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G-Jackson

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Everything posted by G-Jackson

  1. G-Jackson
    @cbeeching - You might be in the same situation we are... I.E. Even if we had the best LP in the world the staff still wouldn't use it... I've been sorting through some of my papers because I'm just about to start training my fellow Governors at the Junior School. In one BECTA Document "Getting Started with your Learning Platform" on P1 under the title 3 steps to success No 1 is Have the commitment of your Senior Leadership Team and that is where we fall over... as much as I try to get things moving with no one pushing it from the top you end up going nowhere I work with lots of our Partner Primary Schools and some of them are doing fantastic things with KLP... It seems to be an attitude problem - If you want to make it work you can but if you set out to make it fail you can.
  2. G-Jackson
    Been off Ill for 3 days and only got back in to school yesterday... place is crazy as it's Open Evening on Monday... we've just had a new Digital Signage Large Monitor put up in Reception ready for our prospective parents and all the staff are talking about it - "We should have one in every classroom so we can see messages" which we could if we had a spare £150 - £200 thousand... so I say - well you could just read the messages off the Learning Platform while you are logged on to do your register... oh the Learning Platform's c**p is a response... Oh how I wish I worked in a Primary School - The ECO Club project I mentioned looks like it will be bigger than I thought - I mentioned it to a teacher at another school and got an immediate "Can we take part?" response. They say dogs are like their owners - I'm begining to think teachers are like their kids... Primary Teachers seem to look at something new and think "What can we use that for?" Just like a young child might. Whereas the secondary teachers here are more like teenagers and will either just sulk and ignore it or call it names.
  3. G-Jackson
    I think I'd agree with that although it was a bit of both with us... RM came in and installed KLP because Derbyshire had said All schools in the county will have it and our Deputy Head asked if we could be part of the Pilot. So we had our initial training and the idea was that we would use the people trained to cascade train their departments - we also chose people with multiple roles e.g. French Teacher who was also a Head of Year, PE Teacher who also runs clubs and Duke of Edinburgh, PSHE Teacher who runs school council etc... we thought this might get them thinking about the Portal side and VLE... The idea was that at INSET &/or Dept Meetings etc they could cascade train and IT would offer to back them up if needed... the problem was the person in charge of the project never bothered to make sure the cascade training got started so if all just stalled. So in answer to your point - The planning side of the implementation was good but the actual implementation wasn't. If the people at the top won't drive it the people at the bottom aren't going to bother either. On the plus side - I have been contacted by Science today who want to start up an ECO Club on KLP in conjunction with one of our feeder Primary Schools... so we live in hope.
  4. G-Jackson
    Our problem is that no one at the top is pushing it forward - I go to the Primary Schools and the Headteachers are very enthusiastic on the whole and they are making big changes here - they have someone type up information - then pass it to someone else who photocopies 70, 80 or 90 copies - then they pass it to someone else who walks up to the staff room and puts a copy in every staff pigeon hole... When we had our initial training the one person I wanted on the training was the Head's PA as she produces many of the main documents that would be uploaded - but she didn't attend as she was too busy Now she doesn't want anything to do with KLP so anything she creates has to be passed to someone else to upload. I was also asked to create a Governor's area and get all Governors KLP accounts - this was done inside a week ( over 12 months ago) It's never been touched since... On the flip side as a Governor at a Primary School I have set-up their Governor area and uploaded several documents... the Governors are itching to go - the only problem is getting RM to set-up their accounts.
  5. G-Jackson
    They won't use e-mail either most of them seem happy to use endless reams of paper and do the same thing over and over again... e.g. Last Year we had 7 teachers come in one by one asking us to unblock YouTube so they could show a video to each of the Year 7 classes... I said - Why don't you upload a copy to the VLE and make it available to them? - Too much trouble... low and behold - this week one by one they've all been coming in asking for YouTube to be unblocked so they can show the same video The thing is - our teachers may well want to hope KLP goes away but, as I said above, a lot of schools (Primary/Juniors) around here are using it and the kids love it so they are coming to us and asking why we don't use it... I'll let you know how I get on with my champions so watch this space.
  6. G-Jackson
    We've had KLP installed for about 19 months now - we were a pilot for Derbyshire who are rolling it out to all schools in the county. We attend regular strategy meetings and, I must say that, the Primary Schools in our area put us in Secondaries to shame. They are pushing it forward from the top down and seem to be really giving it a good go. Most don't use the VLE side at present - just the Portal+ but they use it for administration and for teaching & learning. We on the other hand are suffering from the usual problem of teachers not wanting to touch it with a barge pole and hoping that if they forget about it then it will just go away As the KLP administrator I am trying to find a few people who will champion KLP and get things going so that I can then use them to show others but it's slow going. What really annoys me is we are putting information on KLP for Staff but when you say to them it's on the Learning Platform we get "I don't have time to look on there" - My response now is - "Well I don't have time to walk round school and tell 90 members of staff the same piece of information" I quite like Kaleidos as a communication tool and think it will get better - the introduction of Learning Spaces (although we don't use them yet) should be a good thing. One thing I do like about it is the inter-connectivity - we are able to publish information to our Feeder Primary Schools and allow them access to our Transition Interest Space. Also a new Diploma course we've started has students on it from another local secondary school and they can pick up assignments and hand in work via the Learning Platform and take part in on-line discussions, which makes them a lot more integrated as they only visit our school twice a week. I've no experience of other LPs/VLEs so can compare Kaleidos but IF we can get our staff to use it I think it would be a great benefit.
  7. G-Jackson
    I have said it many times at Chinese new year - never been lucky enough for anyone to give me cash though - Perhaps if I'd been in China and not the UK I might have had more luck. I did get given a nice cookie yesterday - we take part in a Japanese Exchange program and one of the Japanese Teachers was handing them out in the Staff Room Thanks for the friend invite by the way.
  8. G-Jackson
    Thanks Eddie - Whatever it was you said - I'm affraid that's my limit of spoken Chinese - oh and Gung Hay Fat Choy - I can write the numbers up to 99 though
  9. G-Jackson
    Ni Ho Maa Eddie and welcome to the forum
  10. G-Jackson
    They might be if our order doesn't turn up by Tuesday
  11. G-Jackson
    Thanks guys we have been assured that they will be with us by Tuesday (but that's what they said last week) - So will give them until then. The nearest I got was Equanet (PC World Business) who had the stock in but they were £1 dearer so it was going to cost us £200 as we'd already agreed the price with parents. IJT were still doing 1Gb and 2Gb the last time I checked - we still have a few left which we sell for £3 We are only just moving up to 2Gb for the kids.
  12. G-Jackson
    Hi Guys I know it's not really Hardware but couldn't see a thread for Consumables etc I need to find a supplier ASAP who can ship us 200 2Gb USB Memory Sticks at under £4.00 ea Our usual supplier - IJT - have let us down big time.
  13. G-Jackson
    to all you new guys
  14. G-Jackson
    If I respond it will only ever be my 'close friends' and I must say that the one who managed to coax me into school for an hour in late August did bribe me with Goodies
  15. G-Jackson
    I've been on Facebook for about 5 months - on the one hand it's great for keeping in touch with all those friends I do want to and often quicker than e-mailing them. On the other hand I often get Facebook messages from Teachers asking why their Laptop is playing up or why such and such Application isn't working.
  16. G-Jackson
    My son is in his second year on Club Penguin and just started SEcondary school be he loves it and I'd say it was the best £37 we've spent. Normally we buy a DS or Wii game for about £35 and he's completed it in 2 days - He never get's tired of CP and quite a few of his friends are on it plus a few cyber-friends from around the world. As someone pointed out above - it's really a Social Network Site for kids - it's Disney and it's monitored... I don't know if there are any real educational benefits to it or not but I'd rather him be on CP than Bebo which is a horrible site. When the time comes and he wan't to move on I think Facebook is the way to go - they are sensible and responsible - unlike the bebo brigade who seem to have a couldn't care less attitude whenever we've tried to report cyber-bullying issues.
  17. G-Jackson
    Hi to all of you... You'll be fine David - It's been wet all summer here too
  18. G-Jackson
    Hi blacksheep - True but I didn't think anyone would be using anything less... we don't have a massive IT budget and we've been on Server 2003 for ages. I expect we will remain their for some time to come.
  19. G-Jackson
    If you're running MS Server you can just use the built in Disk Quota - you need to Enable Quotering on the disk and then set it up for the users... we just Quota our students but Staff are going a bit stupid now so we might start restricting them too.
  20. G-Jackson
    I'd love to see a copy of your AUP to pass on to my Boss.
  21. G-Jackson
    Hi Craig might want to pick your brains on Ranger for Networks - we've just had it installed here and are still trying to get to grips with bits and pieces - especially configuring stuff. We had some engineers in from Stone who set up the vast majority of stuff but we get the odd problem and have to revert to the user manual - which as you are no doubt aware is rather thick and not always as user friendly as it could be. Glyn
  22. G-Jackson
    Hi IKweb and Hi jimofcheeni - I used to live on the other side of the Humber many years ago near to Cleethorpes - Never managed to venture across the bridge though.
  23. G-Jackson
    Hi KK20 What's you background?
  24. G-Jackson
    Oh No - Aunt Irma's come to visit (IT Crowd) OK - I think I'll join you....
  25. G-Jackson
    East Midlands Today said he had been released - he had a fractured skull - I'm guessing that QMC need the beds so he's been discharged. It also said that the Police had or were about to question him so he must be a lot better.
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