First Days- A Return to Paper

Early this Fall, I was ready with a good collection of moodle-based and other activities starting with the first week. Unfortunately, you can guess what happened. And what didn't happen?

Numerous server and network problems resulted in simultaneous problem reports from students. "This is really slow, Mr. Appel" and "My computer won't let me in, but I know I typed the password right!" When network woes plagued us, it was frequently true that students could get into moodle, but if they tried to write notes or do vocabulary activities using Open Office Writer, they then could not save their work!

In such times, we retreat to paper. We were well into the third week until the system seemed reliable enough to count on again, with occasional problems about once a week for the following several weeks. Traditional paper and pencil activities made a big "come back" during that time.

However, there were some "work-arounds" to save students from losing their work. It was sometimes possible to use some parts of the system. For example, on some days it was possible for students to log in, write notes or a vocabulary activity, only to find out that they no longer had access to their network accounts (and completely losing what they had just worked on). In most cases, they still had access to moodle. That meant that not only could they use moodle activities that hour, but that they could copy from their notes and vocabulary, then paste that work into a moodle journal or assignment. Since moodle was not subject to losing student folders, their hourly work was safe. Once sanity had returned to our network, students could retrieve their work by cutting from moodle and pasting to an OpenOffice document. Or, they could just refer to moodle if required.

As we've all heard, it is wise to have an alternate activity ready. That is never more true than in the first month of school.

A semi-technical aside: Some of the problems may have related to things such as IT's attempts to create a single log in for students, rather than the double log in required the previous year, and the switch from OpenSuse Linux to Ubuntu on the server with Kubuntu on the desktops. The IT folks worked hard, and we're far better off now!