There have been many times where I have worked with technology and things just did not work out the way I thought they would. Everything from a television not finding a vcr or dvd to a projector burning up during a slide presentation. One of my most memorable was working with a ProTools system while teaching a Recording Techniques class.
I was consulted when the system was purchased but the tech person at the time found a “great deal” on a custom PC that was supposed to be better. Before each class I would set up the session for the class so our time could be used hands on rather than talk about what can be done. Most times the system would start up, but usually it took two or three re-boots to get it going and for the PC to read all of the interfaces. Once the class got started and students started getting a few tracks down, the secondary hard drive that held the sessions would disappear and this caused a crash for the entire system. This led to more trouble shooting to get everything back up and running just in time for class to end.
Ultimately the class became a troubleshooting class instead of a techniques class as intended. The usual solution to the problem was to hook up the hardware to my Mac laptop that had my version of ProTools to run class and shift the student sessions onto an external drive. This slowed things up but at least we were able to do more than troubleshoot a system.
This story has a happy ending. One of my past students is now earning his Bachelor’s Degree in Recording Engineering. He has emailed me a number of times to tell me how he was able to get a ProTools system up and running, even before his professor could solve the problem. The computer, after many returns, has been replaced by a Mac and the trouble shooting course has not been taught since.
Great story. I can't tell you how many times I've been stuck with nothing to teach because my CMS wasn't accessible on the network because the server might have been down or the district firewall was blocking everything, to one time the teacher in the class next door turned off a power switch that somehow killed power on the router that was serving my room. As much as I love technology, it's a thin line between triumph and disaster. I'm glad your students got to exercise their troubleshooting skills. I took my out to play basketball.
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