We need to teach the students to work around technology too! Subbing April 4-8

This week I subbed for an industrial tech, science teacher. He was out because his wife had their baby and the baby needed surgery because of a hole in its heart. As most of the classes were industrial tech, the teacher left a power point for the students to read, some worksheets for the students to work on and a few assignments. One thing this teacher did that I really liked was discussion questions on blackboard. He gave the students three questions that they needed to research and answer, then he had them reply to at least two answers from other students for each of the questions. The students complained about them at first, but they really got into them. They had a week and a half to complete the questions, but most of them finished the work a week early. When does this ever happen? This also allowed the teacher to observe their thoughts without being in the classroom. This is very similar to what we did in our Theory of teaching reading and writing classes.
    There was a big issue this week with technology. There have been issues with the drives that host the student and teacher files. ITS had been warning the students that they would need to clean out their drives, and that if they they did not clean out their files their account would be frozen, though they would still be able to access their files. Unfortunately, on Friday the student drive disappeared. I subbed for an English class in one of my off hours and they were working on presentations. The students completely shut down, they decided that they couldn’t work on their projects because they couldn’t access their files. I told them there was no excuse for not getting their presentations done. They only lost a class times worth of work and they still had their research. Some of the students had even had files they had emailed to each other so they still had access to those at least. Half of the students grudgingly worked on their projects, but the other half insisted that they couldn’t work on them. I am all for teaching technology and using technology, but we also need to teach the importance of backing up your work and finding alternatives when technology doesn’t work out. It is unacceptable for students to shut down just because they can’t access a few files.