It never really ends. Whenever you finish with one Nitwit, another one takes its place. Since the extinction of my old blog, I guess it is kind of hard to actually know what it is that I am talking about. Let me explain …
I am a TAFE (Teaching / Training And Further Education) teacher. TAFE is something of a college, an alternate path of further education, if university is not for you. It is offered in several countries I believe, but it is biggest and best in Australia. Why? At TAFE, you can gain country wide accreditations in almost all industries, at just a pinch of the cost and time of University. I love TAFE!
In Australia, we go to university only if we want a piece of paper that says how good we are, and have tonnes of money so that we spend tonnes of years in lectures and boring class rooms. We go to TAFE, when we want REAL hands on practical training in our chosen area of interest, without getting sore ears and suffering the boredom of class rooms. TAFE rules in Australia, and the universities hate it! I love TAFE, did I mention that already? People even leave their university courses to come to TAFE instead, because it’s so great! It’s so much better then university, especially if your attention span is short!
For more information about TAFE, checkout it.
In regards to my old blog, it had a description of my job and duties at TAFE. For this rant, I will focus on Nitwits and how they can improve.
Part of my job is to mark assignments for the students that participate in TAFE courses via correspondence. This is done via an online website, and email (unless of course you don’t have a computer). It’s very good, but somehow the Nitwits manage to get confused. (FYI, I’m an Information Technology TAFE Teacher – you possibly guessed that).
Who / What are the Nitwits?
My Definition:
Nitwit (Pronounced: Nitt – Witt, as one word concatenated) is the singular description of a student who has totally missed the boat, or thinks he/she is capable of sneaking under the radar.
Nitwits (Pronounced: Nitt – Witts, as one word concatenated) is the plural or group form description of a number of students (two or more) that have totally missed the boat, or think they are capable of sneaking under the radar.
Now that we know what Nitwits are, lets discuss the problem.
For the most part, most students are not Nitwits. They are intelligent people, with a good understanding of the subjects and the information they are studying. When these students submit their work for marking, it is a pleasure to mark. I will also note for you, that these types of students, far out weigh the Nitwits, which is what makes the Nitwits stand out so much.
What I don’t understand, is why we have Nitwits? Allow me to give you some examples of Nitwits
- They write emails like 419Scammers. Obviously they are not sending us scams, but their grammar and spelling is just woeful! – What really gets us, is when these same people use the public learning forums, and write the most beautiful english you ever saw!
- They can’t complete simple tasks – like attaching 14 files to one email, instead of sending 14 EMAILS!
- They can’t zip files! Some manage to fluke a few RAR files, but they are baffled when you talk to them about this zipping business …
- The file REFUSES to attach to their emails when they have to resubmit!
- They copy from the internet, claim it as their own, and don’t even clean up the HTML tables, the hyperlinks, the fonts or the formatting. You can always tell content copied from Microsoft Help – Every second word is in BOLD!
- When you fail them, or give them low marks, they complain and tell you their life stories about how they are secretarial professionals and “do this sort of thing every day” – So that gives them excuse to submit work created by a two year old?
- They think that just because they are “over 40″ or “under 20″ that they are “Pro” material and should be getting good marks regardless of the quality of their work. Apparently “work experience” is an excuse for submitting crap!
- The smartest one say things like “oh, a teacher told me it was ok to copy the entire Wikipedia page”.
- They email their work in, with no name, no email address (because they didn’t configure their email client correctly, not even that hotmail account), no assessment numbers, no anything!
I’m sure by now, you can see what it is that I am getting at here. As far as I am concerned, every student that I have labeled in my mind as a Nitwit, is just failing to put in the required effort. If they actually put in the time, wrote original content, and submitted their work properly, they wouldn’t be Nitwits! Every one else can get it right, how come the other 5% of you can’t?
Top Ten Tips For Nitwits:
- Set up you email client correctly! This is TAFE IT, not school yard bum buddies! i_have_big_tits@hotmail.com is not acceptable! At least mask such a stupid email address with your Full Name! PROFESSIONALISM IS IMPORTANT!
- Learn how to Compress files using Winzip or WinRar!
- We don’t want to see pictures of your pets, kids, families, body parts or Microsoft Paint creations! Don’t pad out your document to 36MB by adding them in! We don’t give a damn what you wallpaper is!
- Use Descriptive File Names For Your Attachments! For Example: TASK 1 – Part 1.DOC. Ilovemydog.doc is not helpful when marking!
- For Crying Out Loud, PUT YOUR NAME ON EVERYTHING! Do you want someone else to take credit for your work?
- Don’t act like you are a professional and know everything! 1. That is our job! 2. You wouldn’t be doing the damn TAFE IT course if you were Pro and knew everything now would you?!!
- Just because you kid is younger then you, doesn’t mean he or she is smarter then you! Don’t give you work to little Gabe and say “get this done before you go to bed and I will pack you a chocolate for lunch tomorrow!” LITTLE GABE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING!
- If you are going to copy from the internet (instead of paraphrasing), follow these simple rules:
- DON’T COPY FROM WIKIPEDIA – EVERYONE COPIES FROM WIKIPEDIA!
- DON’T COPY FROM MICROSOFT – EVERYONE COPIES FROM MICROSOFT!
- Remove the HTML Formatting You Fool!
- Edit Any Pictures, Remove the “Copyright IT Website.Com” notice.
- Don’t for a second think you will fool us, Copying is the best way to get an automatic fail.
- If you are going to copy content from the internet, AT LEAST COPY CONTENT THAT IS RELATIVE TO THE SUBJECT! Trust me, the mating habits of canaries is not how you create a Macro in Excel and The MS-DOS 6.2 Manual is not sufficient proof that you know how to INSTALL A PRINTER!
- The Pre-requisite for doing a TAFE IT course, is that you:
- HAVE YOUR OWN COMPUTER – DON’T BOTHER IF YOU DON’T!!
- YOU KNOW HOW TO OPERATE THE COMPUTER – DON’T BOTHER IF YOU CAN’T!!
- YOU HAVE “Office Type Software” (Either Microsoft Office or OpenOffice or Something!) – DON’T BOTHER IF YOU DON’T!!
- You know to use your “Office Type Software” – DON’T BOTHER IF YOU CAN’T!!
- YOU KNOW HOW TO SEND A DAMN EMAIL AND BROWSE THE INTERNET! – DON’T BOTHER IF YOU CAN’T!!
- If you don’t understand something, or anything (learning material, website definitions, anything!), ASK US FOR HELP! Submitting poor quality work, and then using ignorance as an excuse, is not acceptable for a fail.
So, Lets Recap:
- Set up your email client correctly
- Learn how to compress files
- Don’t pad out your documents with unrelated content
- Name your files according to their content
- Put your name on everything
- Don’t act like you know everything
- Complete your own work yourself
- If you are going to copy from the internet, be smart about it
- Make sure you meet the 5 Pre-requisites
- Ask for help if you don’t understand
Well, that about it does it. Every once in a while, I need to have a little rant, and this time I decided to rant about the faults of certain others. The preface for 90 Days of Vista is coming soon and I think I will be having a rant about Vista some tie soon, it’s already driving me up the wall …
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