Sometimes a "Fail" Can Be a "Find"

This year I subscribed my students to Scholastic Scope Magazine, a language arts publication designed specifically for middle school students that contains thrilling articles that my kids love to read. Some of their favorites?

This article about Facebook:

This Justin Bieber/Beatles compare and contrast activity:

And this awesome writing mechanics review cleverly disguised as an article chronicling the life of the famous competitive eater, Takeru Kobayashi...

When I got the latest issue, I was thrilled to find that they had made some reading comprehension quizzes with interactive PDFs, ones that could be edited and emailed directly to me. This was such a cool find since it jived so well with, ya know, the whole paperless concept. After reading this narrative nonfiction piece about one of the world's deadliest creatures, we embarked upon our new paperless adventure (shocking.), the interactive quiz.

Link sent to all students? Check.
Link retrieved by all? Check.
Bubbles marked? Check.
Short answers answered? Check.
Quizzes "Saved as..." and email sent? Fail..

If you don't already know, middle schoolers are pretty adept at fishing out a teacher's failed preparation, and my students are no exception. They quickly realized that whenever they "Saved as..." in order to make a copy of their completed quiz, they lost all of their answers.

I chalked it up to my not reading the directions carefully enough, apologized profusely, and told them to not worry about the quiz. (Contrary to popular perception, they were incredibly gracious.)

So, I do my duty to go back and double check my instructions, but find that nothing was wrong with them. Then I contacted the fine people at Scope asking for help. Not an hour after my email, someone wrote and said that my class had found a major glitch in their interactive quiz system! Not only did they thank us, but the editor of the magazine wrote a personal "thank you" and will be sending a gift to each of my students as a thanks for helping them fix their system.

This "Fail." was definitely a "Find".

Go team!

At First I Was Insulted....Then I Laughed.

So the TV spot aired on December 5, and I think it went ok. Of course I thought of 2039845702345 other ways to word things and remembered 2039857023 things I wanted to say but didn't, but all in all, the whole spot went well.

Then this morning a colleague of mine stopped me in the hallway as I was dropping off 37 hamburgers for my son's Christmas feast and mentioned that someone had commented on the story via the news website:

(Yes, I am aware there are some writing mechanics issues here...) Hurt and mortified that someone would think that about me, I wanted to get all of my friends to add comments to validate what I have dedicated the past 16 years of my life to: teaching.

And then I laughed.

I don't just teach Latin and English anymore; I've added an entirely new dynamic to my curriculum with this paperless thing. I teach Computer Troubleshooting, Computer Maintenance, Materials Management, Digital Organization, Personal Problem Solving, and Thinking Ahead 101.

Remember that poor soul who just couldn't get a screenshot to work nearly when we first started this project? He's so good at navigating a computer and thinking through computer glitches that I never have to fix anything for him any more. There was another boy (about whom I never wrote) who last year thought that his computer was personally out to drive him crazy. The other day out of no where, he raised his hand and said, "You know, I can't believe how good I've gotten at all of this." And he's right. He and 59 other people have gotten a free computer course in addition to the Latin and English that they signed up for. So, @idahoser, I don't use technology as an excuse to internet shop and catch up on my soaps; I use it to connect to kids, to save trees, and teach kids to do more than decline a noun or conjugate a verb.