On... why are office staplers so rubbish?

This morning I needed to staple two sheets of paper together. Not an unreasonable thing to do in an office setting you would think? Well, stapler number one had two twisted staples sticking out of it in an uncanny impression of the teeth of Douglas Adams' hideous creation Agrajag, staples so jammed in that they could not be pulled out by hand. Stapler number two had the pushing mechanism misaligned with the staple holder and also did not work. Stapler number three, a little red number I had not seen before managed to actually draw blood while I was loading it. I therefore felt disinclined to actually try stapling anything with it. Stapler number four managed to drive a staple through the sheets of paper, hooray! However said staple was mangled with a sharp end sticking out and frankly looked a mess. Stapler number five finally did the job, but I know from experience that it too is temperamental, and has a good chance of jamming the next time I try it. So five staplers, several minutes of wasted time and paper (I had to print the document twice), blood and annoyance just to join two sheets of A4 together.

This seems to be the case with just about every stapler I have encountered in a office environment in the last few years. When I started my career, staplers were pleasingly solid things made of metal, not the poorly made apologies for staplers we have to put up with today with their veneer of shiny (or more often grubby) plastic over cheap, thin metal which fails to do what the machine is (or at least should be) designed to do: staple paper together in a reliable and predictable manner. Those old staplers might have cost a bit more but they worked. Reliably.

Perhaps I should calculate the interminable man hours lost in battling with cheap and nasty staplers, and present a cost benefit analysis of the importance of spending just a little bit more on a good quality stapler instead of the semi-useless items littering the stationary cupboards (and shortly thereafter, the bins) of offices across the land. Except that I have the nagging feeling that it is now only economically possible to produce cheap and nasty staplers. Perhaps all the manufactures of staplers that worked reliably for many years have gone out of business, victims of the quality and utility of their own products, and we are now left in a never ending cycle of substandard machines which need replacing ever more frequently?

In my previous career I had a 1970s stapler which despite its venerable age hardly ever jammed and served me well for many years. It was made by Rapid and manufactured in Sweden. Halcyon days, wish I had had it this morning....

ITC in the Classroom: Google Forms

After last week’s successful trial of Padlet, this week I used Google Forms to make a short quiz for my learners to try. Google forms is part of the suite of applications available to anybody with a Google account (basically that means everyone who has gmail), just log on via the webpage, and select ‘Drive’ from the black option bar at the top of the page, press the ‘create’ button (red, on the left hand side) and select ‘Form’. You can also download the Google Drive application for your computer to speed things up a bit. Up until now I had used the Documents, Spreadsheets and Drawings, but hadn’t really tried Forms. I like Google Docs as they are accessible from any computer, tablet or smartphone with an internet connection, and you don’t have to worry about synchronizing over multiple computers or carrying a memory stick around (other than as backup in case the internet is down). They also save every few seconds, so it is much harder to lose your work - students please note, that’s one less excuse!

The concept is simple: you make the form, it has a unique URL which you can give to your students, they fill the form in and submit it, and the answers are recorded on a spreadsheet. You can choose from a variety of question types - short text, paragraph text, multiple choice, checkbox, choose from list, scale (eg rank from 1 to 5), and grid; so plenty of opportunity to mix and match to suit your needs from a quick quiz to long-form answers. Actually constructing the Form is quick and easy, especially if you have questions pre-prepared.

Before trying it ‘live’ on the class I did a test run and was glad I did; I had forgotten to make ‘what is your name’ a question, without which the data is somewhat less useful! Also the grid question only allowed one correct answer per line, this restriction was not obvious.

Google Forms has been tried on three classes so far (one of which was an observed lesson), and feedback from the learners had been generally positive. You have a fair amount of control over the look of the form the learners see. I chose a  simple, clean layout and no learners had difficulties in understanding how to answer the questions or submit the form. The spreadsheet updates live and so if used in class you can give instant feedback to early finishers or encourage or help those who are a little slower completing the task. Although I have not tried it yet, they should also work well for homework tasks as once the form is live, there is no time limit for completion (unless you take it down).

Next week I will be trialling a different way of running quizzes; Socrative.

ITC in the classroom: Padlet

After recently attending the Science and Maths Specialist Conference at the University of Huddersfield (#Hud13) I have decided to try a few new IT solutions in the classroom. This week I tried Padlet (formally called Wallwisher) free at http://padlet.com

(in this image I have removed the names of learners)

I tested Padlet on five on my classes (none of who had used it before) and overall it worked very well. Padlet is a web-based service allowing a number of users to 'write' messages onto a 'wall' simultaneously; the teacher sets up the wall and the students access it via a hyperlink. The students can edit their own entries but not those of their peers, the teacher can amend or delete any entry if logged on.

After some initial confusion as to what to do and how to post entries and pictures (which I largely let the learners solve for themselves, encouraging them to explore and help each other as necessary) they enthusiastically accepted the concept. Indeed we spent rather longer on the activity than I had initially planned, they seemed to get a lot out of it.

One of the five classes had a less mature attitude that the others and initially some silly messages were posted however after a warning they soon managed to produce some good work. Minor difficulties notwithstanding, all the groups quickly took to the concept and managed to do some useful research for their assignments. Ad-hoc collaboration between learners spontaneously developed and the finished Padlet walls were downloaded and posted onto the VLE for future reference.

Padlet is definitely something I will be using regularly form now on.

Tip: always log on yourself during the session so you can control the wall dynamically.

Next week I will be trialling Google Forms

The tv portrayal of a science lesson on evolution

I don't normally pay too much attention to what my daughter watches on CBBC but was surprised and pleased this morning to see a fairly realistic and sensible portrayal of a biology lesson about evolution on the teen werewolf series Wolfblood followed by an explanation of the limitations of using school microscopes to analyse blood samples. Most tv dramas (irrespective as to whether they are aimed at children or adults) would I suspect have taken the easier route of portraying the 'science' inaccurately to drive the plot along. Not seen any more of the series so not sure if this particular episode is representative, but a hopeful sign.

links 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01ndm1h/Wolfblood_Dark_Moon/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfblood

a couple of other resources on the portrayal of science in film and tv:

http://www.berfrois.com/2011/06/david-kirby-hulk-smash-accurate-science/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Science