Teacher Bytes

The other day our Spanish Language liaison e-mailed the parents of one of my Web Media Productions students wanted to have a conference with me. This was not surprising because the young lady, an honor student in other classes, got off to a rocky start. Seems she had a hard time adjusting to the fact that all work was being done online. I thought this would be one of those conferences where I would have to explain and justify everything that is going on in class. Frankly, I am surprised that I have not had more conferences like this given the nature of the course. It also concerned me that we would have to work through a translator given the family was from Mexico. Things get lost in translation.

When the conference started I explained to the parents why their daughter got low grades on her report card. The biggest problem was she missed several assignments. The young lady started the course late and had to play catch-up with an assigned peer tutor. I also explained the work that was missed before she entered the class was not counting against her. Fortunately I had some good news too. After seeing her report card, the young lady realized she was going to have to get to work like any other class. She has never missed an assignment since and is taking the lead on several projects. Definitely a candidate for most improved. Another observation I shared with the parents was the girl was a bit shy and unsure of herself at the beginning. Now she is more outgoing and confident in how she handles herself. She now attempts to work with applications like Voice Thread by herself first before asking for help and readily goes before the camera.
The parents listened and were pleased to hear their daughter was making gains in the class.

Then came the shocker. They told me their daughter has been showing them her work and explaining how she does it. This so pleased and interested the parents they purchased a computer and Flip video camcorder so she may continue using the tools learned in my class with future other classes. They also liked the idea of sharing things such as video with extended family in Mexico. The parents thanked me for teaching new ways to learn with their daughter and I hoped I could teach her more in the future. I never get tired of hearing I have made a difference in someone’s life.

Anyone who as been around educational technology or even technology can identify with this famous line from To A Mouse by Scottish poet Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” Yesterday was such as day as my attempt to produce a live webcast crashed and burned, with the principal as a witness.

The failure was not from a lack of planning. The student assigned to host the show did her background research to come up with questions she was going to ask. She even sat down with the principal to go over what was going to happen. Failure did not come from a lack of preparation either. The day before, I set up the laptop and webcam I was going to use. I logged onto the website, uStream.tv, and did a test broadcast. Invitations where sent to people in the school, some people at the district office, and friends from the Twitterverse. Everything worked better than I expected as reports came back of being able to see the video and hear the audio. I was feeling pretty good about the webcast the next day.

Everything went wrong when the appointed time came. The laptop was slow to log into the network, never a good sign. The uStream website continued to freeze up and crash several times. There was one time I was able to get good audio but no video. All this was happening with 13 hyper people, 12 students and 1 principal, buzzing around me asking what was wrong. Eventually, I had to admit defeat because time was running out of class but vowed to fight another day. Later, I was able to get everything working but the webcam. It was doing all kinds of crazy zoom ins and outs.

Another attempt at the live webcast will be made next week but with the Girls Basketball Coach as the guest. I would say that would be less pressure but her team just entered Perfectville with a 14-0 record and a conference championship. I am sure she will expect perfection next week from us. However, this weekend I think I will sit down with a mouse, eat some cheese, and try to figure out where things went astray.