Category Archives: Internet

Paranoid? Moi?

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Oh dear.  Personally, I blame Ollie.  If it wasn’t for his internet safety evening, I would probably be totally relaxed, stress-free and friends with everyone.  As it is, I’ve become embroiled in an argument with a sport’s Governing Body about personal information from their membership database that they are making freely available online, information that is currently available to view without any sort of password protection.   It is an argument that is on the verge of escalating out of control. 

I’ve been dealing recently with membership from our club, since our membership secretary moved away, and I knew that I could go online to check membership numbers.  But what I only noticed recently was that all the numbers are hyperlinked and when you click on one it takes into another screen containing a lot of personal information.  To remove your information, you have to register an email address.  When I retrieved my jaw from the desk,  Continue reading →

Talking to teachers

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The school communication chain

Part 1    Parents talking to teachers

  1. Identify a pressing need to speak to a teacher.
  2. Find out name of relevant teacher from reluctant teenager.
  3. Weekday morning: write note and send it into school with relevant teenager.
  4. Weekend morning: find scrunched up note in pocket of trousers heading for washing machine.
  5. Next week:  phone school to speak to teacher.
  6. Teachers being teachers, they’re teaching (during school hours) or in meetings (after school hours), not speaking to parents on phone.
  7. Leave message for teacher.
  8. 2 or 3 days later, phone school again.
  9. Speak to receptionist, she of So I’m Supposed To Know Everything, Now? fame.  She insists that it’s not school policy to put parents through to teachers and you have to be routed via guidance. (See?  She does know everything.)  Leave message for Guidance teacher to pass to Class teacher.
  10. 2 or 3 days later…  Assuming you 1) still have the will to live, 2) can remember the original question (did you keep that note?) and 3) still want an answer, figure out Guidance teacher’s email address and email the question.
  11. 2 or 3 days later… Yes!  Result!  Receive response from Guidance teacher who has spoken to class teacher.
  12. But…  You need to reply to the teacher’s reply.  Email Guidance again.
  13. 2 or 3 days later…  receive a reply to the reply.
  14. It must be about week 4 by now.
  15. If you’re lucky, very lucky, Continue reading →

Protective? Or overprotective?

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slide-header.jpg“You’re an overprotective mum. ”  🙄

“No I’m not, I’m just interested.  Do you know all the people on your contact lists?”  ❓

“Of course I do.  Do you think I’m stupid?” 😡

“Well, anyone can see those pictures you’ve put on.” 😕

“No they can’t.  It’s private.  And I haven’t put my surname, or my age, or where I live.  Go away.” 👿

So I did.  I went and googled GP1’s name, then GP2, and I couldn’t find either of them.  I was mildly reassured but note – mildly.  I have done this before but in a fairly desultory sort of way.  Tonight, though, I was just back from the school Continue reading →

Bed blogs

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Patientline entertainment system Patientline is the communication system that is installed at each patient’s bedside in the ERI.  It provides a personal telephone number, television, radio – and internet!  Woo hoo!  It took me a day or so to discover the internet function and a little longer to get onto Edubuzz (I like the new look, by the way!) and guineapigmum.  So I saw a couple of good wishes people had put on my blog and it cheered me up.

Once the morphine fog cleared a little, I thought I’d have a go at responding – and then it all ground to a halt.  Interminably slow connection speed, a keyboard with letters that didn’t work, most of the blogs that I read regularly blocked and a brain that wasn’t functioning.  What, I wonder, is wrong with Mother at Large, Not wrong, just different and Reluctant Memsahib? Are they full of scurrilous material, likely to raise the heart rate of patients to a dangerous level?  Anyhow, I gave up and resorted to less challenging pasttimes – the Archers and the insufferably perfect Nigella (although I have made the chicken pie she demonstrated since coming home, and it was pretty good).

I wondered, though, if this is what it is like trying to use the internet in schools.  Slow, broken and blocked.  I hope not.

To Bebo or not to Bebo – that must be an old one

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Photo

I’ve just dropped by Ollie Bray’s blog and read his post about a family-oriented internet safety training evening that Musselburgh Grammar School held this week.  I would have liked to have gone along but there’s been too much going on this week, so here’s hoping Ross High will run a similar evening in the near future.  (Just nicked your picture, Ollie – thanks!)

I am very aware that my eldest son spends all his spare time at home on the computer – games, BeBo, MSN, Hotmail, Skype and who knows what else. His cousin in Manchester Continue reading →