I do love winter, but…

I love winter. Not because of any fondness for Christmas (if it were up to me, I wouldn’t bother at all) or for snow, but simply because this time of year is magical. The light is different. The air is different. And it’s perfectly okay just to curl up at home and think how lovely it is not to have to go outside (as long as you don’t have to…!).

I have to say, though, that it’s not perfect. I posted earlier that I like it getting dark in the afternoons – and I do. I love the long summer evenings too, but somehow it’s nice to be able to get in at the end of the day and it feels like it’s properly evening instead of still being like midday.

However, that’s not the whole story. I like it getting dark, but I could still do with a bit more…daylight, y’know?

Take this example. I have a net curtain thing across my window. My mother took it down to wash one day because she said I wouldn’t notice: after all, it’s dark when I leave in the morning and dark when I get home in the afternoon. So the curtain is washed and put back up again, and sure enough, I didn’t notice.

I do occasionally get home with a little daylight left or open the curtains in the morning if it’s a particularly light day, so I did see the physical evidence of the curtain being there. However, it wasn’t until the weekend that I realised man, my curtain is CLEAN!

No, really. It’s white. I’d forgotten it used to be white under there! It doesn’t really matter, though, as in the half-light that comes in the mornings and evenings, you can’t really see it at all. In daylight, its luminious cleanliness illuminates the room, but hey, how often do I see this thing in daylight? Uh, twice a week…

And people say that ICT in schools is vital.

I know that I post way too much about school these days, but I’ve had it up to here with people telling me that ICT GCSE is absolutely vital and really educative and representative of the working world.
In just over one half term, this is what we’ve done in my GCSE IT class:
1. Read the case study. I’ll admit it: reading the case study is not actually that unreasonable. However, I do have an issue (I know I’m overreacting) with the incredibly ridiculous way the case study is written.
The scenario is that you are Jo, who is working at a medical practice. Brian, your boss, has given you this stuff to do. There’s 3 different projects that we do this year, the current one being an interactive presentation for a medical practice.
However, it’s rather difficult to see why Brian doesn’t do it himself, as he has decided every last little detail of the presentation, right down to the number of slides, how they’re linked, the layout of the slides, the text that needs to go on them, the pictures that need to be used…the presentation could be made in less time than it would take to have the ‘conversation’ that explains what you need to do.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of the case study to show just how irritating these conversations are (Jo also keeps an infuriating ‘notebook’, which is written rather comically), so I’m going to instead show here some of the case study we did last year, which was about building a website:
Student:                        We have used a product called ‘Dreamweaver’ a bit at school.  I reckon I could use that to build a web site for you.

Erin:                             Dreamweaver?  Funny name!

Student:                        To be honest I need to learn how to use it much better first of all and then I can get back to you about what exactly it can do.

Erin:                             Fair enough.  But I would need to be sure that you know how to use it well because I don’t want the web site to look bad or as if it has been done by my 3 year old son!

Student:                        It will look good but I do have to go back to school to talk to my ICT teacher.

Erin:                             OK, but I want to get moving on this quickly.  The first thing I want you to do is to go away and learn how to use Dreamweaver and then come back to me with a document explaining how Dreamweaver can help us to build a web site and why having a web site would be better than running an advertisement on the local radio.

Student:                        What will that document look like?

Erin:                             Well I suggest that give it a title like; ‘How Dreamweaver will help Premier Leisure’ to build a web site?’  You could have 2 columns:  one which has a title like ‘Feature of Dreamweaver’ and another in which you can explain what that feature does to help us build a web site’.  At the bottom you could write about why a web site would be better for us than running some averts on the local radio station.

Student:                        Why do I need to produce this document.

Erin:                             Well I need some reassurance before we start to spend money on a computer and the Dreamweaver software that it will actually solve our problem.  My boss, Samantha, will take some convincing as well so it needs to be very detailed.

Student:                        OK I will contact my ICT teacher, learn how to use Dreamweaver        and I will get back to you with this document describing how Dreamweaver can help us to build a web site and about why a web site would be better for you than running some averts on the local radio station.
.
Erin:                             I am really looking forward to hearing from you.

Aside from removing my school’s initials, that’s exactly how it appears in the document. Later on, the ICT teacher
speaks in the form of a table and also quotes the file paths. ‘Nuff said.
2.  Complete the ‘analysis’. This involves filling in these questions in absurd detail:
THE FORM OF THE OUTPUT  (What is the project going to look like?)

THE INFORMATION TO BE OUTPUT  (What things need to go into the presentation.)
THE DATA NEEDED TO PRODUCE THE OUTPUT AND THE SOURCE OF THE DATA (Where do I find the things to go into the presentation)
DESIRED OUTCOMES AND PERFORMANCES CRITERIA (What must go into the presentation)
TESTING (Does the system need to be tested? Yes or no)
If anyone could fill me in on the difference between ‘what things need to go into the.

3. Page layouts. These are detailed mock-ups of every slide, containing all the font sizes, background colours, details of images to be used etc. I can see the point behind doing these because planning is important and if this were a big-money enterprise, the people paying for it would definitely want to see plans..but for a 5-slide presentation that you could knock up in half an hour? It would be far quicker to make the entire presentation, have it be crap and make it all again than it would be to make the page layouts once over.

4. Write about the psychology of colour. I kid you not! We wrote about 2 pages about the psychology of colour and how this would affect the colours we chose for our presentation. This is patently ridiculous because (a) even if you did decide to research this stuff before making a 5-slide presentation for a medical practice, you wouldn’t bother to write about it and (b) we (theoretically) don’t actually have imput on what colours we use, because part 4 is to:

5.Do a font and colour survey and spend ages trying to get people to answer it. Everyone fills in the votes themselves, though, thereby rendering this useless – and again, who would actually go to this level of detail for a 5-slide presentation for a medical practice?

6. Font and colour justification. Basically, write a paragraph about every single font size, font colour, background colour etc. that you have considered using and then why you have decided why or why not to use it. I can’t think of a single reason anyone would actually want such a document (the idea? sure. this level of detail? no way), especially IN A FIVE-SLIDE PRESENTATION ABOUT A FUCKING MEDICAL PRACTICE!

7. Picture survey. We were given a load of pictures and told to survey everyone in the class (at the same time as they’re surveying us) to see what pictures they’d like on each slide. As if anybody cares…insert the usual spiel about why nobody would go to this much bother.

8. Picture justification. You guessed it! Write about all the pictures and why you decided to (not) use them. Groan.

9. Implementation plan. This reads something like this:

1. Open up MS Powerpoint.
2. Create a new presentation.
3. Create a slide.
4. Type heading.
5. Type subheading.
6. Insert picture.
7. etc. etc. etc.

I can’t see any reason whatsoever why anyone in any company would ever want anything like this document to be produced. If you’ve hired someone who knows how to use the software they’re going to use, then they’d do all that without thinking. If you’ve hired someone who doesn’t know how to use the software they’re going to use or how to do what they’ve been asked, why did you hire them in the first place? (And is having them write out ‘type in cell’ etc. etc. really going to make it better?)

10. Software justification. This is a document explaining what needs to be done (i.e. text needs to be typed) and what features of MS Powerpoint allow you to do this. The strange thing is that we’re only allowed to use one piece of software to make the presentation, so the justification really is ‘the exam board says so’, especially when there’s better software out there. Also, all the tools have to be in bold, so you end up writing things like, ‘I will use the keyboard to type because MS Powerpoint allows you to type on a slide’ as if this is something specific to MS Powerpoint.

11. Testing plan. Fill in these columns: test no., what I am testing, how I will test it, test data, expected result. The only thing we need to test is the hyperlinks, so this document consists of one row saying something like ‘I will click on the hyperlink from this page to that page and see if it works’ with only the names of the pages changed.

12. Make the presentation! Yes! It really takes that long! In excess of six weeks of planning is really needed for something that could be built in ten minutes! But oh no…it goes on.

Firstly, you need to take ’skills shots’. This means taking a screenshot of every single ’skill’ you use. A skill is opening the software, typing in a cell, saving the document…every last thing you do. I can’t see why this is necessary – text doesn’t go bold by itself, so if you have bold text in your presentation, obviously, you put it there! Ah well. You then have to annotate every single ’skills shot’ to say what you did and why you did it (i.e. ‘I opened MS Powerpoint by clicking on the shortcut to MS Powerpoint on the desktop. I did this so that I could open MS Powerpoint in order to actually build my presentation because it’s pretty damned difficult to use any software to do something without actually opening the software.’)

You also have to save several versions of your presentation as you make it. Fine – I can see why the exam board might want something like that to see how you actually accomplished the task, even though there’s no possible way of awarding any marks for it. You then have to annotate each version to say what you have done, why you have done it and what you’re going to do next (does this sound familiar?). And now, the piece de resistance: you take a screenshot of your annotations and annotate the screenshot! We have to annotate our own fucking annotations! And you thought it was easy…

13. Evaluate the whole damn thing. We haven’t got as far as this yet, so I’m not particularly familiar with the particular idiocies of it, but I’m sure you can imagine.

I am absolutely for teaching ICT in schools. Teaching it in this manner, though, is ridiculous: it’s a qualification in making up lots of bullshit to say absolutely nothing at all and has nothing to do with computers whatsoever.

This is the valuable qualification people are so keen to encourage.

Sometimes it’s almost pretty here

Outside, it is dark and it is raining and everyone is driving home through the centre of the village. The beams of the headlights shine through the rain and the raindrops glow and the cold air blusters about and it is pretty.

On Mondays we drive along the road beyond the school that is on a ridge and you can see for miles and all the fields glow golden and the light is beautiful and there are no houses and it is pretty.

On Fridays we go past the fields and through the woven trees you can see glimpses of the fields where there are rabbits and the light filters through the green leaf screens to the road and the windows are open and the dusk blows in and the music is there and it is pretty.

Yesterday I was by the wood in the field and I stopped and I turned round and it was silent and the field stretched back behind me and it could have been miles from anywhere and it was pretty.

I reached the end of the wood and looked out at the house nestled in the hill and at the broken-down fence and thought of how it looked in the snow like it was from a fairytale and it was pretty both times.

In winter in the mornings I get to school and the sun is rising and I get off the bus and look out at the clouds and they are glowing pink and yellow and every day I take a picture and my friends laugh but I know they don’t mean it because they know the clouds are pretty too.

Exercise advice from the BBC

How to make school sports enjoyable:

• Talk to the teacher concerned on the quiet, if you can, and explain what’s bothering you. Teachers are there to encourage you into doing more than you think you can. If you really can’t, then say so. Clearly whoever wrote this article has never tried getting hold of a PE teacher. You might as well go for the Holy Grail – it’d be a damned sight easier, and it’s probably more rewarding when you get it.
• If a particular sport or activity is a nightmare, ask if there’s something else you could do instead. Come up with some suggestions so it’s clear you’re being helpful rather than just trying to get out of it. Where are these schools and how can I get in one? I’ve never heard of a school where you have a choice. Here, in years 10 & 11, you do get some choice (you get to pick 1st and 2nd choices from a list), but even then, you’re assigned something and that’s it. Saying ‘I don’t want to’ won’t get anyone anywhere.
• If you’re worried about what you look like, talk to your teacher. Ask if it’s possible to wear tracksuit bottoms or baggy clothing if you’re worried about your weight, for example. Have they failed to notice that most schools in this country have uniforms and that applies to PE as well? You don’t get a choice.
• If periods are a problem, talk to the teacher (or a female teacher if your PE teacher is male). Exercise often helps with period pain once you start, but if they’re particularly bad, ask to sit out. Ask to sit out my arse. You need a note, sometimes more than one note, and often they’ll ring your parents anyway to check that they really did write the note.

With sports in schools the way they are now, no government is going to get people interested in sports who don’t have an interest already. Being forced out into the freezing cold in shorts and t-shirts to play games is not enjoyable for many people and marshalling everyone into it serves no purpose at all.

Overpackaged food

One thing that really gets my goat is overpackaged food. Walk into any supermarket and you’ll see packaging atrocities: who the hell decided that a coconut or a pepper needs to be shrinkwrapped?!

Anyway, I was quite pleased today to see that Asda have changed their dip packaging. In the past, they’ve sold their dips how other supermarkets do: a plastic pot with a cardboard sleeve. The sleeve has all the information on (type of dip, best before etc.) and the pot is blank.

Now, everything is printed on the pot. Not only does this dispense with the superfluous cardboard sleeve, it means that the date is actually on the dip (hooray!) and that you can tell what kind of dip it is without faffing about trying to guess which cardboard sleeves match up to which dips.

Now all that has to happen is for someone to stop wrapping the bloody coconuts.

Oh man :(

My dad just dropped my favourite coffee cup and the handle broke off Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

We have a collection of broken mugs scattered around the place. On the desk in front of me is one with a chip in that holds pencils. I have one on my desk for my hairsticks and forks. I already have my pencils in one with a muffin on it (which has always been used for that purpose and never to hold coffee or muffins), so I guess this one’ll have to hold…I don’t know, any ideas?

Italy photos

I’ve finally managed to upload some pictures of my trip to Italy. I tried for a long time to sign up with Flickr, but couldn’t get my head around the sign up process. Then I tried photobucket, and now I see why everyone uses it! The upload system is so simple and it was a doddle to start using. My only complaint is that it took me a long time to figure out how to get the link to my album.

And speaking of the link to my album…

Tadaa!

Tidy up

If you’re particularly observant and have also visited this neck of the netwoods before, you may have noticed that I’ve tidied things up a little. I haven’t really bothered to pay much attention to my blog’s sidebar since I changed the theme (whenever that was), so things have got a bit cluttered and out-of-date.

One thing that really struck me is just how many more blogs I read now than I did a couple of months ago. I used to manually check the 3 or 4 blogs that interested me each day. Then I graduated to using netvibes to subscribe to RSS feeds. After I’d filled up two tabs with feeds, I decided that it was time to do the job properly. I investigated a couple of different RSS readers, but the only one I liked was bloglines, which I’m still using faithfully.

I subscribe to new blogs almost daily. Mostly, I come across new blogs by seeing links in ones I already read, though I also use sites like blogged and stumbleupon (I use the wordpress channel) to discover new places. The blogs that I read are almost exclusively book-centric or pretty much daily journals, though there’s still a few teaching blogs that I read that have hung on from my academic phase a couple of months back.

Since I’m talking about blogging and all, now seems like a good time throw in the fact that I’ve started another blog, centred around my reading. I read a lot of book blogs and for a while I’ve wanted to get more involved, so I’ve set up Booktrash. It’s still very much a work in progress, but watch this space!

Winter

I just looked up quotes about winter in the hope that I’d find something appropriate with which to begin this entry, but all the quotes I could find were about winter as a cold, desolate, bleak thing, to be endured but not cherished. My view is the polar opposite.

I love how it gets dark in the afternoon. I’ve always preferred things when it’s dark; it’s so much cosier indoors and so much more exciting outdoors because everything is different in the dark.

I love walking home in the twilight.

I love getting to school and standing outside with my friends, stamping our feet in the cold, so that we can watch the sun come up over the fields.

I love going down to the wood when it snows and seeing the sunlight lighting up all the fields and walking round to the back where there’s a house on a hill that looks like something out of a story book.

I love getting up in the morning to turn the alarm off and then getting straight back into bed and curling up in the warm.

I love piling on layers and layers of clothes and snuggling into them. I love wrapping blankets around myself and curling up with a good book. I love lighting fires and candles every evening.

I love hearing all the Christmas songs on the radio – I hate the songs, but I love how they come back every year and everyone hates them just as much as always.

Winter means bonfire night, which means fireworks, which mean bonfires and the smell of woodsmoke and cracks and pops late at night and posters for the fireworks and standing outside in the garden, craning our necks so that we can see over the church to the school to watch the fireworks display.

Winter means being the first one to walk on the frost in the morning and hearing it crackle under my footsteps.

Winter means soft fluffy scarves and nice warm boots.

‘Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories‘, someone once said; I think that summer must be unbearable without winter to look forward to.

Catchup

I’ll just blow the dust off this thing then, shall I?

I’ve been meaning to post ever since I got back from Italy, but somehow I haven’t got round to it. I’ll post some photos at another time (if I ever get round to it!). It was one of the best weeks of my life – I got to see Venice, which is something I’ve always wanted to do ever since I can remember, and I also got to visit Verona and many other places in the locality of Lake Garda. For once, I’m telling the truth when I tell people I had a brilliant holiday!

I’ve been back at school this week, which isn’t an amazing amount of fun but then what do you expect? That’s just life. My timetable isn’t so bad and apart from in IT, I don’t have any truly awful teachers, so I’m busy thanking heaven for small mercies. It could be a lot worse (which is not to say it couldn’t be better!).