Profound thoughts seem to come in quick succession when I'm driving to school in the morning. Passing by the Upland cemetery, the rising sun reflected off of the granite headstones, creating flashes of pink that caught my eye. This visual stimulant brought the thought that those flashes are just like our lives. You would think, "Wow. That's kind of depressing to realize at 7 in the morning!" That's actually not the sentiment I felt. There is something amazing in that flash; something brilliant and mesmerizing. Everyone has one, but that doesn't make it less beautiful. The cool thing is: this analogy falls short of the preciousness of life. The headstones reflected one color and all the flashes were relatively the same. Our flashes of life aren't the same. Everyone's is different. Cool, huh?
I wish that I could say that the profound moment settled into my head and I looked at every person with wonder and awe, with appreciation at the handiwork of God, but this post is titled "Fail" for a reason. That's right. Humanity strikes again.
In past posts, I have mentioned technology: the highs and lows, the excitement and the frustration that I have encountered thus far as a student teacher. Today tops all of these. Today, I tried to use technology in the classroom. Today, I failed. In the excitement of using "Voki," I went to the tech people at the high school and started asking about the language lab equipment. Unfortunately, the computers did not have microphones for the students to record themselves. The head tech guy said, though, that he could try and get a laptop cart from the science department. So-very-ever thankful, I bounced out of the tech room, feeling like this was going to work after all. The tech guy comes and finds me and says that the science department agreed to share the other laptop carts and that I could have a cart for Friday.
We tried logging onto the program, but the version of Adobe on the laptops wasn't new enough... So, they had to unfreeze the computers, download the new Adobe, refreeze the computers and then make sure that the website worked. Then, we encountered another problem. The program didn't register the internal microphones. We found our way around that and I practiced and practiced so that I could fix any problems that arose with the microphones. This was all on Wednesday. Thursday, I abducted the laptop cart and told the tech guys what they needed to do for me to use the laptops (because the head tech guy was gone for the day)... that felt oxymoronic... me? telling techies what to do? No way.
So, Thursday continues. I tell my students that I'm thrilled to have them work with a website where they can record themselves speaking French and use an avatar. They are excited. I try logging into my account and it doesn't work. I try not to panic because it's probably just a glitch. I come home and I even set up a new account and none of the possibilities are working out. Perfect.
Friday morning: I get to the high school and move the laptop cart into the room and start to look at the laptops. Of course, the one laptop I decide to use as a run-through doesn't have the recent version of Adobe on it. Panicking, I pull out two more laptops, log on and try out the website. Those are working. Ok. I couldn't help but feel cool that I was working on three computers, side-by-side, all at the same time! Panic doesn't go away when I realize that I have to go through and manually turn on all the internal microphones before my fourth period class starts. Needless to say, I didn't get that done in time. My class came in and I had to act like all of this was meant to happen and that things were under control.
24 students, countless recordings, repetitions of instructions, and a handful unprepared students later, it's almost lunchtime and the last thing I want to do is to do that again and again... for three more periods. I have no other choice, though. Who knows when I will have the laptops again... the science department can be pretty stingy with "their" stuff. During lunch, I wanted to throw in the towel. My brilliant idea of having students save their Vokis failed. My brilliant idea of using the language lab failed. My "brilliance" failed. I realized, though, that I couldn't transfer all that onto my students. That isn't fair.
Long sad story short, I hit a new low at school and I was stuck. I had to try and get myself out of the depths of teacher despair in order to keep going. It's like wanting to call your mom because you're sick, but you're stuck at college so there's really no point in calling because she can't do anything. I don't know if I'll be brave enough to try using technology like that in this classroom again, so I won't make a projection. I do know that I'm thankful for the weekend... because it's been a week.
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