Crisis in the Chromeroom

It was bound to happen sooner or later.   We must remember that technology is neither flawless nor infallible.  In fact, there is only one sure thing about technology; it is sure to fail you in someway.  And yet, even though I was armed with this knowledge, it did not prepare me for the challenges I would face when the crisis hit my Chromeroom.

It began last Thursday.  A few of my Chromebooks were flagged with an error message- something about not being shut down properly and needing to be restored.  I kept a cool head and began clicking restore as instructed by Chrome.  After all, I had made it my mission not to let these technology roadblocks fluster me.

But the yellow error banner reappeared as if to taunt my first attempt at problem solving.  I tried rebooting, but still the error message appeared.  The students were beginning to grumble with frustration.  Luckily, I have a few extra Chromebooks in my cart, so I quickly swapped them out with the “sickbooks.”  One lesson I learned early is that some students (and adults) are looking for any excuse possible to balk at technology, so I swiftly squelched any possible dissent while trying to fix the problem.

By the end of first period, I had seven casualties on my desk and realized it was time to call in some backup.  I made a call to Sue, my Technology Integrationist and #1 Geek, but when her voicemail reminded me she was out of the district at a workshop.  So I was left to face the crisis alone. 

I tried channeling my inner geek and began to record the problem step by step.  I worked to isolate the differences between the Chromebooks and crashbooks.  I hypothesized the problem was connected to the login, which was the key difference in those that worked and those that didn’t.  But without a direct line to Google, I was left with a theory and no solution.

Each hour a few more Chromebooks broke out in error messages.  But I also realized I wasn’t alone.  One of my students thought the error alert was similar to something that had happened to a friend’s video game.  He suggested that we delete the extra users.  His idea worked and soon the Chromebooks were up and running again.   My crisis had suddenly become an opportunity for problem solving.  It was a great glass is half full moment.  Lesson number two, in this crisis, was that empowering students and embracing problems creates authentic learning opportunities.

It seems this was the perfect fairy tale ending to my scary story, but there were more lessons to be learned before this day was done.   Deleting the users was only a temporary fix and soon the error message was reappearing.  I made it through the day with a lot of rearranging, but without a solution.

The next day Sue was in the in the back of my classroom wiping and re-imaging computers, so I began my lesson on revising fragments and run-ons with a renewed sense of strength.  With Sue by my side, I knew we could handle the crisis.  And we did handle it, but failed to solve it.  I spent the next two days planning and changing lessons, as Sue wrote support tickets and changed set-ups.  She sent out messages to her chrome support group and found others who were experiencing the same problem. Lesson number three is you need a good support team to implement new technology.  Finally, it seemed that the cause of the problem had been found and just when we were about to test the changes, in the spirit of a great suspense film, the school’s WiFi went down!

I abruptly went from 20 working machines to none and I had less than 20 minutes until my next class.  The planned lesson was a personalized review session using online lessons, flashcards and quizzes.  I needed a new plan.  Steadying myself with a deep breath, I looked around the room for inspiration.  Off the shelf, I pulled out a lesson from last year and with a box of scissors soon we were making flashcards.  Clearly this was the most important lesson I was to learn from the experience: be flexible.

When faced with a crisis, I figure you have two choices.  You can allow the problem to paralyze you and spend your energy complaining about why you can’t move forward.  Or you can find away around the problem.  You can embrace the challenge and find an alternative path to the desired destination. 

This isn’t the end to my story, because my quest to becoming a 21^st Century teacher is an epic journey.  This crisis will eventually be solved and lessons I have learned will prepare me for the next time a technology problem invades my Chromeroom.