Why technology sucks (or maybe it's just me...)

Some days are disasters. Today was one of those days.

Last night I spent a few hours creating a game of Jeopardy on powerpoint, to be shown via my LCD projector. I made said game on my macbook (this mention of my computer is important, I promise -- I am not Kanye West blogging about typing away on my Mac Air).

At school, I realized that I didn’t have the adaptor cord that connects my Mac to the LCD projector. In fact, I have no idea where it is and haven’t seen it all year. That’s fine – I also have a regular old PC laptop (thanks Baltimore City), which connects to the projector. So I emailed the powerpoint to myself and was ready to go. Ha. I wish it was that easy.

All the figures and pictures that I had put in the powerpoint wouldn’t show up – instead, they showed some message about Quicktime and a decompressor. A quick Google search (I did a google) told me that even if I downloaded those things the pictures still wouldn’t show up. GREAT. At this point it was about 8:08 am. First period starts at 8:15 am.

I ended up taking screen shots of EVERY SLIDE (which DO translate from Mac to PC). But that took a while, and I did it while reviewing the review packet that students had done for homework (watch me teach! Watch me juggle ten things at once!) While I’m reviewing the packet and fixing Jeopardy, one of the assistant principal walks in, apparently to make sure that I’ve made sure that students are in uniform -- which I am diligent about (to the point that students really complain about how crazy I am) EVERY DAY except, of course, today – because I’m teaching and fixing my computer AT THE SAME TIME.