So I try and save a tree. I figure I'll post the syllabus and first day shit to the LMS and me and the kids will bask in TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING.
But the campus network here at Poop U sucks some major ass. It's been on and then off the past two days. I can't even login to my course from my goddamn campus office right now. Those iPads might as well be bricks for how much I can depend on them for teaching in the classroom. And it's far to late to print that shit off.
Well fuck this shit. I'm dismissing class early. My totally sweet first day TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED ACTIVITY is trashed because the campus IT idiots can't find their ass with both hands. I'm going to the bar down the street for office hours. Maybe their wifi will actually work.
At least their taps will work.
ReplyDeleteSeeing as how your class is a technology-enhanced one, it looks like you won't be able to meet all semester. Oh, well...
ReplyDeleteiPads for the students but none (not even loaners) for the adjuncts? Yes, there's a problem here.
ReplyDeleteiPads/LMS but no wifi/network is also, of course, a problem.
There was a time when I could teach a class without electricity as long as the classroom had windows and there was sufficient daylight. I still can, but I do need some warning so I can print/copy the necessary materials. This may raise questions about whether my teaching is, in fact, technology-enhanced, or just technology-translated, facilitated, and/or dependent.
Die IT, die!
ReplyDeleteThey gave me an ancient and heavy laptop. It hurts my back just looking at it.
ReplyDeleteI don't have an ipad myself, but my understanding is that things sometimes work, and appear, quite differently on them than on a laptop or PC. It seems to me that you need to have the same technology your students do, since their technology is standardized (I'm not sure the standardization is a good idea, mind you, or that iPads/tablets are the solution if one does choose to standardize, but if everyone's supposed to have an ipad, then you, too, need the tech equivalent of an instructor's copy).
Delete>>>It seems to me that you need to have the same technology your students do, since their technology is standardized (I'm not sure the standardization is a good idea, mind you, or that iPads/tablets are the solution if one does choose to standardize, but if everyone's supposed to have an ipad, then you, too, need the tech equivalent of an instructor's copy).>>>
ReplyDeleteI've been waiting for months to have my old office computer upgraded. They have the new computer. But it runs a newer operating system and they have to make a disk image. Now they are saying it will take some weeks (weeks?). I said, if that's the case then someone needs to update all the software on the older computer presently in my office (we have site licenses and I don't have the serial numbers). As in NOW, since I teach the software?!
Now you know why I avoid any technology in the classroom more complex than paper, pencils, books (printed on paper made from dead trees: go plant more trees if this upsets you), chalkboards and chalk (alas, I was forced to concede to whiteboards and smelly markers years ago), VHS tapes (I can't skip the friendly FBI warning with DVDs), and photocopies, always with all copies made 24 hours before they're to be handed out, in case my department's copy machine is broken so I have to borrow the one from the Dean's office. It isn't that this user of Hubble Space Telescope can't use advanced technology in the classroom: it's that he doesn't want to use it, because it's both unnecessary and unreliable.
ReplyDeleteI recently dodged another, increasingly intrusive, request to use Blackboard by saying truthfully that I can do everything it can much better, since I all my own web programming. I do all my own stunts, too: my department Chair hates it.
And I never, never, never use the Internet in the classroom. It reminds me of W. C. Fields's admonition that anyone who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad. What he meant by this was that kids and dogs are too unpredictable to be useful in the Vaudeville shows he starred in: putting a kid or a dog on a stage in front of a live audience is asking for trouble.
The Internet is much the same way. If the damn thing even works at all, chances are good that something embarrassing will appear on the screen. Even in my office, I avoid typing anything into an Internet search engine such as Google whenever a student is watching.
What FFfF said.
ReplyDeleteDon't servers crash everywhere, and more often at places with "enhanced technology"? That's what they do. It's called Murphy's Law.