Tech Troubles

 Boy, I needed a lot of patience today... Lots of tech issues. One family has struggled with super slow internet this week. Their videos have been grainy and the kids say the reverse is true too. The 7th grader said the top half of a slide will load (when I'm screen sharing), but the bottom half will be pixelated for about 30 seconds or so before loading clearly. No one else had those troubles. 

The 5-6th graders are prepping for a lab they can do at home. It involves dunking litmus paper in various liquids. We read over the lab today as a class so they know what to do when we try it on Wednesday. One girl couldn't find her lab. We were doing Lab 4; she could only find Lab 5. 

"I don't have it Miss H!"
"Well, that's very strange because I sent it home in the same packet as the other one."
"But it's not here! I looked everywhere!"
"Hmm, I'm not sure what to tell you."
"Maybe you could send me a digital version of the lab?"
"Sure. I'll do that after class."

After class, she messaged me, "I found it; it was in my hands the whole time." 🤦 At least she used a semicolon properly! (That was our English minilesson for the day).

This week is parent teacher conferences. We're doing them virtually this year, so I opened up my schedule all week. I had two tonight, one tomorrow, one Wednesday, and two parents that haven't signed up yet. Since their kids know how to use Teams, Mr. E and I are doing conferences through Teams. That worked really slick. The kids can help their parents get set up, I can message them when I'm ready, they can message back, we can video chat securely, no problems. Both of them tonight were super short, less than five minutes a piece. It was great.

In between video conferences, I had a Habitat meeting (also virtual). Last month, I was selected to receive a Habitat for Humanity House! Each month we have a meeting about home ownership and the hour we spend is credited to our 'sweat equity' on the house. There were a bunch of safety videos we had to watch in preparation for working on a dig site. I finished two of them and have four more to go. 

While watching the videos, I saw I had an email from Pastor/the worship planning committee about some of the songs in the Christmas program. I'm not sure if we can even do the Christmas program the way we have it planned if we switch to virtual learning after Thanksgiving break. Both Mankato and Nicollet are going virtual from November 30th through mid-January. There have been a lot of covid cases in our area (which seems to be true all over the place). New Ulm however, has made no announcement about shutting down. That makes it a harder decision for our school since we'll only have half busing if we keep going in person. I thought it was a done deal that we'd be going virtual after break, but apparently no official decision has been made. The New Ulm superintendent hasn't contacted Mr. E back to let him know their thoughts, which makes it harder for us to decide what to do. Sigh. What a mess.

And then, a parent texted me that her daughter's computer (a new laptop she just picked up from school tonight to replace one with a very badly cracked screen she'd previously been using) showed an error screen when turned on. 

Okay. Let's call the IT guys.
No answer.
Okay, let's text the IT guys and come up with a backup plan.
Ten minutes later...
Praise the Lord, he actually texted back! And better yet he got it working again! 

Hopefully that's all the tech troubles we'll have for a while...