I know you have your phones with you in class. I know you're not afraid to use them. When I send class cancellation messages the Thursday evening before a Friday 8:00 AM class, it's for your benefit, not mine. Why am I getting the first read-receipt Sunday night? Did you really ALL sit there looking around hoping someone else knew where I was, then pull out your phones for a little FB action, and just put them back without checking your campus e-mail? REALLY?
Student use of technology is reserved only for getting herb or getting laid. School related communication simply will not work.
ReplyDeleteOMFG yes! How is it that a group of people who can manage to upload a selfie video of their latest bacchanal (presumably while, themselves, significantly impaired) cannot manage being able to upload a project paper/video (presumably while not impaired)?
DeletePresumably because they're not impaired? Some folks just gotta have a snootful.
Deleteseriously, for a generation that is supposedly all techy, they are often clueless on basic computer tasks.
ReplyDeleteThey weren't going to show up anyway, why bother hearing from you that class wasn't going to be held?
ReplyDeleteRead-receipts are NOT part of the standard email protocol, and are not to be relied upon. Essentially, it marks the email with a flag telling the receiver's client to return an email when the user looks at it for more than 10 seconds.
ReplyDeleteMany mobile clients won't do this, and I always configure my mail clients to NEVER send read receipts. Why? Cuz it's nobody's business when I last checked my email. I suspect many students rightfully feel the same way.
Also, I tend to forgive students for not using their institutional email too much. After all, there's never anything interesting in their inbox. All their social contacts either use private email or other electronic media. I mean, I'd LIKE them to, but I know perfectly well which of MY email accounts I check first....
I concur with the finding that many/most mobile email clients do not honor read-receipt requests.
DeleteSince the email went out in the evening, one would expect that at least a few students first encountered the email through the client on their laptop/desktop. It seems unlikely that all of them would have the read-receipt function disabled.
Where I work, reading one's email regularly is considered a professional responsibility for both employees and students. If "someone important" sends an email with read receipt requested, it looks good when your email client honors the request.
When students fail to upload a document on time, they ask for credit if they can show me that the file hasn't been modified since before the due date. The bring their laptops to my office and show me the file properties.
ReplyDeleteFYI: File properties can be changed. I don't know if they know how to do this but it can be done. I don't trust it.
Now you know why this user of high-tech toys runs low-tech classes. Oh, I was suckered into drinking the Kool-Aid when I was a much too eager-to-please Accursed Visiting Assistant Professor some 15 years ago, but I got over it quickly when I realized that a high-tech classroom means that you have to be a 24/7 tech consultant, in addition to being a teacher, researcher, manager, fundraiser, and all the too-many other things faculty are expected to do these days. Now, I accept class work as paper copies handed in during the first five minutes of class ONLY, and so far I've been lucky with not getting flashbacks.
ReplyDeleteSeems a bit much to have to attach a "read receipt". Sort of sends the message "I need you to read read this because it doesn't count if you don't."
ReplyDeleteNo I don't! There's this thing called the sent box that acts as proof that the mail was sent to you. If you choose to not read it in a timely manner, then your choices are your choices. But as far as I am concerned, my ass is covered!
There's the whole "Two Generals Problem". Just because you sent the message, and can prove it, does not mean with 100% certainty that they received it, and that loophole will be exploited whenever deemed advantageous. In this context, the read receipt serves notice to the addressee that "I'm not taking your bullshit excuse that you didn't get my email, because I have proof you did."
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