Page 2 • The Home Schooling/Teaching and Learning at Home Thread • Non-Gaming • Social • Eurogamer.net

Drakesmoke 6 Jan 2021 15:32:13 710 posts
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Seesaw for us, year 5. It's a horrible app. Currently being sent three tasks a day, one English, one maths, one of another subject. There's no teaching, it's just written instruction and I can't tell whether the little one can't get the instructions in that format or just doesn't want to sometimes. I'm a bit surprised as when they last shut down (isolating for confirmed case) she was a lot more independent than she is proving to be at the moment but I think possibly because she'd had several weeks in school last time, rather than one day.

Schedule at the mo is that I log on for work at about 8.30, get her up about ten to nine for breakfast, this is good as I can get going myself without the school run or her distracting us. It's then get changed and cleaned, and do a chapter of your book. She's then free until about 11.30 when I'll do her maths, and then there's an hour or so in the afternoon where my other half steps in.

Other parents don't help. I stuck her tablet on to charge at quarter to nine and a FaceTime call comes through with about half the class on it. I don't want her to miss out but once they get into that play zone you've lost them. So many are just sticking their kids on devices and going 'fuck it'. I'd be surprised if half the class are actually doing these tasks. I won't call them learning either.

To her credit, this is her third time home schooling, and while we have attitude blips she knows how it can all affect everyone in the house and is generally being good. I do wish I could get her to read the lessons in advance however, but she can't seem to delineate between 'her' time and school, despite the fact that technically it's not supposed to be hers. Maybe that level of forward thinking and responsibility is beyond a 9 year old though.

One issue I do have is that my other half, well intentioned as she is, will butt in with suggestions during 'my' lesson in the morning. I don't find that helpful and I think neither does the child tbh. Although she was actually sniggering at us bickering yesterday morning.

Edited by Drakesmoke at 15:33:22 06-01-2021

freddymercurystwin 6 Jan 2021 17:42:52 2,371 posts
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@crashVoodoo Yep the whole cross platform of sources they use is such an energy drain, with two muppets, one in primary, one just started secondary there are about 6 or 7 different App's/sources they all use that we have to access, there's just not a coherent approach, we don't know if there's a live lesson or prerecorded one or a zoom or whatever and we have to check all day on all the different sources to see what lessons/work might or might not have come through!

SnowmanRR 7 Jan 2021 08:45:32 253 posts
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Any recommendations for a decent printer to print out all the crap school are sending through? Been a while since I last owned a home printer and was forever buying ink cartridges back then.

Murbs 7 Jan 2021 08:56:27 24,964 posts
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SO grateful that my two are both secondary school age. My eldest is year 11 so has recently found out she won’t be sitting her GCSEs. Delighted is not the word.

Anyway, heard my youngest (year 8) on her registration call this morning at 8.40 so went upstairs to check all was ok with the world and found my eldest had decided to go back to sleep. FFS.

Murbs 7 Jan 2021 08:58:44 24,964 posts
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SnowmanRR wrote:
Any recommendations for a decent printer to print out all the crap school are sending through? Been a while since I last owned a home printer and was forever buying ink cartridges back then.

Bought a Canon TS8350 from Argos back at the start of all this chaos in March. My eldest is doing GCSE photography so there’s a lot of photo printing going on and I’ve been well impressed. Perhaps not so much with having spent close to a couple of hundred quid on ink and paper since though...

elstoof 7 Jan 2021 09:06:57 26,644 posts
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Get a black and white laser jet is the answer I think. Inkjet cartridges cost a fortune

Dougs 7 Jan 2021 09:08:48 97,446 posts
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Definitely.

You-can-call-me-kal 7 Jan 2021 09:16:42 22,315 posts
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Wife’s been refused parental furlough. I’m pretty shocked. She works for one of the biggest corporations in the world (think P&G but not P&G) who have ludicrous resources and would have no issue at all covering her. She’s a bipolar working mother of two, which they know.

Been told she’ll have to take holiday or unpaid leave. It’s genuinely scandalous. The government would pay her salary. It would make no difference to them at all.

Not-a-reviewer 7 Jan 2021 09:17:59 6,910 posts
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If printing photos there’s a photo box app which lets you print 60 (I think) photos a month and you just pay a couple of quid postage.

nickthegun 7 Jan 2021 09:18:11 84,512 posts
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I said in the other thread, I bought one five years ago and it was an absolute game changer. Its a lot more reliable than any inkjet ive had and the replacement (3rd party) toner costs 15 quid and does 1000 pages.

If I need a photo printing, I just use photobox.

elstoof 7 Jan 2021 09:20:32 26,644 posts
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Been muddling through with my old Epson stylus inkjet as I weighed up the cost of a new additional printer vs the one I had, marginally the wrong call. Think I’ve bought 3 packs of refills at 50 quid or so per pop. If first time buying then definitely would’ve gone laser

Not-a-reviewer 7 Jan 2021 09:21:10 6,910 posts
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You-can-call-me-kal wrote:
Been told she’ll have to take holiday or unpaid leave. It’s genuinely scandalous. The government would pay her salary. It would make no difference to them at all.

That’s crazy that they’ve said to take unpaid leave. They could easily have agreed a very short and limited part time furlough. That just sounds like a boss (or HR) on a power trip or being lazy.

nickthegun 7 Jan 2021 09:23:55 84,512 posts
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I bought mine, like quite a lot of things, in a fit of pique. I needed to print something fairly urgently and I got the nozzle jammed error for the millionth time on my reasonably expensive canon printer.

Boom, Im done, fuck inkjets.

And this laser (its a samsung, I dont think they make them anymore) has been absolutely bulletproof. It prints first time every time, no matter how long its been between prints.

sport 7 Jan 2021 09:24:01 16,578 posts
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You-can-call-me-kal wrote:
Wife’s been refused parental furlough. I’m pretty shocked. She works for one of the biggest corporations in the world (think P&G but not P&G) who have ludicrous resources and would have no issue at all covering her. She’s a bipolar working mother of two, which they know.

Been told she’ll have to take holiday or unpaid leave. It’s genuinely scandalous. The government would pay her salary. It would make no difference to them at all.

Did they give an actual reason?

mothercruncher 7 Jan 2021 09:24:26 18,715 posts
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Does anyone have any experience of Microsoft Teams not loading images in Word docs by any chance?
Ours is all Teams based and seems decent, like others- a Maths task, English and one other a day. But any of the Word docs we’re supposed to work on refuse to load the images. Either the desktop app, or via the web. Meaning we’re printing stuff out, filling it in with a biro and taking a photograph and emailing it, it’s a bit absurd.

PazJohnMitch 7 Jan 2021 09:25:09 16,554 posts
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Not-a-reviewer wrote:

You-can-call-me-kal wrote:
Been told she’ll have to take holiday or unpaid leave. It’s genuinely scandalous. The government would pay her salary. It would make no difference to them at all.
That’s crazy that they’ve said to take unpaid leave. They could easily have agreed a very short and limited part time furlough. That just sounds like a boss (or HR) on a power trip or being lazy.

My company would be exactly the same.

Justification is that part time staff work 60% of the hours for 60% of the pay. Therefore it would be unfair on them to pay someone 80% for no hours.

elstoof 7 Jan 2021 09:25:18 26,644 posts
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Presumably they don’t want to risk everyone asking for it and gone for a blanket rufusal

nickthegun 7 Jan 2021 09:28:09 84,512 posts
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My mate works for a quango and, I think, all of the women on his team have asked for it. The subtext for all of them is that they need to get better husbands who pull their weight with the kids.

Anyway, yeah, he has had to turn them all down in the short term as just one would cause a riot.

hedben2013 7 Jan 2021 09:28:24 1,906 posts
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I had printing DRAMA yesterday.

We had a brand new colour ink cartridge in the inkjet printer on Sunday night, cost of £15. Wednesday midday, I discovered it was almost completely out- and that the 13yo had been printing full colour pages of extracts from some YouTube video her teacher had screenshotted.

Tried to gently suggest to the 13yo that maybe she didn't need all that printing she'd done, and got "it's for my EDUCATION everyone ELSE is doing it!"- ie her standard stock response to anything when she thinks she's being told off.

Anyway now we're on the Instant Ink subscription thing with HP and I've banned anything that isn't printed in greyscale at draft quality

nickthegun 7 Jan 2021 09:30:17 84,512 posts
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mothercruncher wrote:
Does anyone have any experience of Microsoft Teams not loading images in Word docs by any chance?

If you arent doing a collab on a document, there is usually a function to just download it to your machine which is usually better as teams is shit at rendering documents.

You-can-call-me-kal 7 Jan 2021 09:31:57 22,315 posts
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@Not-a-reviewer

@sport

It’s company-wide policy left over from the original furloughing, which was designed to helped businesses, but this business is so big and rich they didn’t need it. Essentially a case of computer says no.

The government should really have announced this element of furlough as a separate ‘parental relief’ scheme or something. It exists for a completely different reason, but if businesses have a blanket furlough policy it will apply to this also.

PazJohnMitch 7 Jan 2021 09:35:06 16,554 posts
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Why do I get the impression I work for the same company as Kal’s wife?

Edited by PazJohnMitch at 09:36:24 07-01-2021

mothercruncher 7 Jan 2021 09:45:42 18,715 posts
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@nickthegun
Yeah, I’ll try a download, thanks. I find it baffling that one program made by Microsoft is seemingly unable to properly render another that is, you know, made by Microsoft.

freddymercurystwin 7 Jan 2021 09:55:05 2,371 posts
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mothercruncher wrote: Meaning we’re printing stuff out, filling it in with a biro and taking a photograph and emailing it, it’s a bit absurd.

We've had to do that with about 95% of all of their work, it's mind numbing.

PazJohnMitch 7 Jan 2021 10:03:06 16,554 posts
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Would that Whiteboard program help? (Not used it myself, so not sure if applicable).

I tend to just use the fill and sign options on Adobe to write on PDFs but doubt that will work for younger children.

Or use Autodesk Design Review.

Edited by PazJohnMitch at 10:06:20 07-01-2021

bzzct 7 Jan 2021 11:23:19 2,063 posts
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freddymercurystwin wrote:

mothercruncher wrote: Meaning we’re printing stuff out, filling it in with a biro and taking a photograph and emailing it, it’s a bit absurd.
We've had to do that with about 95% of all of their work, it's mind numbing.

Ditto, and it's all in weird formats - screenshot-of-a-landscape-monitor-with-a-landscape-document-on-it-but-that's-on-its-side-so-its-a-tiny-portrait-that's-then-distorted-into-a-Word-doc etc. etc. Aside from making everything more of a faff for everyone using it, it doesn't fill with you confidence over the teachers' basic IT skills.

hedben2013 wrote:
Anyway now we're on the Instant Ink subscription thing with HP and I've banned anything that isn't printed in greyscale at draft quality

Not to take the kid's side but if you're now on Instant Ink you pay per page anyway, so 15 colour photos would be the same as 15 low-quality B&Ws.

Edited by bzzct at 11:24:11 07-01-2021

hedben2013 7 Jan 2021 11:35:37 1,906 posts
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@bzzct Ah yeah good point, what I actually mean is I've signed up to instant ink, but the first two cartridges take up to 10 working days to arrive... so until they arrive we're on strict printer rationing.

Once they get here I'll ease up on being a tightarse

EDIT- wait the allowance is pages not amount of ink, I get it! Doh

Edited by hedben2013 at 11:36:42 07-01-2021

freddymercurystwin 7 Jan 2021 11:47:11 2,371 posts
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So dopey question, presumably a laser printer has a black cartidge and a colour colour cartridge?

elstoof 7 Jan 2021 11:49:28 26,644 posts
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Domestic lasers are usually black only, colour lasers are spenny

sport 7 Jan 2021 12:01:12 16,578 posts
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Finally bit the bullet and under EG advice bought this Sharp. Hope the kids like it.

The Home Schooling/Teaching and Learning at Home Thread • Page 2