Cancelling School Year

[DonS 3,067]

Thankfully our district is going to restart online teaching on Monday.  Don't know what other districts will do to handle "inequity", but at least the state is no longer preventing everyone from teaching because of it.

In the words of the great philosopher Judge Smails: "The world needs ditch diggers, too". 

 

[vuduchile 1,941]

Looks like that’s gonna be the decision for MI.   What a joke.  

[fandandy 3,311]

It's official in Michigan.  Whitmer just held a press conference and canceled the remainder of the school year.  

[vuduchile 1,941]

1 hour ago, fandandy said:

It's official in Michigan.  Whitmer just held a press conference and canceled the remainder of the school year.  

I think everyone knew it was coming.  I was grocery shopping when she was on, so my wife texted me.  The store was focking packed too.  Way too many damned people.  I did get 12 rolls of Angel Soft.  They were all out of poopy fingers.  

[DonS 3,067]

1 hour ago, fandandy said:

It's official in Michigan.  Whitmer just held a press conference and canceled the remainder of the school year.  

So your state isn't going to even attempt online teaching?  Suboptimal for sure, but better than nothing. 

[posty 2,296]

1 hour ago, fandandy said:

It's official in Michigan.  Whitmer just held a press conference and canceled the remainder of the school year.  

Canceled?  No "distance learning"?

[fandandy 3,311]

1 minute ago, DonS said:

So your state isn't going to even attempt online teaching?  Suboptimal for sure, but better than nothing. 

 

1 minute ago, posty said:

Canceled?  No "distance learning"?

I listened to her address and supposedly she wants and expects this to happen but is leaving how it happens up to each individual district.  

[fandandy 3,311]

3 minutes ago, vuduchile said:

I think everyone knew it was coming.  I was grocery shopping when she was on, so my wife texted me.  The store was focking packed too.  Way too many damned people.  I did get 12 rolls of Angel Soft.  They were all out of poopy fingers.  

Well, if you ever want the good stuff you know where to come.  

I'll even throw the first roll in for free.

[vuduchile 1,941]

5 minutes ago, DonS said:

So your state isn't going to even attempt online teaching?  Suboptimal for sure, but better than nothing. 

 

5 minutes ago, posty said:

Canceled?  No "distance learning"?

 

3 minutes ago, fandandy said:

 

I listened to her address and supposedly she wants and expects this to happen but is leaving how it happens up to each individual district.  

Our district has been doing a half-assed distance learning thing since they were first sent home.  They've been prepping to ramp that up for the past week.  As Don said, it's better than nothing, but I'm not sure how much better.  We'll see.  

[fandandy 3,311]

I'm not confident that schools will start back up in September to be perfectly honest.  

[vuduchile 1,941]

1 minute ago, fandandy said:

I'm not confident that schools will start back up in September to be perfectly honest.  

My wife and I were talking about that last night.  Elementary schools were already infamous for kids spreading colds and flus.  I wonder how different it might be when they re-open?  

Smaller classroom, desks 6 ft apart? Distance learning becomes a part of the overall program? 

What will lunch and recess look like for these kids?

 

[Hardcore troubadour 12,636]

We could clear some space in the classroom by sending illegals and their kids back. 

[Cdub100 3,380]

16 minutes ago, vuduchile said:

 

 

Our district has been doing a half-assed distance learning thing since they were first sent home.  They've been prepping to ramp that up for the past week.  As Don said, it's better than nothing, but I'm not sure how much better.  We'll see.  

Our district has been doing the same using schoology... It doesn't work half the time.

I'm super close to starting IXL homeschooling program.

[Cloaca du jour 2,064]

There are a ton of great things that can be done online as far as education.  The problem is getting most kids to do the work.  Same as in regular classroom.  Kids that barely work in school sure as hell arent going to do anything at home lol.  Parents have to get more involved.  Needs to be scheduled..teachers should have set hours to be online each day.  It can work..just going to be trial and error for a while.  Think about how difficult a complete shift in how you do your job hit you in a week. You have to completely re tool how you do everything from teaching to evaluation/grading.  Redoing every assignment and activity that you do in your classroom is now useless.  You cant just scan it and throw it at the kids and hope it sticks.

 

[vuduchile 1,941]

47 minutes ago, Cdub100 said:

Our district has been doing the same using schoology... It doesn't work half the time.

I'm super close to starting IXL homeschooling program.

My son's school has utilized something from IXL for awhile now, but only for extra help and summer refreshers.  

[Cloaca du jour 2,064]

Get something positive out of this shitty situation https://imgur.com/gallery/tMqEks9

[Hawkeye21 1,853]

53 minutes ago, Cloaca du jour said:

Get something positive out of this shitty situation https://imgur.com/gallery/tMqEks9

That's a really cool idea.

[titans&bucs&bearsohmy! 2,745]

The school I work at seems to be under the impression that we are going back in two or three weeks. 

They've installed checkpoints at two gates to test temperatures. Isolation booths in the cafeteria (just wooden partitions separating the students). Hanging signs everywhere about washing hands.

Keep in mind this is a ritzy boarding school. The kids live here during the week (at least many of them do) packed 4 to a tiny room. 

I don't see any way in hell this happens. We just had a new case in our city yesterday. The "2nd wave" seems to be starting. No way the parents send their kids to an overcrowded under supervised environment.

They've been doing online for over a month now. They just got us foreigners to start this week. I'm only doing 3 classes a week, compared to my usual 18. No curriculum whatsoever. Just told me to make sure the kids are interested. 

[Hawkeye21 1,853]

School is officially cancelled for the state of Iowa now.  The governor announced it this morning.

[posty 2,296]

50 minutes ago, Hawkeye21 said:

School is officially cancelled for the state of Iowa now.  The governor announced it this morning.

Canceled as in no school or "distance learning" school?

[Hawkeye21 1,853]

1 minute ago, posty said:

Canceled as in no school or "distance learning" school?

No going back to school.  I think they are still working on distance learning.  Our governor also talked about starting school earlier in August.

[posty 2,296]

Just now, Hawkeye21 said:

No going back to school.  I think they are still working on distance learning.  Our governor also talked about starting school earlier in August.

If you guys are going distance learning, I hope you guys are much more successful than Fairfax County...  It has been a fustercluck this week...

https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2020/04/why-fairfax-co-schools-say-distance-learning-will-improve-monday/

Leaders in Virginia’s largest school system — Fairfax County Public Schools — are apologizing and promising things will be better when students resume distance learning on Monday.

During a virtual school board meeting that focused on the mishaps and glitches in the distance learning experience, representatives from Blackboard, the system the county uses for online and distance learning, also repeatedly apologized for the platform’s performance, but told board members the school system hadn’t updated the software that runs the virtual system in two years.

The issues led the county to cancel online instruction for the rest of the week to get things back in order.

FCPS Superintendent Scott Brabrand told WTOP that he wanted to apologize to parents and students for the mishaps.

“We remain committed to making sure we’re going to get it right,” Brabrand said. “We’re going to recommit to getting distance learning right for the rest of the year here in Fairfax County Public Schools.”

Brabrand said he and his team were not aware of any potential security or technical issues ahead of the first day of virtual learning until they began to manifest.

“We did not foresee this, and I accept responsibility for not seeing this coming,” Brabrand said. “We’re working around the clock to make sure these software issues are not going to happen again.”

One of the biggest problems identified was simply the difficulty students and others had logging in to the system. In some cases, the servers couldn’t handle the number of simultaneous logins.

“There were challenges between the login servers and the application servers, and that’s where the logjam occurred,” said Maribeth Luftglass, the assistant superintendent in charge of information technology.

“Those login servers were resynchronized and rebalanced and then what happened the next day, is after lots of people were able to log in, that caused additional backlogs and logjams in the application servers,” which handle all the software, Luftglass said.

The other problem was identified by Blackboard’s Tim Tomlinson, the company’s chief product officer, who said the school system hadn’t updated the software as frequently as it should have in recent years.

“The practice that Fairfax County has used historically is they take updates once a year, they apply them in the summer, they take a downtime window in order to test them,” Tomlinson said. “For the last two years that has not happened. This system actually hasn’t been updated in two years. We recommend that all of our clients stay on the most current versions of our software. The version of the software that Fairfax County is running is three years old. Fairfax County has made the choice not to update that software.”

Luftglass said the county is already working to address that, telling the school board “the key recommendations from Blackboard since we’ve had all these problems is to do some patches that they have identified and used with other customers that we were unaware of,” she said. “Those are being processed and integrated into our application today — it started last night.”

She said a bigger update is going to be installed in June.

Another problem with the virtual learning system wasn’t widespread but was disruptive: Anonymous “guest” users sharing links in some online classrooms that led to pornographic or malicious content, some of which was anti-Semitic.

That happened primarily at the high school level.

“Because those links were shared, they were guest links, anybody could use those links to get into those sessions,” said Luftglass.

To deal with that issue, on Monday access will be restricted so that students will have to use their school-provided email address to enter the online classroom, and only students in that class will be allowed in.

“We did not emphasize that enough,” she said, about making sure teachers didn’t create sessions that allowed for guests to show up. “They can’t put in a fake name, they can’t put in a fake profile picture.”

“In some cases we had a couple of students that put in inappropriate profile pictures up,” she added. On Monday students won’t be allowed to use profile pictures, nor will they be allowed to set up chat dialogues that exclude the teacher leading the session.

Later in the board meeting there was additional news about the county’s contract with Blackboard, the company running the distance learning platforms and the subject of intense criticism recently.

Fairfax County leaders said the contract with Blackboard expires after the next school year and the county has already decided to sign a deal with Schoology to take over after July of 2021.

“So we plan to migrate to a different product and platform over the next two years,” said Luftglass.

[Hawkeye21 1,853]

I'll have to ask my wife what they plan on doing.  Right now a lot of teachers have been teaching from home but I don't think it's been required.  There haven't been any grades or anything like that, just trying to keep the students current with their studies.  Not are students are doing it or are able to though.

[Big Blue 06 195]

New Jersey schools closed until at least May 15.  They don’t want to pull the plug yet, but I could see it going that way. 

[tanatastic 2,061]

It’s terrible. A friend of mine has 3 small children. The eldest doing homeschool now. You know how awful it is to have your teacher be a mom who has no idea how to teach plus has to do it in a house with two other screaming rugrats causing chaos? 

[DonS 3,067]

Can't remember if I already shared this:

https://i.postimg.cc/7LDB4TyM/20200417-115028.jpg

 

[posty 2,296]

16 minutes ago, tanatastic said:

It’s terrible. A friend of mine has 3 small children. The eldest doing homeschool now. You know how awful it is to have your teacher be a mom who has no idea how to teach plus has to do it in a house with two other screaming rugrats causing chaos? 

I bet this quarantine makes parents appreciate the job that a teacher does...  If not, they should...

[Utilit99 4,099]

Maybe public schools in NJ, NY, CA, and other liberal hot spots should all close until they themselves can learn to teach the kids how to be smart. Currently they are implementing mental disorders into the kids.

Oh Johnny, you are 12 years old today?

My name is Jane now, Mrs Bob. Get it right.

Ohhh!!. Wonderful. Let's get you hooked up with Barb, I mean Bill, for your next project.

You are all doing so wonderful in this math class.

Now children, how many black children does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer is none, because we are fighting for reparations that would allow the black child to hire a white child to do it for them. That will be on the test, so make sure you take notes. That is, if you are a gender identified as a child that is allowed to take notes. If not, I'll just mark that question as correct on the test.

Ok class. time to go to the gender neutral bathroom to do what you need to do in there. If you were born a male and still think you are one, then see me in my office after class because we need to have a stern talk about that.

 

 

 

[vuduchile 1,941]

1 hour ago, posty said:

If you guys are going distance learning, I hope you guys are much more successful than Fairfax County...  It has been a fustercluck this week...

https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2020/04/why-fairfax-co-schools-say-distance-learning-will-improve-monday/

Leaders in Virginia’s largest school system — Fairfax County Public Schools — are apologizing and promising things will be better when students resume distance learning on Monday.

During a virtual school board meeting that focused on the mishaps and glitches in the distance learning experience, representatives from Blackboard, the system the county uses for online and distance learning, also repeatedly apologized for the platform’s performance, but told board members the school system hadn’t updated the software that runs the virtual system in two years.

The issues led the county to cancel online instruction for the rest of the week to get things back in order.

FCPS Superintendent Scott Brabrand told WTOP that he wanted to apologize to parents and students for the mishaps.

“We remain committed to making sure we’re going to get it right,” Brabrand said. “We’re going to recommit to getting distance learning right for the rest of the year here in Fairfax County Public Schools.”

Brabrand said he and his team were not aware of any potential security or technical issues ahead of the first day of virtual learning until they began to manifest.

“We did not foresee this, and I accept responsibility for not seeing this coming,” Brabrand said. “We’re working around the clock to make sure these software issues are not going to happen again.”

One of the biggest problems identified was simply the difficulty students and others had logging in to the system. In some cases, the servers couldn’t handle the number of simultaneous logins.

“There were challenges between the login servers and the application servers, and that’s where the logjam occurred,” said Maribeth Luftglass, the assistant superintendent in charge of information technology.

“Those login servers were resynchronized and rebalanced and then what happened the next day, is after lots of people were able to log in, that caused additional backlogs and logjams in the application servers,” which handle all the software, Luftglass said.

The other problem was identified by Blackboard’s Tim Tomlinson, the company’s chief product officer, who said the school system hadn’t updated the software as frequently as it should have in recent years.

“The practice that Fairfax County has used historically is they take updates once a year, they apply them in the summer, they take a downtime window in order to test them,” Tomlinson said. “For the last two years that has not happened. This system actually hasn’t been updated in two years. We recommend that all of our clients stay on the most current versions of our software. The version of the software that Fairfax County is running is three years old. Fairfax County has made the choice not to update that software.”

Luftglass said the county is already working to address that, telling the school board “the key recommendations from Blackboard since we’ve had all these problems is to do some patches that they have identified and used with other customers that we were unaware of,” she said. “Those are being processed and integrated into our application today — it started last night.”

She said a bigger update is going to be installed in June.

Another problem with the virtual learning system wasn’t widespread but was disruptive: Anonymous “guest” users sharing links in some online classrooms that led to pornographic or malicious content, some of which was anti-Semitic.

That happened primarily at the high school level.

“Because those links were shared, they were guest links, anybody could use those links to get into those sessions,” said Luftglass.

To deal with that issue, on Monday access will be restricted so that students will have to use their school-provided email address to enter the online classroom, and only students in that class will be allowed in.

“We did not emphasize that enough,” she said, about making sure teachers didn’t create sessions that allowed for guests to show up. “They can’t put in a fake name, they can’t put in a fake profile picture.”

“In some cases we had a couple of students that put in inappropriate profile pictures up,” she added. On Monday students won’t be allowed to use profile pictures, nor will they be allowed to set up chat dialogues that exclude the teacher leading the session.

Later in the board meeting there was additional news about the county’s contract with Blackboard, the company running the distance learning platforms and the subject of intense criticism recently.

Fairfax County leaders said the contract with Blackboard expires after the next school year and the county has already decided to sign a deal with Schoology to take over after July of 2021.

“So we plan to migrate to a different product and platform over the next two years,” said Luftglass.

First week was a disaster here as well.  The 6th grade teachers are putting in about 2 of work, 3 days per week via zoom.  Then they're available to answer questions via email.  The zoom meetings are mostly spent berating the kids for not listening, talking out of turn, or some other nonsense.  After that, my son has about 15-20 minutes worth of actual work to do, then he's done.  

The 5th grade teacher does even less.  She emails the week's lessons on Monday then has a 2 hour zoom meeting on Friday where the same sh!t goes on that I described above.  There's no way my son will be ready for middle school next year if this is all he's gonna get.  We're probably gonna have to set up a process for my oldest to tutor my youngest to make sure he's getting the math instruction he needs.  I can help him with language arts and social studies, but I suck at math and so does my wife.  

 

[Hardcore troubadour 12,636]

Man, Virginia is a focked up state now. It’s like NY,  but uninteresting. 

[vuduchile 1,941]

2 hours ago, vuduchile said:

First week was a disaster here as well.  The 6th grade teachers are putting in about 2 of work, 3 days per week via zoom.  Then they're available to answer questions via email.  The zoom meetings are mostly spent berating the kids for not listening, talking out of turn, or some other nonsense.  After that, my son has about 15-20 minutes worth of actual work to do, then he's done.  

The 5th grade teacher does even less.  She emails the week's lessons on Monday then has a 2 hour zoom meeting on Friday where the same sh!t goes on that I described above.  There's no way my son will be ready for middle school next year if this is all he's gonna get.  We're probably gonna have to set up a process for my oldest to tutor my youngest to make sure he's getting the math instruction he needs.  I can help him with language arts and social studies, but I suck at math and so does my wife.  

 

And, the one and only zoom meeting scheduled for 5th grade got cancelled today. 
 

Teachers are so heroic.  

[frank 2,144]

19 hours ago, vuduchile said:

First week was a disaster here as well.  The 6th grade teachers are putting in about 2 of work, 3 days per week via zoom.  Then they're available to answer questions via email.  The zoom meetings are mostly spent berating the kids for not listening, talking out of turn, or some other nonsense.  After that, my son has about 15-20 minutes worth of actual work to do, then he's done.  

The 5th grade teacher does even less.  She emails the week's lessons on Monday then has a 2 hour zoom meeting on Friday where the same sh!t goes on that I described above.  There's no way my son will be ready for middle school next year if this is all he's gonna get.  We're probably gonna have to set up a process for my oldest to tutor my youngest to make sure he's getting the math instruction he needs.  I can help him with language arts and social studies, but I suck at math and so does my wife.  

 

You can’t do 5th grade math?

[vuduchile 1,941]

2 hours ago, frank said:

You can’t do 5th grade math?

Not really.  I use basic math and geometry every day at work but I suck at algebra. 

[Strike 3,968]

On 4/2/2020 at 7:09 PM, titans&bucs&bearsohmy! said:

Keep in mind this is a ritzy boarding school. The kids live here during the week (at least many of them do) packed 4 to a tiny room.

That's the definition of a ritzy boarding school? 

[TimmySmith 2,782]

Why are school systems even pretending at this point. Fairfax was out for 6 weeks up for a week and back down. Just check the right boxes and quit wasting everyone's time.

[Patriotsfatboy1 1,432]

20 minutes ago, vuduchile said:

Not really.  I use basic math and geometry every day at work but I suck at algebra. 

There are online programs that allow you take a picture of the math problem and it will show you the answer and the steps to get there. With “new math”, this will be valuable.

[Reality 2,710]

20 hours ago, vuduchile said:

And, the one and only zoom meeting scheduled for 5th grade got cancelled today. 
 

Teachers are so heroic.  

My kid is teaching himself, junior in high school. They are basically only being assigned busy work. The teachers are getting a free ride, it's pretty much a disgrace.

He's taking a couple college courses at USI as well, same deal. Teachers are more of a joke than I thought they were going into this mess.

[Cloaca du jour 2,064]

So please...enlighten us how you would revolutionize online learning for a teacher?  Lets say that you have 20 years in..have all your activities...papers...homeworks..etc in files and all your lab equipment...etc.  now you have a week to flip to virtual learning.  No training...other than...here is a website...i.e google classroom...edulastic..etc. 

Now make sure that 150 kids are all able to do the work without you there...make video conference hours but no one shows up.  

Please...give us your wisdom how you would reach and enrich your students with a 180 degree shift in your working environment??

[Reality 2,710]

1 hour ago, Cloaca du jour said:

So please...enlighten us how you would revolutionize online learning for a teacher?  Lets say that you have 20 years in..have all your activities...papers...homeworks..etc in files and all your lab equipment...etc.  now you have a week to flip to virtual learning.  No training...other than...here is a website...i.e google classroom...edulastic..etc. 

Now make sure that 150 kids are all able to do the work without you there...make video conference hours but no one shows up.  

Please...give us your wisdom how you would reach and enrich your students with a 180 degree shift in your working environment??

Now the teachers want us to come up with a plan for them, sounds about right. We've got our own jobs to worry about. What a sh!t show.

[Cdub100 3,380]

2 hours ago, Cloaca du jour said:

So please...enlighten us how you would revolutionize online learning for a teacher?  Lets say that you have 20 years in..have all your activities...papers...homeworks..etc in files and all your lab equipment...etc.  now you have a week to flip to virtual learning.  No training...other than...here is a website...i.e google classroom...edulastic..etc. 

Now make sure that 150 kids are all able to do the work without you there...make video conference hours but no one shows up.  

Please...give us your wisdom how you would reach and enrich your students with a 180 degree shift in your working environment??

It's not like online learning is this brand new way to do things. Sure it will be a struggle at first, but stop trying to make it harder than it actually is.