Sometimes It Is Technology, Sometimes It Is Me
Posted by terrepruitt on March 2, 2022
I am still teaching via Zoom. I have students not in my area and some of us that enjoy the fact that we don’t have to deal with traffic to get to a class. And I STILL have issues with technology. Sometimes I think it is Zoom, sometimes I think it is the internet, sometimes I think it is the various cords and cables, but basically it is always something. I believe that if I didn’t set up and breakdown my set up so often I wouldn’t have a few of the issues, but some are just whacky. It could also be that my laptop is about 8 years old. There are several things that Zoom does that my computer can’t do because the operating system cannot be updated. So, there is that.
One of the issues I have is when people come into a meeting it disrupts my “share”. When I first started teaching virtually I would start the meeting early, set up sharing, and get the music all cued up to be ready for class, and it worked fine. But at one point it stopped working. As soon as a student would sign on my share would stop working. Today I started class after already doing a sound check with students and the music wasn’t working, but it just had been. I think it was because two students had signed on. So somethings are just whacky and I can’t explain and then somethings . . . . oh the shame!
Last week, I had started the meeting, checked my microphone and was waiting for people to come on, once they were on I checked the music and I believe it worked. Then, since it was a Nia class, I talked about our focus and intent, while moving some things around, and then started the music and it wasn’t working. It had just been working. Now, if you teach virtually you may know there are a lot of things to check. Some people may have more than me, but I have my laptop, my mic, and my speaker. Now with that there is the laptop volume: output and input. And then the mic volume – actual buttons, and the speaker volume. Plus there is the volume on Zoom – both speaker and mic. There is an aux cord for the speaker and a connector for the mic and the speaker. So there are all these various things and I checked them all. My students are thee most awesome people in the world because although they wanted to get the class underway (of course!) they were being very kind and patient and I was just bewildered. I kept noticing that the speaker sound kept changing to “Zoom camera”, so I was thinking it was something to do with the update I had just done. Just as one person started to enlist the help of her son I glanced up and had an idea.
So, when I mentioned my computer was old I didn’t say that it is a hand-me-down and one reason it got handed down to me in the first place is that when it was an actual work computer in an office it had an unfortunate accident . . . it got drenched in a Big Gulp so the touchpad stopped working. Since I have to use a dongle and an external mouse, I just use an external keyboard too. Well, when I looked up I noticed that I had set a box on my external keyboard. I removed the box and the speakers stopped changing to Zoom camera. I think the box was pressing a key on the keyboard.
Geez Louise! I was embarrassed and annoyed and a little surprised I hadn’t actually done that before. Today I made sure there was nothing on the keyboard. When we had the aforementioned problem, I didn’t check anything because I had already checked everything so the first thing I thought of was the share and thankful that was it. Last week, — red faced me!
So . . . sigh, just sharing yet another thing that can mess with getting a virtual class underway! Since it was so silly I thought you might get a giggle or at least a smile out of it!
I welcome any embarrassing story someone would like to share . . . . anyone?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 
Ann Coleman said
Zoom always defeats me!
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terrepruitt said
Awww. It is a challenge when there are so many cords, plugs, devices that are hooked up and trying to get them all to run together.
When we are doing our “cocktail” meeting we don’t have issues, it is when I try to hook up so much stuff. As I mentioned I think 1) moving everything around all the time disrupts things and 2) the age of the devices I am using.
I do think it is weird that the “share” works until someone signs on. It used to affect my camera. I would have everything set up and the second someone signed in everything would default back. Very frustrating when I am trying to be all set and ready to go and then BOOM it is all undone.
Thank you for sharing your Zoom frustration. Regardless of all of the whackiness I am so grateful for it because it has allowed me to teach!
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microphones said
Thank you so much. As a new Outschool teacher with limited tech experience this is really, really helpful. Your way of explaining is SO understandable. I’ve watched many other Zoom tutorials and they lose me when it comes to technology. This was great!
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terrepruitt said
Glad it helped you. Good luck . . . with technology sometimes we need it!
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