While not quite as exciting as Season 5 of Game of Thrones, the saga of spotty wifi and dead batteries rampages on.

We are nearing the maiden voyage of online testing next week with some cracks beginning to appear in hull of our ship.  The Math department was given an activity just a couple of days ago, and we were told that all 11th graders needed to be familiar with it in order to understand part of the Smarter Balanced Assessment.  As in most places, our 11th grade students are spread over several levels of math.  In order to present it to them, we either needed an emergency homeroom session (which we weren’t going to get) or every math teacher had to give up a day to teach the activity.  Bribing my colleagues with my famous carnitas seemed to work, and we press on.

I have been working with many of Florin High School’s math teachers in training our 11th graders on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.   First, I emailed them with links to the test prep site, the I rolled the Chromebook cart to their rooms to help get their students online.  Some of the Chromebook batteries were low because they hadn’t been recharged properly.  We remedied that situation easily, however.  Next, I told the students to log on.

Weeks ago, I was given administrative permission to help students change their forgotten passwords, so the login process usually goes smoothly.  Except today, of course.

After quickly and carefully handing out the Chromebooks to the students, one hand after another shot up.  Something was wrong.  Really wrong.  After checking all the systems we determined that the wifi in the teacher’s room was not working.  Strange.  It had been working all year.  So, we moved the students and their computers to my room.  It always has wifi.  Except today.

I think we can make this work for 430 students. Give me another Pringles can.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/moving.png

 The administrator I called seemed to not believe me.  The wifi couldn’t be out in a whole wing.  That wing was designated to be part of the test-administering section of classrooms.  I asked if there was a reset switch for the wifi system.  He didn’t know.  Our tech person was offsite, so no help was coming from there. I asked what would happen if the wifi went out during the test.  He wasn’t sure.  Would the students be able to log back in at another location in the school?  He wasn’t sure.  If they pressed “save” often, would it protect them in case of a wifi outage?  He wasn’t sure.  I asked what the contingency plans were in case of a widespread outage.  There wasn’t one… yet.  Now it seemed like a good idea.  You bet.

Tune in next week to see how our trusty heroes prepare for the epic online challenge. You’d better be among the first to read, or there may be spoilers (and not just from Game of Thrones!). Thank you for reading this blog. Have a great week!