Troubleshooting

The first online chat last night had a bit of troubleshooting on students' ends, and a bit I need to do on my end. But students accomplished most of what I wanted in terms of rapport (and there's no way I can compete with more than a dozen typists chatting simultaneously). I felt as if my fingers were gasping for breath at the end of the hour. Fun, definitely, and not like most in-person classes.

Other troubleshooting is still required, of course. One student couldn't connect at all, another is being blocked from using Blogger by his employer's firewall settings, and there's a tiny glitch in the video package I'm using. I need to adjust my plagiarism quiz to include some materials about permissions and fair use for the multimedia essay students will be creating. But a certain amount of troubleshooting is to be expected the first week, and I've already created an ad hoc rule for students: don't apologize for technical problems. Really. You're not Microsoft, and you're not being paid big bucks to make their mistakes. Or something like that is true, in any case.