When technology fails

At approximately 8:40 am today, we were told to log out of our computers because of some network issue.  Hours later when we were still locked out, I entered my login and password to find my computer worked perfectly.  Within minutes, a voice over the loud speaker adamantly told me to log off the system as if Big Brother himself were ordering me to do so before the thought police could deal with me.

This happened a second time, and from what I hear some teachers had logged back in, even after the vehement direction to log out.  Those teachers were remotely logged off the system and I'm sure a tally mark exists next to their name on some list somewhere.  Regardless, the subsequent comments from colleagues and facebook posts about not having access to technology made me think: Are we too techno-dependent in the 21st century classroom?  What if the interwebs disappeared tomorrow?  Could I still teach?

I remember when my house was valued at twice the purchase price five years after we bought it.  I remember thinking, "the value can't go down, can it?"  We all know how that ended, but the conspiracy theorist in me questions the extent to which we as teachers should rely on technology in our classrooms because it might not be there someday. Perplexed by paranoia,  I fired up the google, and searched my heart out looking for some sort of "top 10 things to do when technology fails" type of list.  I found this great blog and I hope if you click the link, you read all of it, especially the last paragraph.  This is not what I did today.

What I did do today consisted of being grateful that the activities I planned entailed predominantly pencil-to-paper skills, and that I only missed about 20 minutes of a clip of a movie and an audio version of a play.  Whew!  I made it out safe.  Countless others intended to rely on the computer, lcd, and/or doc camera for the entirety of the 100 minute block period. 

Unable to easily google a list to share with you here (yes, I smell the irony), I shall compose a top 10 list of things to do when technology fails.  Ahem:  

1. read the text

2. write questions about the current topic

3. draw something, anything

4. rate processes, procedures

5. discuss current events

6. review notes from previous lesson

7. create problems and scenarios

8. evaluate previous activities

9. justify answers from a previous assignment

10. debate potential changes to the style of the next assessment

Well, at least it's a start.  You should print out the list, though, because you won't be able to access it should technology fail.