Topsy Turvy

It's the first day of the semester, and I only wanted to shoot my computer a couple of times. Thankfully, not because of the students.

There is a twofold dilemma in working on a semester basis. Not only do we completely change students, but we also change virtual classrooms. This means that all the work I did tweaking and perfecting my web pages from last semester has gone out the window and I have to start from scratch. Unfortunately for me, this has created a major computer glitch and I am locked out of my own grade book.

Here are the basics of what happened. On Tuesday, our Ed Tech gurus loaded our course (reading, assignments, etc.). They then found a bunch of errors and reloaded the course, but didn’t get rid of what was originally loaded. Meanwhile, one of my students decided to turn in a bunch of assignments but sent them to my Semester 1 class (the guidance department placed her there as a holding spot because she enrolled in the last week of the semester). Sure enough, I tried to enter her grades in the wrong places. Our IT department cannot repair this glitch and has kicked it up to the company that designs and runs the classroom software. Now things are completely locked up and will be at least for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, only one student so far has asked me to look at her assignments. The students I’ve been able to reach have been incredibly polite and keen to understand the workings of my class. One student has already looked ahead and started reading her independent novel, digging into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in between her current assignments. Another has called me three times in ten minutes for help. I’ve told her that she’s working on a Scavenger Hunt and she needs to scavenge a little for the answers. She agreed with me, which was a relief because my phone has been ringing like mad all day with other calls.

It’s a brisk, topsy-turvy start to the semester.