Sorry Matt, I slipped up slightly in my phraseology - the word missing was "Secondary" - please insert at the beginning of the original email. This is from someone who is an ex-industry IT professional and now provides ICT support services to schools in all age ranges, as well as to LEAs. Primary teachers are on the whole harder-working, more positive, more flexible, less complaining and less well-paid than their secondary counterparts. Of course, on the whole, primary children are a whole lot nicer than secondary ones...

And on the subject of MyWorld, be nice, one of the subscribers wrote it. I thought it was nice  anyway... And it helps fund him do a lot of open source related work (BTW Mr D., the metadata's ready for Hobarte e-reg, if you've got comfortable with Interbase now. And a certain well-known development company may be onboard....)

Cheers

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Johnson
To: SuSe
Sent: 5/29/02 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] RE: [school-discuss] Becta feedback

As a teacher first, and a network administrator
second...

 --- Chris Puttick <chris@centralmanclc.com> wrote: >
Teachers in the UK are being expected to do less and
> less work by
> government.

Ay, about time. Have a misread your intention, or is
there a bit of "they don't work hard enough, those
lazy bastards" in your tone? I, for one, am a bloody
busy bloke. Although you do say there are some notable
exceptions, I don't know a primary teacher who doesn't
work hard. Don't get me wrong, I know some crap ones,
but even they work hard! Government after government
has expected teachers to do more. Every little regular
two-hour task they pile at teachers, implies that they
have two hours free. The Government seems to say that
the workload should decrease, but I've seen little
evidence that. Moan, moan, whinge whinge. Damn
teachers.

As your package does not fit neatly into
> the UK national
> curriculum (i.e. you haven't pre-defined for them
> what the package does in
> NC terms), they're not (with some notable
> exceptions) going to be
> interested.

Absolutely. It's worth _so_ much more to a teacher if
it's tied in neatly, and labelled clearly ie. This
element of gcompris covers "blah blah blah" at
Keystage 1. Not through idleness, but through trying
to cut down to reasonable the ammount of work that's
required to do the job. I think I work at a reasonable
level. I don't think I do _too_ much.

Given the position of BECTa,they really
> should take the time to
> evaluate these packages, but don't.

Agreed. Becta's site says it's function is:

---

"The strength of Becta is its ability to bridge
educational and technological developments and
communities. Becta also seeks to:

*evaluate information and communications technology
(ICT) practice

*support existing applications of ICT

*investigate emerging technologies and associated
pedagogy.

As the Government's lead agency on the use of ICT in
education, Becta plays a crucial role in helping to
maximise the benefits to all teachers and learners
that using ICT can bring."

---

It looks to me, at first glance, that there's some
great ideas in gcompris. I'm surprised it didn't get a
positive reaction. Well, perhaps I'm not surprised -
that would be naive. Have you seen some of the RM
MyWorld stuff? *Choke* Now, all RM have done is
clearly tie it in to the National Curriculum. So,
that's the secret.

See the following to see what kids in English schools
are up to:

http://www.nc.uk.net/home.html
http://www.standards.dfee.gov.uk/schemes/

You could try to find someone with some experience in
Primary teaching to tie all this in for you. (No, not
I, I'm afraid)

Hope that may go at least some way in helping.

--
Matt Johnson

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