Pop quiz, hot shot….While on winter break you plan several activities for the first day back that require a projector. The first morning back you are running a little late so you don’t have the chance to turn on your projector before the students enter the room. After taking attendance you turn on your projector (or Smart Board) and it starts to warm up……and then it shuts off. You think to yourself “Hmmm that’s weird.” So you try again and get the same result. At this point you notice that the red light next to the picture of a bulb is flashing. Dun Dun Dun! Your bulb died over the break. So there you are standing in front of 30 students who are ready to learn and you can’t share your activity with them. What do you do? Do you beg the office to make copies for you? Bribe the teacher next door to let you use their projector? What do you do?

This exact scenario played out in my class yesterday. For some reason over the break my Smart Board bulb died and I was left standing in front of my students wondering “How am I going to get them this information?” My solution was to embed the document onto our class blog. The fact that in about 2 minutes I can embed a document from Google and then have my students access it is just another example of why I love WordPress. Ultimately I think that embedding the document into my WordPress site is going to be better for my students. Many of them commented that they enjoyed that they could view the document close up and navigate it at their own speed.  What should have been a lesson killer instead turned into an eye opening experience that will influence how I approach distributing work to the students.

-Ryan