Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The past two days have been pretty hectic as it was our school’s E Learning – two blasted days for us to sit at home and stare at the computer until our eyes rot out.
Well mine did. Almost, anyway.
The thing is that technology sometimes brings out the best and the worst in humans. We were told to sit down quietly in our homes or anywhere with a computer and internet access and a decent FlashPlayer as well as Adobe, and Windows Media Player that no one used anyway –
Talking about WMP, I’ve gotten the new WMP 11. It looks very, very sleek and pretty, with its shiny, glossy black covering and the seek bar that looks like a pretty blue fuse when you play songs. Then there’s the fact of how they categorise the songs. Just that alone is enough to make me want to revert back to WMP 10. I miss WMP 10!
- Ahem, enough distractions now.
Well I can safely say that the school’s server was completely not suited to deal with the traffic. I mean I woke up at 8am for the past two days to go online at 10am only to discover that
a) They uploaded all the powerpoints onto some Flash thing, with the teachers speaking coherently.
b) Practically ¾ of the time is spent zoning out in front of the computer waiting for SOMETHING to load.
c) The fact that some kiddies couldn’t even load the WorkSpace page itself says alot.
But at least they rectified the problem! And for that I am happy.
So aside from the predictable technical glitches and stuff, I really saw the kindness in humans these two days. We did communal sharing; when one person couldn’t access this particular file, a person who could access it would come to the rescue with the saved file on MSN. And mass emails were sent out, with e-lectures, blank notes, worksheets all attached and a reminder to thank the person who did all of this in the first place – who wasn’t the one who sent it out.
Of course Aggie did wonders and her shameless AJC concert merchandising again.
And I actually got sick of the internet. I’d stare and seriously stare until my eyes hurt.
But in the end, all was well. The major glitches were on Monday, when all kiasu kids would come and try to load everything so as to be able to relax on Tuesday. I feel eternally grateful to the kiddies who’ve helped me so far, and I feel that there is much love in the world right now, other than the fact that I had waited over 6 hours for a ½ hour chemistry lecture to actually work on Monday.
The next day, the mass email was sent with all the slides attached and, best of all, quiet slides.
I felt kind of cheated.
The worst is that kids tend to get distracted, as I did, but not as badly as someone I know –
XINLI STOP JAEHO-ING RIGHT NOW
- And (ah damn pins and needles helphelphelp) thus didn’t get much work done. But I can safely say that all my online work is done, a couple of minutes before they closed the entire thing too – yes I have wonderful timing – and is quite satisfied.
I am quite happy though. I did some decent work! But not much. So that’s a complete bugger.
So ---
‘The world is round. Embrace it or it’ll roll you flat.’

Posted by norbert at 4/11/2007 12:07:00 AM