A better day by a bit, but still the type of day where I had to thank my kids for their patience and for allowing me to use them to learn a lot about how to do all this. Their sites are up and running (I’ll provide links next week) but I will probably not do it the way I did it today ever again. (Comments always welcome on this process by the way…)
Twenty-four students making weblogs made our Frontier server very slooooooowwwwwww. Especially when I chose the route of giving them some creative control by not making a pre-configured template and instead let them choose their own and then taking them through the salient configs. Way too much to ask. Next time, the heck with choice. (It occurred to me much later that I probably could have done all the configs, saved it as a theme, then let them switch the themes to their own liking after…sometimes my brain doesn’t see the easiest route…especially during the first week of school.) Live and learn.
And that’s just what today was, a learning experience. On a student of weblogs level, I loved it…no way to do this without doing it. On another more teacherly level, I despised it. Nothing like dealing with the unknown when you’re standing in front of 24 kids. Humbling.
Pat felt my pain yesterday, and I really appreciate the words of support. I too wish for more of a local neighborhood, but it’s too early for most people to see the light here. My tech support is great, like Pat’s; more than willing to do whatever it takes, open to new ideas. But we’re taking something that wasn’t meant for the classroom and students and trying to tweak our way through it. I’m still hoping that someday soon someone will come to the classroom teachers among us and just help us build the real deal. Manila is great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s harder than it needs to be.
I’m really tired…the first week, even half week, is always the hardest…it’s like getting back into shape. And with doing all this new stuff, it’s even harder.
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