So, some news. After nearly eighteen fantastic months at @heraldscotland it's time to try something different. We're launching an education supplement!

Thank you @EisOrkney for your generous donation! It’s greatly appreciated 💛 We continue to accept donations for our legal case while our lawyers are busy in the background https://t.co/KltiBnJ0iF We will provide all of our supports and update as soon as we can.

Over the weekend @heraldscotland reported that Glasgow schools face more teacher cuts. I can now confirm that one of them is St Rose of Lima primary school, as confirmed in their latest newsletter. They're going from 16 classes down to 15...in October!

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Councils may have to fund deals for "crucial" school IT as national provision is reduced https://t.co/53HQQzLPux

This doesn't bode well for the new term. Losing access to desktop apps via GLOW, the Scottish Governement's VLE will be problematic The online version of the apps (Excel, etc) are useless at best for some of the work we do as they are so limited in their options. @Liam4Orkney

@MrMcEnaney Horrific. Years of N5, H and AH development gone. Similar with BGE courses. Loads of CLPL time wasted. Loss of Publisher also a major issue.

There may be access to the online versions of the #O365 apps for Word, Excel etc, but they don't have the same functionality as the desktop versions, and are often more fiddly to use, especially when formatting of documents is important. This will make many tasks more difficult.

'Significant incompetence': answers sought from government over school IT loss https://t.co/q7EVUoZEGO

@MrMcEnaney Agree with what’s been posted. The online version is fine if all you want to do is super basic stuff. However all of my teaching material is on word or PowerPoint . The reduced functions and chronically poor page formatting will make creating resources incredibly challenging.

How much of a problem will this cause for pupils trying to complete SQA assignments on MS Word? #EnglishScotland

Lots of reaction from teachers on this story, and we've got more to come tomorrow...

This may sound on the surface like an IT hiccup, but losing full offline access to basic resources like Word will hit some students and teachers much harder than others.

@MrMcEnaney And worst (for me) I use OneNote for lessons. Print the booklet into the page, then write over the top of it live during lessons. But the file printout doesn't display *at all* in the browser. Basically renders my method of teaching impossible.

@MrMcEnaney Unmitigated disaster. I set up a tonne of formula, macros, etc on our dept spreadsheets. They don't work in the browser. Formatting of word docs is *atrocious!!* Something that is 5 pages long (and prints 5 pages) is 12 in the browser, nothing is where it should be (if at all!)

@MsCostelloChem @MrMcEnaney As it stands I'll need to upload every document I use to OneDrive to then use them with office online, uploading individual documents takes around 5 minutes per document. Every department will need to upload every file across the whole authority.... This will be chaos

@MrMcEnaney A lot of files display badly in the browser, with dodgy formatting. I always use the desktop apps for more control. Like the storage reduction, it's just another slap in the face, saying we're not worth looking after, or consulting, or even informing.

EXCLUSIVE in @heraldscotland Teachers and pupils face loss of crucial school IT, including Word and PowerPoint, in the new school year...and the government has known about it since August last year. Get the full story here 👇 https://t.co/3SylsaYME8

Support for Learning Teacher, Stromness Academy - ORK08492: Location: Stromness; Salary: £34,959.00 - £51,258.00 per year; Closing date: 28/07/2024