If you'd seen it in a tv show you'd say it was so cliche as to be unbelievable: this morning, as 10s of thousands of students and teachers logged into my district's various "portals" on the first day of school, the portals crashed. And classes were online today.
Most of us, given a dozen minutes of notice, were able to find quick work-arounds, email students, and at least get them into our Zoom meetings. Things were fixed in less than 90 minutes.
Then I learned that one of my online curriculum providers (no textbook, the curriculum is entirely online) changed the rules over the summer, didn't let me know, and then kept dropping the ball as my emails to them this week got more and more frantic--school is starting, I need access to the curriculum. As of this minute I don't even have access, and I'll have to enter a bunch of information for each student so they can all access the curriculum. This does not please me. Had I known earlier in the week I could have gotten this done, it's now Thursday night and I cannot even get into their site to get anything done--I need the curriculum on Monday.
Today could have gone more smoothly.
2 comments:
It's amazing the amount of prep this "distance learning" takes. It also takes forever to grade assignments. All of this screen time can't be good for students or teachers.
Lots of teachers are requiring students to keep their cameras on. I don't. Somehow, government institutions conducting home surveillance just feels wrong.
I *ask* students to have their cams on, but I don't require it. I don't think we *can* require it.
I'm I'm saying a student is "present"--and we *are* taking attendance now, unlike last spring--I'd like to be sure that they actually are "present". Legal document, and all that.
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