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 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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com