The last time I felt this much trepidation was when my Novice track student showed up in this orange Viper. Turned out he was very cautious and slow, he was one of my easier students to deal with and his sessions were actually a bit relaxing.
Well, predictably things have started out with technical issues. Zoom, which is the platform we’re using for all of our online classes, is down nationwide. Millions of students were going to be using the platform today across the nation, so problems were bound to arise.
Luckily, I don’t have a first period class; however, I’m not optimistic that Zoom will be up before my second period class starts. I was also planning on using Zoom to record my lectures and had planned on using the morning to get a couple recorded, which didn’t happen. My next planning period is 1pm on Tuesday, so videos will have to wait until then.
I’ll update at lunchtime if anything interesting happens.
UPDATE: Zoom started working halfway (45mins) into my first class and worked for the entirety of my second class. The virtual students are pretty much all on their own, I don’t have the ability to do any type of real-time monitoring or interaction with them and the in-person students. I make sure they’re all there during roll, and that’s pretty much it. I’m going to try to find ways to allow them to better interact with the class, but there’s only one of me and I can only pay attention to one group at a time. The in-person students get my attention by default since I don’t have a way to mute them (all the online students are muted).
Things are going more smoothly than I had anticipated, just like the guy in the Viper. Every day is going to be an adventure and I can already tell I’m just adding onto the list of things I have to do each day. Eventually I’ll fall behind and something will get dropped or cut for time, probably the recorded notes which I’m already behind on since they didn’t get done this morning while Zoom was offline.