Snow Day Disruption

I’ve just about had it with snow … no, check that — I have had it! Thursdays are the days that I get to teach and I really love it. I’ve been sick all week and when I woke up around 4 this morning I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get through the day, regardless of the snow. I rescheduled my morning meetings and planned on resting until class time. When we cancelled classes later in the morning I figured it was a lost week.

What is disappointing is that last week we had such an amazing class as the groups did their first round of synthesis presentations, focusing on the ideas of disruptive technologies seen through the lens of our first theme of community. Truly an exceptional experience and one that pulled the class together into the early stages of our own community of practice.

So when the snow and my health threatened to cancel class we took matters into our own hands and disrupted the snow day by using Google Hangout to do a check in and a preview of the next couple of weeks. It wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly better than not having any time together at all. We did have a few moments of meaningful discussion about Library space, McLuhan, and how technology like Hangouts can be a decent tool for connecting communities.

hangout

2 thoughts on “Snow Day Disruption

  • March 5, 2015 at 4:32 pm
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    Great use of time. I use TodaysMeet for my high schoolers on snow days (we have had 5) and as study sessions. It never dawned on me to use Google Hangouts this way. Do you know if Google Hangout can handle 80 students at a time?

    So glad you believe in community with your students.

    Reply
  • March 5, 2015 at 5:41 pm
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    Hi Shai … no, it can sadly only handle 10 participants unless you have an EDU or Business account, then you can do up to 15. My class is small, 9 including me so it is perfect. This is a good guide:

    https://zapier.com/blog/google-hangouts-video-calls-guide/

    My suggestion would be to look into Google Hangouts on Air. That let’s you do more broadcast style to tons of people.

    Reply

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