The technology gods get revenge
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 07:53PM While humans plan, the gods laugh. - Yiddish proverb
This evening's SIGMS online presentation, for me anyway, was pretty much a disaster. Thanks to the exciting presentations by Joyce Valenza and David Loertscher, the 90 minutes was still a great experience for the participants. But my part pretty much sucked.
Despite everything seeming to work in Adobe Acrobat Connect Media Pro just prior to the event, my system slowed, then crawled, the crashed - for the entire 90 minutes. I did get in a rather rattled few minutes toward the end of the session with some badly converted slides that were reluctant to appear (at least on my screen) in a timely manner.
Not sure why this happened - network speed, computer processor speed, incompatibility issues, over-loaded Acrobat Connect? Or maybe my dance to the technology gods just prior was not done with sufficient deference. And what I really dislike is that I don't know what I would do differently next time.
And I was pretty excited about my bit in this "Creating New Learning Landscapes" panel. Over the past year or so, one of my real areas of interest has been how one takes some of these exciting educational networking strategies and make them universal and sustainable. What are some "essential conditions," as ISTE would call them, that would make the use of social learning tools a regular part of all teacher's instructional repertoires, not just experiments done by a few early adopters.
Well, I can't take the evening back, but I can vent.
And more so, I can share the slides people should have seen and the link to the wiki with the support materials.
Links to other ISTE SIGMS webinars
So, boys and girls, remember that none of us are immune from the whims of the technology gods. Just tremble - and obey!
Reader Comments (7)
Doug, you know we have all been there and have great empathy.
You actually modeled poise under pressure and the ability to retain and deliver your message. We did not hear any swearing which I am not sure I could have pulled off. The information and ideas you shared at the end were valuable and as always you are generous in now sharing those materials with us after the fact.
Your experience also made me feel much better when I accidently dropped my Skype conference call yesterday evening, happily only being embarrassed in front of my district colleagues and not a wider audience.
Besides, I think you are one of the technology gods. LOL!!
Hi Doug,
Thanks for your presentation. I wasn't able to be there live but enjoyed your presentation. It was good lesson in not giving up when we're under pressure or in front of a group of 7 year olds when technology fails us.
Two ideas I found especially important were:
1) Try many; adopt selectively and universally
2) Support best practices, not best technologies
I am a primary teacher in Canada and completing my diploma in Teacher-librarianship. In your experience what have been the technologies you have adopted that are successful for younger learners?
Thanks,
Jen
The same thing happens to me almost every time I'm supposed to be doing professional development workshops with our faculty, even if everything worked perfectly 30 minutes beforehand. I'm getting really good at tap dancing.....
Doug,
How very kind of you to demonstrate that tech is never a given - for experts or newcomers. We need to model graceful "failure" as well as exciting "victory" to our colleagues.
Doug,
I had a great reply to you but I got a 404 error, then the computer had to reboot. I'll have to try again later after I re-install Windows.
Hi Dottie,
Thanks for listening to my vent, anyway. This, of course, is not the first time such a thing has happened, but technology lulls you into a false sense of security then whacks you!
Being a Wal-mart greeter is looking better and better,
Doug
Hi Cheri,
Thanks for the kind words. I will practice my dancing!
Doug
Hi DIanne,
You mean I could have passed this off as a purposeful object lesson? Next time!
Say, thanks for the review of my book on your blog! I mean to get there to say a public thanks soon.
All the best,
Doug
Bob,
Very funny.
Doug