Tag Archives: comment

Health and Safety – whatever happened to common sense? (Local authority advice)

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snow I was forwarded a copy of the email sent to site managers/heads across my local authority.   It seems we live in an age when no-one can take risks, and common sense cannot be left to the individual.

These are some of the pearls of wisdom offered to site managers and heads:

  • Details should be drawn to the attention of all employees working on the premises so they are aware of the safest ways of entering and leaving the premises.
  • Arrangements should be made for access routes to be inspected regularly following the salting and gritting to monitor its effectiveness. It is recommended that this is done before the end of each session. PLEASE NOTE: TEMPORARY SIGNS DENOTING SAFE ROUTES MAY BE NECESSARY.
  • All staff should be reminded of the need to wear appropriate footwear when coming to work in severe weather conditions as it will seldom be possible to clear all snow and ice from a site. In particular, walking from a parked car to the nearest access path may be hazardous.
  • In the past, there has been at least one instance of pupils in a first school picking some crystalline salt granules off the playground and tasting them, thinking they were snow or ice particles. Heads of Establishments with young children are therefore advised to purchase salt/grit mixture rather than pure crystalline salt for treating icy surfaces. Children should be warned accordingly.
  • Suitable clothing, particularly for caretakers who will be working outside, should be used
  • Ensure that there is a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for snow and ice clearing activities

Do we live in a society where individuals have no common sense?  Do we live in a society where we want to remove each and every risk, no matter how small?  Do we live in a society where school managers (and the LA) are frightened of being sued?  I suspect the answer to all these questions is yes – and until there is a change of culture we will continue to be treated like a nation of children.

It’s teacher bashing time

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Image © Rob Gould @ Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

As snow falls across the country, schools have closed for a variety of reasons.  Frustrated parents are quick to blame the teachers (we all need a scapegoat) and discussion forums fill up with comments about lazy teachers.  Too soon the conversation changes from “why can’t they get to school?” to don’t they have enough holidays already.  I’ve even seen suggestions about teachers having inset days in their holidays (which is ironic since inset days did originally come out of teachers holidays).

The press feel the need to join in with this teacher bashing, after all appealing to the public sentiment is what sells papers.  As I sat reading the Times today I read an article that made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.  Not because of the subject of the article but the tone, and the glaring inaccuracies in the article that the times included.

The article in question was a small ‘filler’ by their education correspondent Nicola Woolcock.  I managed to track down an online copy of the article here.  Apparently it is far too hard to dismiss incompetent teachers and so-called experts suggest that there could be 24,000 inadequate teachers, although Ms Woolcock declines to say which hat she pulled these figures out of.

According to the article heads must give notice before entering the classroom for a formal observation, and can only do so for three times a year.  Of course Ms Woolcock is reporting the current agreed arrangements for performance management, many observations for which are not actually carried out by head teachers.  There is no limit on quality assurance observations which I am aware of, and I know of many heads who walk around schools and pop into lessons to see what is going on without giving notice.

Of course there are teachers who experience difficulties.  One of my roles as an AST is to work with some of these teachers in my local authority.  It could be argued that it is difficult to sack incompetent teachers, although I suggest the true story should read it is far too hard to dismiss any incompetent public sector worker.

However when I read I was struck by the lack of balance, and the emphasis on bashing teachers rather than on a balance discussion, but a balanced discussion doesn’t sell newspapers does it?

Copy and Paste Customer Service.

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For a long time I’ve seen lessons where staff have used the internet.  Teachers are getting better at finding ways of using the internet, but I still see lots of instances of straight copy and pasting.  Is this a good idea?

Over the last week I’ve been patronised by two different companies who have responded to my enquiry by email.  I don’t think either company bothered to read my email properly, just scanned it for key words and then pasted a response.

Boots
I did a lot of Christmas shopping on the Internet at Boots, and am a sucker for their loyalty card points.  I’ve been to their ‘Advantage Card’ machines several times and points still haven’t been added to my account.  The first time I contacted them, the email I received had a few lines about my pending points and then a huge copy and pasted instruction set telling me visit a machine to collect my points.  Hadn’t they read the email I sent?  Perhaps it was just me so I tried my card again and contacted them once more.  I explained that I had tried my card several times in an Advantage machine and my points had not been added to my account.  This is the email I received:
Thank you for contacting us about collecting your pending points from our Advantage Card extra offers kiosks.

To collect your points you’ll need to insert your card into the Advantage Card extra offers kiosk in our larger stores, it looks similar to a cash machine. First it will find your name, and display that on the screen, then it will tell you how many points you have to spend, and they’ll be downloaded onto your card for you.

You’ll also have the opportunity to look through lots of exciting and exclusive offers simply by touching the screen.


How helpful!  Copy and paste customer service at its best.

Carbonite backup

I’ve a problem in Windows 7.  Carbonite scans the Firefox profiles folder for changes and stops you installing add-ons for Firefox.  Disabling Carbonite or excluding the folder from backups stopped the issue so the problem was clearly with Carbonite.  This is the copy and pasted response I received from them.

Hello Rob and thank you for contacting Carbonite Customer Support.

Carbonite has been designed to operate in the background so as not to slow down your PC or interfere Internet connection while you are actively using your computer.

It seems like the issue you are facing is not related with Carbonite, but with your system. We request you to please contact your local computer technician for the further assistance regarding this issues.


Please let us know if you need additional assistance.

Sincerely,

Maxwell
Carbonite Customer Support

Perhaps it’s just me.  Perhaps it’s a generational perception?

Teachers – join me on the quest to stop this abuse of copy and paste by teaching our students when it is appropriate to use copy and paste, and when it is not.  And be loud in your complaints when you receive this kind of response from a company – copy and paste customer service = poor customer service!

Completing Warcraft 3 again – why a good computer game is like a good lesson.

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Whilst tidying out my cupboards I found a copy of Warcraft 3 (and accompanying expansion the Frozen Throne).  Most games of this era had not survived my clearing culls, but this game has a soft spot in my heart.  Not only was it one of the best games I played with an excellent story line, but I revisited all the places in the game when I played World of Warcraft for four years.

Completing the game again was like taking a trip down memory lane.  I revisited all the places I had been to in World of Warcraft, many of which held fond memories (in the same way that childhood memories are fond memories). 

So was I prepared to rejoin World of Warcraft after a year of not playing?  Blizzard gave me a free week to entice me back.  Unfortunately as a level 80 character who has completed most of the game, there isn’t much left to do.  Player vs Player action isn’t balanced and isn’t much fun for my hybrid class.  I don’t have the time or inclination to level up my cooking/fishing skills or to go around doing the same kind of things over and over again – too much repetition.
I couldn’t be bothered to level my level 60 and level 70 characters, which would take many times longer than it took to complete Warcraft 3.  Another reason for not completing these tasks is that there is very little story line linking the quests together.  Not like the story arc that runs through the Warcraft3 game.

So what made Warcraft 3 a good game for me?

  • A good story arc to give me a reason to keep playing (it held my interest)
  • A different experience every time you play – not the same one time after time
  • Something that doesn’t take forever to see any progress.

As a teacher I see that these are some of the requirements of a good lesson?  I’m not sure this means I have a future in game design, but perhaps there are still more lessons to be learnt from the computer games industry…