Argh!

What a frustrating week! On Monday, I was fully prepared after spending hours over the weekend finalizing the lesson plan and creating the model video for our theme project. I had the computer lab booked, and the set up instructions on the eboard for students to create their own accounts at masher.com. As usual, it took a while for the students to create their user names, passwords, and in some cases mailinator e-mail accounts, to successfully register with the site. I have 17 students in this particular class. Once they were all up on masher the trouble started. "Mrs. Blick, Mrs. Blick, it's not working," "Mrs. Blick, I can't hear anything," "Mrs. Blick, it's frozen!" Yes, the site must have been overloaded and only a few students had functionality to work on their videos. The following day I separated the students into two groups and had one group work on an alternative activity in the hopes that fewer students logged in would free up the site. However, there were still several students whose applications ran far too slow and they were unable to make any progress. So, after 3 hours in the lab working on this project we have very little to show for it. And with CSAP coming up, I'm hesitant to spend any more time on it. What have I learned? Well, that even the best laid plans don't ensure success every time!