Skype

Grrrrr!!! I went back to view my blog post and it wasn't there! All that writing and it wasn't there! I forgot to click publish post! Nice job, Anna! Sheesh! Well, that's how my day has been -- TGIF in a big way!

It all started at 7:50 a.m. Husband left at 5 a.m. to go deer hunting in Missouri. Got the kids up, got to school, got Emily on the bus, went up to the lab to begin my day. Son Aaron asked me how many counties there were in Illinois. Being the tech gal I am I said, "Aaron, just Google it." That was easy enough or so I thought. He said, "Mom, it says it can't find the page." First I thought that perhaps he spelled it wrong and the filter picked it up. So I said, "Check your spelling and try again." "Mooooooommmmmm, it still doesn't work!" I check my computer. Sure enough, can't find the page on mine either. Open email, hit send/receive. Error. Okay, Internet's down. Phone rings. Other building. I pick up the phone and instead of my usual "hello" it was, "Internet's down, huh?"

I spent the better part of the morning on the phone with the ISP. Turns out, one of the ports on our router went bad and it chose 11 p.m. last night to crash. I didn't realize how much I rely on the web -- that is, until it's down. The projects the students are working on are in some respect web-based. So it was on to plan B. Usually my plan B is web-based. Well, not today. Good teachers need a plan B and a plan C. I have gotten to plan D before -- well, I have been in education over 20 years and it was bound to happen. I'm sure it will happen again too. What is funny is that the kids don't even realize we use the web so much. It kind of reminds me of when the electricity is out and you think about baking cookies or turning on the computer. As soon as they walked in the door today I told them the Internet was down and here were their choices. I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth and one boy asked, "Mrs. Jukes, can we go to Mathisfun?" Yeah, well....

Okay, so back to the fun... my ROE tech friend brought me a spare router and it was back on the phone with the ISP.

Lunch was plan B too. Normally, I go to the cafeteria and grab my lunch, take it upstairs to the lab and listen to Leo Laporte. Instead I caught up on Tom Grissom's podcasts. (great education stuff BTW! -- plug for Tom! tech4teachers podcasts -- great stuff!)

Turns out the ISP couldn't fix it remotely so they came to me. I finally got home around 4:45 today. But, I'm glad to say, we are up and running and now we will all have internet and email on Monday. Yoohoo!

I just realized that the title of this blog post is Skype. Oops! Got a little carried away with my day that I almost posted without talking about it. That would've left you all confused and probably me too.

Last night I had the privilege of co-presenting with our LTC director at the Southern Illinois chapter of the Illinois Computing Educators monthly meeting. We talked about Skype. I get so excited when I talk about Skype because I've had some great experiences with it. We were able to Skype Tom Grissom. That was really cool! I "met" Tom on Twitter when we started following each other. I had never seen him in person or talked to him. After all, he's in Central Illinois. Talking to him and actually seeing him was really, really cool!

I'm hoping to unleash some more of it's potential in my school very soon. I have been in contact with the education department of the Jefferson Laboratory in Virginia to Skype with our 7th graders who are studying atoms. We are planning on trying to get together in the next couple weeks. We need to be sure our equipment works on both ends. What a great learning experience for our students! This is stuff you can't learn in a textbook.

My next adventure is to hook up with another 5th grade class either in the U.S. or another country for our 5th graders to talk to.

The world is certainly getting smaller!

Until next time...