What Happens When Technology Doesn’t Work

I was trying to show the live penguin cam from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. It worked easily at home but when I got to school, the Apple computers needed a plug in. I teach Kindergarten and had to download the plug in and keep 22 kindergarteners entertained (we sang a song or two in the darkened classroom). Next day, I wanted to show the groundhog coming out of the den. YouTube is blocked at school and most of the videos seemed to be on that. I found one that wasn’t, previewed it before the kids came. Got the kids all excited about seeing the groundhog, started the video and realized I needed the speakers to be connected. Plugged in the speakers and then, the connection to the projector didn’t work. Sigh. Still haven’t figured that one out (unplugged, replugged, turned off and on, checked the connections). I had small groups come see the video at the computer while the others sat on the carpet. Not ideal and took 5 times as long.
I love your idea of the book. My team has all differing levels of comfort with technology. The school keeps giving us more and it is getting more complex. I believe the best way to get teachers comfortable is to have someone come in and teach with them side by side for a week or two with a gradual release of responsibility. The problems with the technology not functioning as planned, though, is another problem. It takes a different mindset to be willing to try lots of solutions and some people are afraid of making the problem worse (breaking it). (Some of my co-teachers are afraid to delete anything, even when multiple copies exist, do not understand why email is everywhere on all the computers, and want to write down everything I tell them!). Good luck with the book!

Jason I love your idea of working with a teacher and then letting them take on more and more of the tech aspect of the project. I have some teachers that need more handholding.
Laura I laughed reading your story. Similar things have happened to me. I am in a high school and sometimes with bigger kids come bigger problems!
My worst tech glitch came when I was doing a huge presentation for our district. I wanted to show martinlutherking.org to them. The site was down! Later on in my presentation I showed how to find an older version of a site by using the wayback machine. When the MLK site was down I just didn’t think of the wayback machine. I explained the site; not anywhere near as good as showing and it wasn’t until later that the lightbulb went off and I said I could have used a tool that I was modeling later on! Oh well! The presentation went well despite starting off nearly disastrously!
I also had a twitter malfunction when I did a presentation. Didn’t realize that twitter would block people from signing up when they received multiple requests from same IP address. Here I’m trying to walk people through the process of joining twitter and no one can sign on! Well we learn from or mistakes!

My worst moments with technology have come when I found a great tool, that in my head totally supported what I was doing in the class, only to find as I employed it that the time required for the students to use the tool to show their learning was far beyond the time the lesson needed. The worst example of this was when I thought it would be fun for the class to create a movie showing the causes of the Revolutionary War. It is a great time to highlight cause and effect, as the Americans and the English act and react to each other, an important lesson in history.

So I divided them into groups and had each group choose 4 key events that led to the war. They then wrote and script and planned for their shooting. At this point, it seemed like a brilliant plan. They were talking about all sorts of history ideas, debating significance and making clear choices about what to include and what to leave out.

Then it was time for the filming, and each group had 4 major events to portray. The back of the classroom was piled high with costumes and props that they had created. And the filming began. Each group disappeared off, around the school, to get the best backdrops for their scenes. After the first day, a slight portion of one scene had been finished. After the second day, a bit more. So it went for over a week, by which point, I was beginning to wonder if there was any history being learned in the midst of the mad dashes for costume changes and grabbing of props.

They were having a great time, one that I let go on for almost two weeks, when I finally pulled the plug. At that point, the students didn’t even protest, a sure sign that the activity had gone past its time of value. It was a good idea, but one that needed to be focused better. I had given each group far more than they could accomplish while still in the learning phase, one that used the technology to supported the growth of the students’ understanding of the topic.

When I do it again, I would still have them make a movie, but I would assign one event to each group and then create a class movie. That would engage the students in creating the movie, but make the task one that could be done in an appropriate amount of time.

Feel free to use any or all. Good Luck! Hadley

I saw you post this through twitter a few days ago. Sorry I am just getting around to it, but I got 2 good ones…

I am a first year teacher, and thankfully I have not encountered too many since I have been teaching. However, I encountered 2 very interesting problems during my reign as a student teacher. I too consider myself to be competent in most technologies. I am a digital native – born into the world of facebook and YouTube.

I actually taught for a very long time during my student teaching – 12 weeks when you are only required to do 6, but I enjoyed it so I did not want to give the classroom back. I used my macbook pro all the time when I was teaching and still do…it is what I comfort with (easiest for me to troubleshoot when something goes wrong).

I was doing an online journaling project using penzu (every student in my school had a laptop) on what it was like to be a slave coming to America during the 1800s. I had the students chronicle their lives as slaves coming to America and what their life was like from the moment they were forced to America to the end when they lived their life out as a slave. I used somewhat staged prompts each day they wrote to guide their writing initially, but other than that, the students had free reign.

As the students were writing, I played music for them to write. I tried very hard to create playlists in iTunes that worked well with the prompt for the day. First day of music went great. Second day of music went great. Third day was terrible. Whenever I played the playlist I wanted to, the music would skip to another song or to another playlist or go mute or skip through the song or change volume. To troubleshoot, I allowed the students to continue writing and just unplugged the speakers until I figured it out. I would quit iTunes and restart the program and play the music. Then plug the speakers back in for the class to hear and it would work flawlessly. Then 20 seconds would go by, and the problem would reoccur. Once I again, I troubleshooted the same way. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times. The students could see me getting frustrated. The music was not even necessary, but I wanted/needed it to “set the mood.” I knew how important it was to set the right atmosphere. It took me almost the entire writing time to figure out a student had brought in one of the iTunes remote controllers that comes with most macbooks. He was controlling my computer from his desk. INGENIOUS, but so frustrating for me. I have to tip my hat to that student, but I learned 2 very important lessons that day. One – When the fluff does not work around your lesson plan, let it go or it will completely defeat the purpose of the lesson if the students see your frustration. They share your frustration and confusion and will stop engaging themselves even in a self-guided activity such as online journaling. Two – always troubleshoot even the dumbest of ideas when it comes to technology. It could be as easy finding the remote control. I know, as a technology literate teacher, I feel the easy problems can never be my problem, but it is always good to start with square one even if I know there is no way it can be that problem.

I too had another problem similar to Hadley Ferguson, but I will actually spare you the details as I just read her post. It involved online debating through voicethread as opposed to normal debate style. Great idea, but proved to be too difficult technology wise and the point of the lesson was lost in the work.