Saturday, November 1, 2008

Keep It Simple - they are 6 and I am busy...

Remember the adage - K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid. Well someone in the school distract forgot what the hell it meant. They are on their 3rd new math curricula in less than 5 years.

I fail to see how hard it is to teach kids math. I am NOT a teacher, but I am good at math, I have always been decent at math - until like Calc 2 and the numbers suddenly aren't real and frankly I am only into MATH that involves things I can count. I hated Geometry because my brain just does not work that way. I can do percentages and simple calculations in my head and I get what numbers mean, when presented in fancy charts and graphs.

Well the geniuses in the central office of our school distract have blown a ton of money on yet another useless math program. This one involves US at home spending a ton of time trying to sign onto a website - which is poorly designed and just plain crappy. It does not show the kids which letter they clicked on to answer the questions (yeah does not darken the circle - did these people not learn anything from the years of taking tests using a scan tron answer sheet?) It does not record their work and on the work sheets and practice "pages" you cannot type the numbers but rather you have to draw them free hand with the mouse! WTF? Did I mention it does not work with any number of browsers.....

It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to A) try to get us signed on using any number of browsers. B) try to find the homework, C) try to figure out how you do the worksheets and D) to draft an email to the teacher telling her that this program IS crap and L will not be doing her homework on the computer. I learned MATH with pencil and paper and L will too! I can sharpen pencils - this piece of shit the School Distract paid big bucks to adopt - well one of them can come over here and waste 1 hour and 45 minutes trying to get it to work or they can write me a check for $55 - roughly what I charge my clients when I write for them. Because I am done wasting my time and L's frankly. We lost a ton of nice weather and daylight fighting with that stupid website.

The kicker - there is a help desk - open M-F 8 am to 4 pm - the same hours she is school. Right - hardly helps those of us trying to use the crappy site. Oh wait - they knew it was crap and set the hours accordingly.

The kicker - I downloaded the Amazon Video on Demand player and a movie in my first try and we watched the movie tonight. So I have to say - that the problem lies with the crappy math curricula and website and not my technical prowess.

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