[etni] Re: Moed Bet Schedule
- From: "Bari Nirenberg" <nirenber@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ask@xxxxxxxx>, <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 10:42:30 +0200
**** ETNI on the web http://www.etni.org.il http://www.etni.org ****
Thank you, ETNI team. And since you mentioned it, I have a gripe or two
about the Ministry site...
I'd like to describe my search for the moed bet schedule. I went to the
first page of the Ministry site and clicked on the link that said "behinot
bagrut". That took me to the main page of "agaf habehinot", where once
again I had to click on a link that said "behinot bagrut". Then, on the
right, I had to find where it said "exam schedule" (in Hebrew -- I'm just
getting tired of transliterating. Here's where the trouble started. On the
next screen, the right hand side (the list of subjects) looked fine. The
month on the calendar looked fine. But everything written IN the calendar
was in gibberish. I'm no newbie to computers and I know how to "fix"
Hebrew -- usually. Nothing worked. Then I remembered that last month I had
had no trouble looking at the June schedule. So I changed the month to June
and lo and behold, everything was in normal Hebrew. Then back to July and
more gibberish. Even looking at the gibberish, however, I noticed that
something was wrong. Yesterday was moed bet in math, right? But it looked
like the calendar was empty for yesterday. And it looked like it was empty
for Thursday, as well. At this point, I had a student talking to me on ICQ,
trying to find out the time of her exam on Thursday. I sent her to the same
page of the Ministry site and she was able to view the Hebrew, but she
confirmed that the calendar didn't say anything for yesterday OR for
Thursday (that would have made her a bit nervous had it been a day earlier,
but she KNEW there had been moed bet in math, even if it didn't appear
there).
Having determined that the exam wasn't listed there in Hebrew or in
gibberish, I returned to the first page of the Ministry site and started
over (note that every single page on the Ministry site appears in normal
Hebrew on my system apart from that schedule page and, at least last year,
the pages with the exam grades, which I sometimes got in Hebrew and
sometimes in gibberish. This could be a glitch on my system, but it happens
so rarely, that I imagine it also has to do with the fact that the pages are
poorly coded). Once again, I clicked on the "behinot bagrut" link and got
to the main page of the testing department. This time, I looked at the very
tiny print on the notice board (white on blue, no less -- kind of hard to
read) and tried the link that said something like "instructions for
preparing for internal examinees - moed bet". The page I got to was about
both math and English and it was fairly long. The dates of the exams
appeared there, but not the schedules. There WAS a schedule for the
listening comprehension, though, which I found encouraging, so I kept
reading. Then I found it. About three quarters of the way down the page,
in the middle of a letter meant for principals was a tiny little link to the
exam schedule. If it hadn't been underlined, I probably would have missed
it, because it certainly wasn't anything that stood out.
It's bad enough that navigating the Ministry site is a nightmare and that
reading the Hebrew isn't always possible for everyone. You'd think that
important information would at least be easily accessible -- a BIG link on
the main page, for example. Since TWO kids told me yesterday that they had
no idea what time module E was on Thursday, I'm assuming that this is
information that examinees need to be able to find easily. Do you need a
degree in computer science or a genius IQ (or both!) just to find out what
time an English exam is?!
I'm finished griping. Hope everyone's having a good time at the conference.
It's certainly cooler up there in Jerusalem than it is down here in the
Negev!
Bari
> -----Original Message-----
> From: etni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:etni-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of ask@xxxxxxxx
> Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2004 06:38
> To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [etni] Re: Moed Bet Schedule
>
>
> **** ETNI on the web http://www.etni.org.il http://www.etni.org ****
>
> Hi all,
>
> Our thanks to Bari for braving the endless mazes of the Ministry of
> Education site in order to discover the URL for the moed bet schedule.
>
> Unfortunately the amazingly loooooooooong URL provided by the Ministry
> for this purpose broke into at least two lines, disabling the ability
> to simply click on it in Bari's email message. (One wonders how the
> Ministry managed to find people to replicate their confusing
> bureaucracy into the virtual world as well.)
>
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