[TXSTYLE]

Going just wonderful for both of my sons! In fact, they will attend virtually for this entire school year. Super convienent and super smart and super safe.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

As with everything Apple, varying one bit from their standard offerings into a custom build adds weeks to the delivery time. If you'll take that same machine with half the RAM and SSD, you can pick it up tomorrow at our closest Apple store...for $2,099 academic price...and get a free pair of AirPods on the back to school promotion. Any customization pushes delivery out to the third week of September.

That being said, I maxed out a custom-order 11" 2013 Macbook Air back in the day. It took almost a month to drop-ship from China, and let me tell you that computer is still 100% usable and relevant today. I miss it a lot, and would probably still be using it today if I didn't have a sibling going through hard times break their ancient Macbook and gift it to them in 2017.....

Typing now on a mid-2012 MBP that I upgraded myself to SSD and 16GB RAM. Still running strong. The iMac that croaked was working fine until it didn't. For a few days everything took an eternity to open. Then one day it just showed a black screen with the mouse cursor. After that, it would show the Apple and progress bar at boot up, but when it reached the end of the bar, it would just sit there until it went into sleep mode. It still boots that way. And even though I have a wired keyboard on it, it won't respond to any keyboard commands at boot up, so I can't even get into recovery mode.

[AlpineWhite_SJ]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

As with everything Apple, varying one bit from their standard offerings into a custom build adds weeks to the delivery time. If you'll take that same machine with half the RAM and SSD, you can pick it up tomorrow at our closest Apple store...for $2,099 academic price...and get a free pair of AirPods on the back to school promotion. Any customization pushes delivery out to the third week of September.

That being said, I maxed out a custom-order 11" 2013 Macbook Air back in the day. It took almost a month to drop-ship from China, and let me tell you that computer is still 100% usable and relevant today. I miss it a lot, and would probably still be using it today if I didn't have a sibling going through hard times break their ancient Macbook and gift it to them in 2017.....

I ordered a non-standard config 16" MBP with edu pricing back in May and the original ETA was a month but it ended up shipping at least a week earlier. Ended up not being too bad.

[LaVitaEBella]

My cousin is complaining about virtual school but I told him that it is better this way to ensure everyone's safety.

[XutvJet]

A teacher just called my wife in tears. She can't figure out the "Canvas" LMS our district just introduced. School starts in 7 days and she needs to explain it to parents and students. Administrators are of little help as they don't know how to use it either. They say to contact to IT but IT is backed up for days. LOL. T minus 7 days until utter and complete CF.

The good news is the district is now reevaluating and will likely go hybrid very soon for elementary school kids. Thank God.

[DocL]

Ok, so my 8yr old twins just started "virtual learning" today. We had already bought them laptop computers for 2nd grade, but the school board spent $25mil for newer computers for every kid to have, so we took them. My wife stayed home today and it was a cluster fuck. Some neighborhoods in our area lost their internet connection due to the overload. We had a small power surge and then my kids got knocked off and it was a PITA to get back on. Tomorrow we start the "pod" where my wife will host four other kids with my son, and my daughter will go to another house. Since we put our kids together this year, the first time since they were in mommy and me, it should be easier as they will have the same learning schedule. However they couldn't be left unsupervised for more than three minutes. At the end of the day my wife asked them what they learned and both gave completely different answers, both of which proved that they learned zilch.

We aren't yet in Phase 2, but when we do enter it the schools will have to open two weeks after. The teachers union here has filed a lawsuit to stop going back to school, so that will will have to be settled first even though the state has mandated going back to school.

I can't see my kids getting a proper education virtually, and the third grade is very important stage in their education. This is a complete cluster fuck, and my wife and I are so upset with this poor attempt to educate out young children.

[AlpineWhite_SJ]

So now stuck in IT support loop for google classroom. Content isn’t showing up like quizzes that should be. Teacher gave up on trying to help and referring everyone to IT support. Typical response is start out with some basic stuff that we’ve already tried. These iPads weren’t touched since last year. There’s literally account info and passwords from whoevers kid had it last year’s parents. Zoom logins, you name it. Checked the google account settings and explicit search results are enabled and not locked down to changes.

I’m not an IT administrator, but even I know these iPads should have been restored to default upon return for summer and imaged with a fresh image with all the relevant settings and apps.

Pretty sure the google classroom issue is on the teacher/content publishing side, but will have to slog through all this to prove it. Some teachers are good adapting to virtual learning but the older crowd isn’t geared for this.

[Nuckle]

My step daughter hates it and get emotional a couple of times per week. She is a A student, takes several honor classes and is a student athlete in the 10th grade. She is keeping grades up but does not feel like she is learning. We have purchased a laptop etc to help but the amount of knowledge being put out is a quarter what it was. She is in class 2 days per week. Thank God, her school district announced today they are going back to full time and 5 days on September 12th. I can't tell you how happy she was today, the most joy I have seen from her in months. I won't get political here about the virus itself but I am happy that people are starting to resist this idiocy.

[zx10guy]

You all are proving my points about how much of a disaster this virtual learning thing is and has been. The stupidity of the school administrators that think they were ready for this is just appalling. Add to this the harm they're doing to the very young kids that require in class teaching. I'm so glad I was able to get my daughter into a private school that is doing in class teaching. A private school that has been able to figure out how to do in class teaching successfully. A private school that has remained open the entire time since this craziness of the lock downs were dropped down on us. Not one incident of infection at all. One month without an infection one would say they are probably lucky. Two months, maybe more luck. But going on 6+ months, there's more than luck involved and I attribute it to good administrative planning/leadership.

When the dusts settles, this should be a wake up call for all the parents to look into cleaning house with all the school administrators that sat on their hands for months doing absolutely nothing until school was about to start. And to add to the data points, the kick off of schooling around the DC Metro area has numerous school districts reporting outages and other issues with their online learning systems.

[CTinline-six]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

You all are proving my points about how much of a disaster this virtual learning thing is and has been. The stupidity of the school administrators that think they were ready for this is just appalling. Add to this the harm they're doing to the very young kids that require in class teaching. I'm so glad I was able to get my daughter into a private school that is doing in class teaching. A private school that has been able to figure out how to do in class teaching successfully. A private school that has remained open the entire time since this craziness of the lock downs were dropped down on us. Not one incident of infection at all. One month without an infection one would say they are probably lucky. Two months, maybe more luck. But going on 6+ months, there's more than luck involved and I attribute it to good administrative planning/leadership.

When the dusts settles, this should be a wake up call for all the parents to look into cleaning house with all the school administrators that sat on their hands for months doing absolutely nothing until school was about to start. And to add to the data points, the kick off of schooling around the DC Metro area has numerous school districts reporting outages and other issues with their online learning systems.

Nothing against teachers, but many of these school administrators are just teachers who have worked there long enough. They really have zero business sense which is what is needed to run the district efficiently. A lot of these people have no concept of technology, which like it or not is a large part of their job these days.

There are so many angles where the issues stem from. Some teachers are great at adapting (usually younger, but not always) while others (usually older, who have less job loss risk) are basically refusing to adapt or even use technology. Combine this with practically zero training on a lot of these now required platforms, a lack of decent and functioning technology, and leadership that can't find it's way out of a paper bag, and it's not surprising there are so many issues.

[vreihen16]

Tenure. Enough said.....

[scostu]

My sons did it from March through June. SUCKED!!!!

So glad they are back in brick and mortar now. They are both wayyy happier and talk constantly about their friends... schoolwork... arts... PE!

Cant wait til this BS is over on Nov 4.

[UncleWede]

M_Six , vreihen16 IF you just got Windows laptops, there wouldn't be the issues you are bringing up

My youngest is a senior in college, and headed into the realm of teaching as a profession. He is a full-on gamer, but HATES online courses.

LAUSD (not us) went with in-class for grades k-6, and then distance for all the rest. There were videos yesterday of classrooms, with tables as usual, but plastic partitions between each. "Keep your hands to yourself" will be so much easier, and yet the idea of cleaning those barriers would terrify me.

Locally, several private schools have already applied for waivers to teach in person. I know several teachers, and they are so confused by the tech, and trying to keep kids remotely attentive. I wonder if this continues whether my son reconsiders his career choice.

[Run Silent]

We went virtual for all of August with full back to in person learning on 8/31. What a difference!

I can see how virtual learning could work for older kids, but my daughter is in Kindergarten and is 5yo. That was not going to work. In addition, wife and I are both full time workers.

So for virtual - she had to go to day care from 8-5, then get home, have dinner and then do her virtual classroom lessons from like 6-10pm. This still didn't get it all done, so we had to do virtual school lessons most of Saturday as well.

That is WAAAY too much to put in a 5 year old. Twice, she simply fell asleep on the playground at school.

Now that she is back to in person learning, it has been so much better and she is much happier.

[TboneS54]

You're better off playing with puzzle games and reading books with your young ones.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by UncleWede

M_Six , vreihen16 IF you just got Windows laptops, there wouldn't be the issues you are bringing up

If I used a Windows laptop, it would be down 75% of the time installing patches and updates. Not that Apple's code has been a shining example since Steve Jobs' passing, but Apple's hardware holds its value and just keeps on chugging away long after a Windows notebook has been recycled into plastic dog poop.

I used to have an awesome IBM Thinkpad X61 a while back, and thought that it was a decent machine. When I looked at the natural upgrade (X Series Carbon), I spent my money on a Macbook Air instead. Ironically, the X61's demise was the Samsung SSD that I installed in it exceeding its write cycle lifetime...just like M_Six's iMac.

On a side note, I just looked at our public COVID dashboard at work. After almost two weeks since move-in, we're still all zeroes.....

[XutvJet]

Originally Posted by Run Silent

We went virtual for all of August with full back to in person learning on 8/31. What a difference!

I really hope this becomes the case for our district once they realize virtual school is going to be a disaster and testing numbers drop significantly (that will be the driver, IMO).

My kids are old enough to weave through the virtual school, but it's an utter joke compared to what you can get with in-person learning.

My 15 y/o son is really sad to not have seen friends but only a handful of times since March. His friend's parents are very militant about distancing, face coverings, and remaining outdoors when they're in the presence of others. I imagine they'll stay virtual for the duration of the year and my son will need to make some new friends (never a bad thing) while at school.

[Alfisti]

At least in the USA your teachers can make an argument they are underpaid and underfunded for this. Over here teachers average $85K , some over 100K, and they just do nothing but put obstacles in the way and go on strike and cannot use modern tech to save their fucking lives.

BTW as an aussie, it never, ever ceases to amaze me the layers you guys have here in governance of pretty much anything, both in Canada and especially the USA. Why are there school boards? My home state of NSW is 8 million people and we have one education board and they have handled this really well, one centralised control room so to speak. Mind you it helps that people listen and the virus didn't go insane but that's not what we are discussing.

Your entire system over here is loaded with needless middlemen, even policing, why in god's name do you need both state and local police??? SO MUCH WASTE, jesus, even just the uniform contracts must kill you cost wise. Again, 8 million people in NSW and one police force, no waste. You guys download a LOT of shit on the municipality/city, i don't get tit, which is why housing taxes are so fucking crazy high.

[TboneS54]

Can y'all imagine the "adults" we're gonna have in 10 years? It's bad enough now smdh.

[Turkish Pickle]

Three week update: Still nothing new. All my classes are recorded so I'm loving the flexibility, gives me enough time in the day to schedule it according to what I want to be doing.

Am I learning anything? Not really, no. Am I almost out of here and therefore have lots of time for myself in my last semester? Yes.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by Turkish Pickle

Three week update: Still nothing new. All my classes are recorded so I'm loving the flexibility, gives me enough time in the day to schedule it according to what I want to be doing.

Am I learning anything? Not really, no. Am I almost out of here and therefore have lots of time for myself in my last semester? Yes.

I got a Masters degree in Technology Management after I'd been doing it for 20 years. I didn't learn anything new except how to do some fancy shit with PowerPoint. But the fancy piece of paper with the signatures on it got me my current job. After more than 7 years here, I'm still not convinced it was worth it.

[vreihen16]

About 30 years ago, I realized that I can no longer sit in a classroom, lecture, or presentation. It's hard to explain, but the "illusion" of respect/credibility between presenters and me is gone.....