Saturday, September 5, 2020

School Daze

The first week of school is done. 

The school gave us a laptop due to the difficulty we had with the PE module. It has the things downloaded on it that we need to be downloaded. Should be easier, but privately I worried because now I was not only learning the system, I was learning it on a new computer as well. 

This morning we got up. 

Logging into the computer was an issue. I was using William's user name and password to sign into the computer, but it was invalid. Contacting the office, they gave me the log in for the computer. 

Success!

Then I had to set it up to our wi-fi. 

Success! 

And then all this stuff started popping up for me to make a microsoft account. I didn't not want to link it to my computer. Not sure how I bypassed it, but I did, so we'll call that a success.

(Sure hope I don't have to do it again.)

Once into the PE module, I couldn't click on the files I needed to open no matter how hard I tried. 

Hauled William and his laptop into the district office. They have a covid scanner that takes your temperature. I was normal. William was too short to test. I set our stuff down, pulled a chair forward and told him to stand on it. 

He scrambled up and got on his knees. He was too short still. 

I said, "William, you're going to have to stand up." He tried to lean further forward.

I said, "William, you're going to have to stand up. Your forehead needs to be right there." He said, in a shocked voice, "Grandma! This is school district furniture!" 

I said, in an angry voice, "Will you just stand up on the chair so that this machine can take your temperature, and we can go into the office and figure out this computer and get back home and start school," and he snapped back, "Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnne!" 

We finally got into the office and the woman showed us a teeny little icon on the right side of the screen bottom. 'View as slideshow'. I apologized and we headed home with that laptop. 

Once home, William logged in and we opened the PE stuff. He had  choices for warm ups: Superhero, Yoga, Dance, etc. He picked super hero. He watched the screen from the kitchen table. 

I was ladling out processed tomatoes. I said, "Just do the exercises along with the video." 

He wanted to do something else. 

I said, "No. Just do the warm up you picked. Next time you can choose something else."

He said, "I'm going to...." with his hand reaching out.

I said, "Don't, William...." 

And suddenly there were two voices coming out of the computer, two warmups going on at the same time. I said, "Shut one of them off."

He said, "I don't know how." 

I set down my ladle and came around the table. I was studying the screen and it went black.

William said, "The battery is dead."

He put his laptop on the charger, and then I came back to my old computer. We did math, which he did well on. I even learned how to save and submit work without scanning it directly to his teacher. Social studies. We broke for lunch and for Harry Potter. Science. 

He was complaining before science was done but we got through it. 

When his mother picked him up after work, she said, "Does the laptop help?" I said that I didn't know yet, because the battery had died during a glitch..." and William said decisively, "The problem is I know technology and Grandma doesn't." 

I made up my mind to work with the laptop, get myself acquainted with it, roam around on the virtual learning site. After I got my kitchen put back to rights, I went in to sit down with the laptop. Young Mr. Computer Expert had plugged the computer into the charger. The box was not plugged into the wall. 

Won't you all pray for us? This school year is going to be a challenge. 

3 comments:

  1. I will pray.

    And I have to ask... will you inform Mr. Computer Expert about his failure to plug the charger into the wall?

    ReplyDelete
  2. No I wouldn't think of it. We will have a discussion about the fact that we are BOTH learning and that we both need to be patient. There is nothing to be gained by rubbing his nose in his errors.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's amazing how technology sneaks up on the best of us. For years I've been considered the guru of technology among my family and still get lots of questions of how to do this or that. But just a week ago, I saw my daughter was able to do something on her phone that I had long thought possible but never have been able to find out where the command was. When I asked, she just rolled my eyes and gave me that "dad is so technologically impaired" look.

    ReplyDelete

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