When the network is down…
Posted: February 19, 2012 Filed under: IT 1 Comment »Here’s my list of 10 things I learned when the network was down.
When the network is down…
1)…having a good, well tested (and often), disaster recovery plan is BEYOND necessary!
2) …even if you don’t have all the answers yourself, if you surround yourself with the people who do, the job gets done!
3)… there is a weird sense of “quiet” on campus.
4) …some educators can be flexible, creative, go with the flow, adapt lessons and pick up another tool. Yes, it might be less than ideal, but the students will still learn each and every day. These educators, without even realizing it, seized the opportunity to model essential 21st century skills to their students.
5) … some educators seize the opportunity to say: ”You see! This is why we can’t go to e-texts/ use blogs/ wikis, etc. This stuff NEVER works”. Imagine if we said this about cars when they broke down. We’d be walking a lot!
6) …some people understand that sometimes these things happen. Others don’t.
7) …it’s very easy to be a “Monday morning quarterback”. “Shoulda, coulda, woulda” doesn’t really help.
8) …some students are able to adapt. They used the resources they had (ex. their home email, texting, Facebook, cloud based applications, etc.) to complete what was asked of them. YAY!
9)…some students are NOT able to adapt. They used the network being down as an excuse to do NO work, which gave the teachers mentioned in #5 another reason not to use technology.
10) … you learn that money can’t solve all problems, but it helps with a lot of them!
So very well said Lorri!
As teachers a back up plan is second nature… something can always go wrong. The lesson we teach our students is in how we deal with and overcome those obstacles…a great opportunity to model how to be resourceful, creative, and flexible… “real life” characteristics they will need to succeed in “the real world” and in future jobs!