Showing posts with label tardiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tardiness. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Two Classes and Strobe Lights


Scenario: You are an instructor about to present a lecture that you will need to record anyway.  It is 11:30 mountain time - the time announced to students when live lecture takes place.  You turn on your computer ready to start the meeting and there is no one there to listen to you live

question:    Do you start the lecture on time? Do you walk away from your computer and decide to return a few minutes later?  Do you wait half an hour after designated time before you start?  or would you start on time even though there isn't anybody with you at the start?

I would hope you would start on time.  five or ten minutes after the designated time, maybe, but not half an hour.  

I was late for class, I'll admit that.  Maybe 15 to 20 minutes.  There was somebody else signed on beside the instructor.  Why isn't he talking?  I am late for class.  What am I missing?  How come the sign on screen is on and I don't see a lecture.  I typed:

"Have you started the lecture yet?  I don't see anything."

My classmate answers that she is double checking the schedule because she can't see or hear anything either.  So what do we do?

I continued working on an assignment that I had started for my other class, but as time marched on, I grew concerned.  What if our instructor, who had obviously signed in to start the lecture, had had a heart attack or something?    It had been half an hour since the lecture was supposed to start.  I didn't feel like I was jumping the gun, but apparently, I was.  At 11:01 his voice came on and he announced that we would get started.  Just getting started?  What?  

I asked about the time and he said that he'd been there on time but that no one else was.  But two of us had been waiting for at least 20 minutes - though I told him half an hour because that's how long it had been from when he should have gotten started.  

Toward the end of his lecture, my screen started strobing - well, not my entire screen, just the lecture. "What is with your screen?" I asked my instructor - believing that he could see the same thing as I.  He suggested that the problem might be with zoom.  Oh, goody.  A third party device.  Who'm I suppose to address those concerns to?

I get someone at Tech support who says there is a glitch and did I try restarting my computer.  I guess I'll just use my laptop next week.  My last instructor (three mods now) made the screen so huge - almost too huge, but at least I could see it.  The class I had today was bigger than the one I had yesterday.  Back to a post-it-note size framed in black background.  Why does there have to be so much background???

I am excited about one class and will learn to adjust to the other.  I will be kept busy for the rest of this month.  I don't know how often I'll be able to post to my blog.  Weekends, maybe?