Tuesday Slice: Debugging

Hindsight (even just a day later) being 20-20, yesterday was not the best day to try out our new iPads in the library.  I had been up since 245a, running on less than six hours of sleep in order to get our daughter to the airport by 5a. 

I got to work by 7a, and my focus was split between tracking her flights, moving tables back to their proper places for reading, managing broadcast team questions and trying to find lunch pictures for them, and sticking the 27 QR codes I had printed out in the appropriate places for the 8a double class visit I was expecting--sans assistant, since she was covering a class for a PLC.

I had tested one of the QR codes with a student iPad on Friday, so I was fairly confident that despite my exhaustion and split focus, the lesson would work.

But they didn't.  After explaining to the classes how to get to the i-nigma app, I snapped on a QR code to demonstrate.  Went to the Safeshare URL, but didn't play the video.

Two more QR codes, two more failures.  

At this point, I admitted defeat, and sent the students off to check out books, which is what they really wanted to do anyway.  I was able to pull up my videos on my Google Drive and show them a few, but the impact was lost.  Cue the "wah-wah-wah" sound effect.

Thankfully, the rest of Monday's classes were lower grades, and there were no bugs to be seen in reading Pat Miller's We're Going on a Book Hunt.  I remembered our Book Nook songs to sing with the kindergarten and first grade classes, and praised them for their use of shelf markers.  Even the second graders were happy to be back in the library, checking out books.

Weary as I was at the end of the day, I managed to make a Nearpod presentation using most of the videos I made, including a few quizzes thrown in to see if the students are listening.  Fingers crossed that this lesson works for the fourth graders arriving at 830 this morning.

P.S. Read here for a 2011 take on the term "debugging".

P.P.S.  My ITS found out the reason my QR codes didn't work--had to do with site blocking.  Friday's success was a fluke due to a temporary unblocking that day.  What are the odds?