Yeh, today was one of those days where things just didn’t seem to go quite right. A long morning of Map Testing seemed to set the mood.
My plan for the day shifted when I got notification that the Microsoft accounts I had requested for my classes were ready. I decided I would go ahead and try to get the students logged in and set up since we had a shortened schedule and so that they would have access to explore on their own. From there it just kind of tumbled.
Today’s schedule meant that I started with my most challenging class. My first mistake was not giving them a link but just asking them to type it in. Then when I tried to get one of the students to connect to the Chromecast I realized they were on a different network and I wouldn’t be able to show an example. In a class full of impatient kids, this was one too any delays.
I won’t go into details of the continued flailing around and torched lesson plan. In the end, we did get everyone signed in and we even got a part of my original lesson completed but it wasn’t pretty.
Looking back, I probably should have waited, developed a video tutorial and had them follow that on their own with me there for troubleshooting and support. But that hindsight is 20/20. Funny thing is, somewhere in there I knew better, but I pushed through anyway.
I’ll have to do a little damage repair on the second part of the lesson as I was so frustrated by the time we got there, it lost its effectiveness and I used it more as a independent work task than the think, share and discover activity I had hoped it would be. But, these things happen.
So, lesson learned. I’ll reset now that I’ve reflected and keep figuring out ways to do this teaching thing better.
Ryan Harwood 