Now I know why I don't preview!!

This is writing number two....I decided to preview my last post and instead lost it.
My post is about the skyping online conference. I was relieved to hear the presenter talk about being prepared for technical difficulties and to have an alternate plan. I feel this can not be understated. Having just gone through 4 months of using skype to communicate with my son while he was overseas, while it was an amazing tool, it was also extremely frustrating. Every conversation we had was marred by long periods of frozen conversation and pictures and dropped calls, hardly conducive to seamless communication. I wonder how much I would have persevered if it was not such an emotionally charged connection I was seeking. I was happy even seeing his frozen image, but when I had important information that had to be conveyed, it was done via the more reliable written word. I cannot imagine how frustrated I would be if I were trying to work on something for the classroom and had similar technical difficulties.
I had experienced many technical difficulties with skype on my daughter's computer, but decided to add it to my own so that I could try communicating with my son independently. Immediately after adding it, my computer crashed, eventually requiring reimaging. While talking to technical support from the computer company, they said the problem was due to my having added skype. Were they correct? I don't know, but skype has not been added back onto my computer because I am not willing to take that risk. I think the concept of using skype for working on projects with people from other parts of the world is very exciting but fraught with challenges. I don't know if, as we enter this digital age and culture, we will all become more adept at dealing with technological glitches, or if, as we get past the first 10th of the 21st century, these tools become more reliable and we therefore experience fewer technological glitches. I do know that, had my communication with my son been out of a need to get a task done, the frustration would have increased. When listening to these online conferences, there have been many where the video/audio freeze and skip and I then need to choose a different talk. How does one deal with these things in a classroom, especially when their technology equipment may be less sophisticated? Even though I am extremely proud of where I am regarding my ability to problem-solve when my technology goes awry, it is an extremely time consuming proposition and not easily accomplished within a classroom environment. During this course, my technological challenges have been many, 3 computer near-death experiences, all requiring starting up with an essentially new and naked computer, inability to view many videos, forgetting of my passwords for my blogs, wikis, nings, etc. and other problems I have erased from my personal working memory. When you think about the need for careful timing for the communication with a faraway classroom, I personally would be frightened to invest too much of my teaching in the likelihood of the alignment of all of the needs working at the same time. Not only does my equipment and my counterpart's equipment have to be in working order, our connections need to work,from where I sit with how technology has worked for me for the past four months, it seems more likely that I would find a four leaf clover!