This Again

Wednesday. Special ed health class. 

It's the end of the semester, so it's time for the STI unit. And on Wednesday, that meant HIV/AIDS. 

The lesson was pretty simple. We did a short reading/worksheet on the basics. Then they were to watch The Announcement on ESPN Plus. (It's a doc about Magic Johnson when he revealed to the world that he was HIV positive.) 

If you've been following my blog lately, you won't be surprised by what happened next. (Back in April. Last week.)

I gave the kiddos a bit of background as life with HIV is vastly different today than it was in 1991. Then I hit play.

Ms. T had helpfully set up computer with the video already cued up. I didn't have to turn anything on, log into anything, or set anything up. Foolproof, right? 

The video began. The buffer wheel popped on for a moment. Then the video played for a bit. Then the buffer wheel. It went back and forth a couple times until the buffer wheel came on, and the movie wouldn't continue.

Later I learned (via Mr. P) that that classroom is a bit of a black hole when it comes to the school WiFi. Ms. T constantly has issues. 

We got maybe 25 minutes into the doc when things went awry. For the next half hour, I tried every trick I know to get the thing working again. Well, almost every trick. I even called Mr. P for help. He couldn't get it working either.

In the midst of this, I had one last idea. I could plug the teacher's computer into the school's ethernet. I hesitated, though. The only cord I knew of was the one that connected the classroom phone. Did I want to not have a phone? 

(If the office needs to contact me, they call. I had already received a couple calls that day.)

By the time I had the idea, class was over. But what about for the next class? 

As I was debating, I glanced towards the floor, and I spied another ethernet cable. This one wasn't connected to anything. 

Once upon a time, classrooms had a couple desktop computers connected via wire to the internet. They've been removing these computers from the classrooms slowly over the last couple years. The computers were "ancient" (at least ten if not fifteen years old), so it's no big loss. But the outlets and some of the cables have remained.

I wondered if the cable was still connected to the internet. I plugged it in...

And I had no more problems with the movie for the rest of the day. 

Before, I couldn't even get ESPN Plus to load a search for the movie. After, the movie popped right up, started, and I got no buffer wheel.

I left the cable plugged in to Ms. T's computer. And Mr. P saw my solution. Maybe that'll help with her WiFi black hole issues. Too bad we figured this out at the end of the school year. Sigh.