Friend #42

After taking a vacation from my brain for two weeks, I had to force myself to attend the first of a three-day conference on Technology in the Classroom today. I should have known something was awry when I got a confirmation email yesterday, stating that it started at 8am. Ten minutes later, I received a new email stating that it actually started at 10am. Ten minutes after that, another email stating that check-in was at 9:30 and the keynote was at 10am AND that we'd get parking passes at the seminar today (how were we supposed to get parking and later pay for it when they demanded payment before we parked this morning???)
At 10:25 - I hate it when things start late - the keynote speaker (if you can call him that) spoke about how we all have dreams and whatever dream we have, there's a form of technology to help us achieve it. Bad rendition of "There's an app for that." He thought he was funny. Then the next woman spoke about the U.S.'s horrible 80% graduation rate. Something we as educators hear every year and gasp in shock. We were sent to our breakout sessions 45 minutes late.
Kim, my 42nd friend, was my breakout session leader. She has been an elementary teacher and her grey hair proves that. She now conducts the teacher technology courses in an Arizona district. She has her Master's in educational technology. Or so she said.
First of all, we did the typical "State your name, school, subject area, the movie that describes your relationship with technology (gag) and what animal do you most relate to (double gag)."
I wanted to run home. And for a person with serious healing scars and back aches, that's bad.
After intros, we were told to power our laptops on, but mine would not connect to the wireless internet. I asked Kim for help. Her solution was to give me one of her laptops. I assumed correctly that she didn't know how to fix my issue. One of Kim's duties was to have us all log into the appropriate website and poke around. At 11:30, Kim announced that it was lunch time, which we all stated that the keynote speaker told us lunch was at noon. After checking and confirming that we were right, Kim voiced that she would "punt" as we call it in the classroom. So we shared interesting websites and project ideas.
At noon, we headed to lunch. It wasn't there yet (of course) so I decided to ask a woman I knew, Jen, if she could help me with my wireless, since she is a computer expert. Our noon lunchtime turned into 12:40. Our 12:45 breakout session turned into a 1:30 session. Chaos. No one knew what was going on. My boss paid $280 for me to be in this mess, so I made sure to text him and tell him what was going on. "I hope it gets better in the next two days, and I hope you're feeling better also!" was his dry reply. So, I now had no "out." I had to stay.
Kim led session two of the breakout session. In this session, Kim was to show us a powerpoint and lead a discussion of how we can use Skype in the classroom. This may have been nice, but Kim didn't know how to use a Mac and her PC was dead. Nice.
Kim called the seminar leader and asked her to bring a new laptop, which she did. A new Mac. More chaos ensued as we, the participants silently dozed into day-dreamland. "I'll get this, I promise" Kim notified.
My phone alarm clock buzzed with a reminder that I had a 3pm doctor's appointment. I joined Kim in the front of the room and explained, "I have a doctor's appoin..." "Oh, Go ahead! Have fun!" She probably wanted every participant to say they needed to leave. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Tomorrow is Day Two of this disaster. Let's hope they have their stuff together by then.