Taskstream

Dear Readers,

I just got an email asking me to take a survey about Taskstream. What is Taskstream? Taskstream is a new-fangled fancy-schmancy online sensation for educators everywhere! It’s a lesson-plan creating, rubric-generating, resume-building, web site authoring, school state-standards locating, interactive thingamajig! And it’s on the Internet!

Oooohhh… the Internet… it’s sparkly… Taskstream, yes, Taskstream has synergy! Oooohhh… Synergy!

I like that word. Synergy! Taskstream has synergy! And Taskstream has people dressed up holding briefcases and smiling. Oooo… smiling…

Professional! That’s what Taskstream is! Professional!

Moving on, I hate to admit it, but I’m an active Taskstream account holder. But not by my choice! I had to buy it for school. NAU made me do it. They said, "If you don't get Taskstream, you don't get a diploma," and "If you don't buy Taskstream, that means you're not serious about being a good teacher, and if you're not serious about being a good teacher, then we'll need to seriously reevaluate your admitance into NAU," and, "NAU said get Taskstream. Are you a part of NAU, or aren't you?" and, "You wanna play in the big leagues? Well, big-leaguers by Taskstream," and, "I have a knife. Here it is. Look at it. It's a real knife that cuts people. People like you. Are you gonna buy Taskstream or not?"

I think I spent about $70 getting a two year subscription. Here’s a link to it:

https://www.taskstream.com/pub/

I just got an email asking me to take a survey about Taskstream, so I took it, and I gave them a piece of my mind, I’ll tell you what. Here’s what I wrote in the comments section of the survey: (I liked what I wrote, and I got worked up, so I copied and pasted it. That’s how I have my comments here, verbatim.)

Maybe I'm not the best person to be taking this survey because even though I'm a Taskstream account holder, I only got it because my college required me to get it, and now that I don't have to use it anymore for my classes, I don't use it anymore. I don't mean to sound harsh, but I thought Taskstream was pointless, and a waste of money. The standards finder was kind of neat, and the lesson plan formats were kind of helpful, but really I would have rather not bought the product. I understand that you're a company out to make money, and, that's fine, but higher education is already expensive enough. Tuition keeps rising and rising, and I think that the more expensive college is, the greater the gap between the haves and the have-nots will be. Why don't you help students be able to afford college a little bit more by stopping your habits of getting universities to require their students to buy Taskstream accounts? Really, all your services could probably handled through free things like Google docs, or students can just turn in things on paper, or they can email it to their teachers. As far as the state standards, it was nice to have them so readily accessible and organized like Taskstream did, but those state standards are all easily available on my state's department of education website. Seriously, a lot of my fellow students felt this way. Taskstream is superfluous, in my opinion. It looks fancy, and some of the bells and whistles are neat, but the bottom line, in my opinion, is that it's not worth the money. It'd be great if the service was optional, so that teachers in training and current teachers could buy your services if they wanted help with their lesson plans and state standards and they wanted a good place to communicate with other teachers, but the way you get colleges to require it of their students is horrible. Several students I know bought a Taskstream account only to use it only once or twice, to submit one or two assignments. That, to me, is frustrating and a waste of money.

Ha! I told them! After getting such a horrible survey response, I bet the Taskstream people will come to their senses and close shop for good.

No need to thank me, I’m just doing my small part to make the world a better place.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa