of the main advantages, of course, being 24 hour accessibility). Am I the only one to see the irony (or sheer stupidity) of the situation?
Words fail me. I bit my tongue so hard it almost bled in an attempt to not launch my laptop through my kitchen window. Am I alone? Is it normal for websites to do this? I know they occasionally go down for maintenance or what have you, but every single night?
I shouldn’t let it bother me, I have the work done and another 7 days (- server downtime of course) to get the stuff uploaded. Still, it’s the last thing I need after an incredibly stressful weekend.
*Sigh* *Deep breaths*
Hugin is yet another free and cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) application, this time used for stitching images together. That means you can take a number of photos of a view, even a full panorama, and then stitch them together to make one complete image. You can stretch and distort the images where you need to and it all looks fairly impressive.
