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it's been a good week!
And I only slightly exaggerate about the computer labs. I was in for one of my online course orientation sessions on Wednesday night, and two of my colleagues had sessions in the hallway around the corner from mine. I went in early to assist one of them, because we have a new Learning Management System this year (no more WebCt, but that's another story...). Suddenly, half the computers went dead in his class. So I went to find the tech assistant, and we discovered that the same thing had happened to my other colleague's class. There was a strong smell of burning electronics. The tech assistant investigated the circuit breaker panel and found it scorching hot. None of the actual breakers had popped, so it was impossible to tell which of the circuits had failed, and testing them would involve knocking out the existing circuits and all the other working computers.
Meanwhile the original colleague had returned to his lecture and was almost completely oblivious to the crisis. The whole thing was almost farcical.
The techie person assured me that it was safe for them to continue, so we made the executive decision to let them carry on with the remaining half of the computers and then shut the labs down afterwards. His guess was that there'd been a power surge or something that had burnt out one circuit. As there was no smoke and the panel was beginning to cool, we were probably okay. hahaha.
My own orientation was unaffected and went well.
Otherwise, no major crises, and for a first week it was amazingly stress free. Although I've been working all through July and August, I find myself full of enthusiasm and energy for my classes, and I'm also looking forward to working in my 25% secondment to the computer-assisted learning office (DE) (have I mentioned this before in here? can't remember). All three of my courses look good and I have a nice and enthusiastic group of students, including a few "fans" - ones who have followed me from other courses. I have one who I believe will have taken four of my classes over the last couple of terms!
I've been blogging up a storm, and have four - count them - four new blogs set up on WordPress, two for my classes, one to function as a kind of homepage for my students and one called College English, which I want to be a place to display links and things of interest to - you guessed it - college English teachers and students.
It's all good, as they say. Wonder how long this cheerful energy will last?
And I only slightly exaggerate about the computer labs. I was in for one of my online course orientation sessions on Wednesday night, and two of my colleagues had sessions in the hallway around the corner from mine. I went in early to assist one of them, because we have a new Learning Management System this year (no more WebCt, but that's another story...). Suddenly, half the computers went dead in his class. So I went to find the tech assistant, and we discovered that the same thing had happened to my other colleague's class. There was a strong smell of burning electronics. The tech assistant investigated the circuit breaker panel and found it scorching hot. None of the actual breakers had popped, so it was impossible to tell which of the circuits had failed, and testing them would involve knocking out the existing circuits and all the other working computers.
Meanwhile the original colleague had returned to his lecture and was almost completely oblivious to the crisis. The whole thing was almost farcical.
The techie person assured me that it was safe for them to continue, so we made the executive decision to let them carry on with the remaining half of the computers and then shut the labs down afterwards. His guess was that there'd been a power surge or something that had burnt out one circuit. As there was no smoke and the panel was beginning to cool, we were probably okay. hahaha.
My own orientation was unaffected and went well.
Otherwise, no major crises, and for a first week it was amazingly stress free. Although I've been working all through July and August, I find myself full of enthusiasm and energy for my classes, and I'm also looking forward to working in my 25% secondment to the computer-assisted learning office (DE) (have I mentioned this before in here? can't remember). All three of my courses look good and I have a nice and enthusiastic group of students, including a few "fans" - ones who have followed me from other courses. I have one who I believe will have taken four of my classes over the last couple of terms!
I've been blogging up a storm, and have four - count them - four new blogs set up on WordPress, two for my classes, one to function as a kind of homepage for my students and one called College English, which I want to be a place to display links and things of interest to - you guessed it - college English teachers and students.
It's all good, as they say. Wonder how long this cheerful energy will last?