May 26 2008
Microsoft - making it easy to complain about teachers
I’ve been working on other things recently and the RSS feeds have been building up a little higher than I would like. One of the sites I caught up on today was Kairosnews, where playpus matt has blogged about his discovery of a template within Office 2007 that makes it easier to complain about a teacher. Microsoft go that extra mile to help their customers, especially when that means complaining about teachers. You can tell this by the presence of additional templates for complaining about a teacher to the Principal of the School and even writing to the school board to complain about a teacher.
Thanks, Microsoft. You’re just the kind of Partner in Learning that we need.
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
But isn’t that the thing we want, as teachers? Critical review from our clients of what we do ? I tend to ask students to reflect on lessons, on what they learned and what they found valuable - and, more powerful, what they didn’t find valuable. Apart from the obvious standpoint that it will go quite some distance to improving one’s own practice, it hijacks the letter of complaint at source.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate M$ as much as the next guy and I really can’t see a need for the templates you mention. But if the lesson isn’t hitting the spot, make sure the students complain to you-the teacher, the person most able to do something about it.
I’ll get me coat.
Ah. You’re talking about feedback. I don’t know that we can say that these templates are designed to generate the kind of useful feedback to which (I think) you refer.
I have been trying hard to get something I can use from pupils in terms of feedback but you hit the nail on the head when you say you can ask “what they didn’t find valuable”. Is it the PCGE student inside of me who is trying to establish WHY they don’t find things valuable? At this point, I find the pupils are unable, or possibly unwilling, to provide the quality of feedback I am seeking. Perhaps it is unfair of me to hope for an element of metacognition in their criticism of my lessons.