Almost Catastrophic Technology Fail!!

Well even the biggest technology users have technology fails sometimes!  The thing that matters is if you roll with it and quickly recover.

Our district prints our Benchmarks for us because it is so much paper, but I had opted out.  Who needs paper pencil tests when you have technology?  It was going to be perfect...BENCHMARKS on the iPads.  Bubblesheet automatically imports the scores into Mastery Connect - piece of cake.  I even heard cheers about benchmarks when the kids found out it was on the iPads!

I knew Thursday (a week ago) I was having some problems with my iPads when two kids brought them to me because it said "plug into iTunes."  Never a good sign when nothing is on the iPad.   My amazing district tech specialist came out to help me the next day.  As we began looking at the iPads, we noticed about 5 of them now had that same sign.  I toted those few home to fix over the weekend because I needed them Monday for two tests.  After a few hours on Saturday, those iPads were restored and ready to be used.

I got to school on Monday morning and plugged those five iPads in along with the rest to make sure they had that final charge before the test!  The kids got the iPads out and we went to specials.  When we came back, we got ready to take the benchmark and as the kids started opening their iPads I heard chaos erupt as one kid started with, "Hey! What's wrong with my iPad?" and then another and another and another and ANOTHER AND ANOTHER...15 kids!  Their iPads were now saying the same thing that the five over the weekend had said!  With 15 iPads out there was NO way the test was possible with technology, but we had to get started!  I got another teacher to cover my class and frantically ran up to the work room to make copies!  Thankfully, the 'Wonderful Monday Copy Mom' was up there and made the rest of the copies while I went down and got the kids started on page 1!  During lunch I went and made the second benchmark copies for the PM testing session.  (Oh and the good-front-to-back-staple your whole packet copier was BROKEN TOO)

My dear friend and technology specialist came back out to my class and worked furiously ALL afternoon and into the evening so we could have iPads working for Tuesday's test.  WE DID IT!!  Tuesday morning, my kids were able to download the reading test into their "Note Anytime" app and write all over it!!  Saved by Kennemer!

Although we recovered the iPads so that we could take the benchmarks, there is still something not quite right with Apple Configurator and the iPads.  I must unsupervise my iPads, wipe them clean, and start fresh, but not until we looked over the tests on the iPad because we will loose everything!

Technology fails...just roll with it...make do...and keep fiddling with it!