The trouble with instructional technology

Instructional technology poses a definite challenge. I think we are finding that out. Some of us have struggled with creating the Google and Blog accounts, as well as receiving the invitation to the Google Doc.

When I first started looking into using these tools that seemed promising in helping the learning process it all seemed so easy. I gues that's what happens when you believe the marketing folks. As usual, the devil is in the details. So we find ourselves not being able to access Blackboard despite multiple tries and attempts to work around the problem. On a side note, there are several complicating factors 1) the university is switching from WebCT to Blackboard and the information was not communicated to the faculty effectively despite multiple attempts to inform the departments (emails are often not forwarded to the person that need them; let that be a lesson); 2) in the classroom MS-Explorer messed up Blackboard so I could not see the class roll at all. It worked in my office and the techies suggested I use Firefox because it has fewer problems. You would expect that the Blackboard folks had done something about these issues by now.

Because faculty were not informed appropriately they are now bombarding the tech folks with questions and problems that they would have addressed had the communication channels worked better. Clearly, all the issues with Blackboard have not been resolved yet. The good news is that folks are working on it. In the mean we'll have to work around it.

The technology glitches are taking up an enormous amount of my time (I have been trying to deal with those for over 2 hours now) that has nothing to do with the substance of the class, and some of the problems are out of my hands. This is very frustrating.

Despite all that, today was an excellent session from my perspective.
I'll reflect later about my organizational activities behind the scenes.