Oh my dear Lord
Title says it all really.
This is a tragedy writing itself.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
'Why Digital?' Seriously? You plainly don't Get It enough. Or at all
"Why Digital?", some of you occasionally ask me. Some get into more detail: "Why Digital, Steve?" It's a question that invites pity and contempt, naturally. Merely asking marks you out as a knuckle-dragging revanchiste. But sometimes I put pity aside; this is a brave thing to ask in 2015. So today, I'm here to help rather than …
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Friday 6th March 2015 15:49 GMT Caff
tell me more
Hi Steve,
I hope you can help, I am at pains here in my company to get buy in from senior management to truly embrace digital. How can I sell them on the benifits of embracing the cutting edge of modern web business, they still have an IT room full of servers and have failed to move onto the cloud?
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Saturday 7th March 2015 17:58 GMT Terry 6
Re: The "Digital" Shortcut
That's the real point. Middle managers with ambition, but usually little knowledge in their own jobs ( whatever these happen to be, it doesn't have to be "arts graduates" ) jump on to the latest new thing and promote themselves (both senses of the word) It's kind of like the employment version of playing Mario.*
Each new buzzword, fad, invention or whatever it is that has appeared over the horizon has to be jumped on to help them move further and higher. The new fad has to be grasped.
By the time to poor sods who have been landed with making the current pile of manure work have reached the point of despair those b******ds have moved on to a new title, a new power base and of course a newest, bestest fad.
* The only thing worse than being in education or IT for this kind cr*p is working with education IT.
Teachers are told they have to use the latest digital whatever it is. Tons of hardware bought, with no planning before, or training after purchase. Purchase being of course made on their behalf by someone who has no idea how it needs to be used, being neither a teacher nor a field tecchie.
The teachers are left floundering trying to make the stuff work educationally and the IT support is worked into the ground trying to sort out all the issues when it goes wrong for an almost unlimited range of poor practice.
Favourite example? Interactive White Board.
Teachers end up using it as a hitech blackboard with Powerpoint, because no one has paid for training, so they don't know what software is even on the system, let alone how to use it.. Tecchies end up sorting out such things as problems with calibration because the remote control vanished months ago and each time the physical "on" button on the badly sited projector is pressed the dratted thing moves slightly, as well as error messages about projector maintenance ( such as "the filter needs cleaning") that seem to appear randomly., or sound mysteriously not working because no one knew what the annoying wire that keeps falling out is meant for. Though even the poor teacher has worked out that the bit that goes on to the computer has screws to hold it in place, but the place it goes in to hasn't got any holes for the screws.
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Sunday 8th March 2015 02:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The "Digital" Shortcut
'..Favourite example? Interactive White Board...'
Add to your list, all of which I've experienced, my favourite of the past year.
Went into one of the rooms housing an Interactive White Elephant one morning, to find the thing covered in scribbles..someone, the night previous took the whiteboard bit to mean 'I can use the markers on it..' That was a fun hour cleaning the damn thing for use later that morning.
(Best part is, I'm not even supposed to deal with the thing..they're paying externals to look after the bloody things..but they had an ETA of days..so muggins here had to deal with it)
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Sunday 8th March 2015 22:35 GMT Terry 6
Re: The "Digital" Shortcut
"the thing covered in scribbles..someone, the night previous took the whiteboard bit to mean 'I can use the markers on it.."
Usually, in my experience this happens when the hapless supply teacher needs to teach by writing on the Digital WB because "going digital" has meant that there is now no ordinary board to write onto, she doesn't realise that you can't use a normal pen on these things, and hasn't been given a password to the aging lappy that serves the board, and which has been set to time out after about 10 minutes. i.e as soon as the staff member who has set it up for her has vanished and the kids are about to come in.
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Saturday 7th March 2015 12:45 GMT Mike Pellatt
You missed many.
You missed many, but the best is The Digital Railway.
This apparently means trying again at the signalling technology (moving block) that failed spectacularly around the turn of the millennium, leaving The Bearded One with a pile of spectacularly fast tilting trains that couldn't go anywhere near as fast as they were meant to and so no longer needed to tilt - although that didn't stop them doing it. I have the coffee stains. Probably digital tilting technology.
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Saturday 7th March 2015 17:14 GMT Nunya Biznas
Uprooted!
This article made me question my tacit assumption that I was "digital enough". It is clear I am not... My life has been a lie.
I'll be in the woods foraging for berries and making jerky out of strips of venison dried over a dead, rotting ana-log if anyone needs me, which you won't because I am not digital enough.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
