Tag Archives: Google Hangouts

* Share Your World

It’s Monday and time to respond to Cee’s Share Your World blogging challenge.  If you haven’t seen her photography blog, you’ve been missing out.  She has a terrific eye for beauty!

Here are my responses to her questions:

  1. If I had to spend a weekend alone in a store but couldn’t remove anything, I would head to Stone’s Education Super Store in Raleigh, NC.  I can’t imagine that this family-owned store would be empty, but I would find plenty to do!  It could rival heaven to spend a weekend ALONE, slowly savoring all the fantastic teaching supplies.  Oh my!  My heart leaps at the thought.  What if I just filled one large bag?
  2. My favorite comfort food snack is chocolate.  Milk chocolate, either Dove or Cadbury.  Forget those dark, healthy things.  If I wanted to taste that flavor, I’d chew the cacao beans raw.
  3. The largest city I’ve visited would be London, but I was a teenager, so that was eons ago.  I’ve lived in San Francisco as an adult, so I have many more memories of special times, like when my sister and her kids nearly drowned at Baker Beach.  Not something I’d ever forget!
  4. It has recently come to my attention that it’s a bit challenging to record Google Hangouts.  I have tried a number of options but nixed them all in favor of privacy.  On the other hand, I took a picture of a kiddo I’m tutoring.  This was simply one of those moments that cries out to be captured for posterity.  By the way, one advantage of Google Hangouts over Skype for long-distance teaching is that you can enjoy a brain break quite easily and for FREE!  Take a look.  He was excited after beating me in a bingo game, for the millionth time.
  5. Student  I am grateful that my dearest widower has given up the table in the sun room.  I have crept out there in his absence, after cleaning all the eraser crumbs away.  I am looking forward to swimming this week, God willing.

* Google Hangnoose, er, Hangout

HangoutSo much for long-distance teaching!  Here’s what happened this morning. I woke up at 7:15 to be totally on for my 8:00 session.  At 7:45, I started readying my computer, Black Beauty.  Only while I was sleeping, a direhorse (from Avatar, remember?) slipped into Black Beauty’s sleek frame.  Remember how much fun Jake had trying to ride a direhorse?  I was a broken woman after 45 minutes of struggling to get saddled up.  My poor student and his grandparents had been patiently waiting, so we eventually started our session.  It was 8:37, my student told me.  But who’s counting the minutes?

My student was perfect but we lost Google Hangouts three times during the session.  At one point, I became “mute” to him.  He started saying, “I can’t hear you!”  I can’t hear you!”  I nodded to let him know I was aware of the problem.  He wrote me a note that read, “I can’t hear you.”  I wrote him a note saying. “I can hear you!”  He started nodding and making gestures, which reminded me of how people react when someone is deaf or speaks another language.  Eventually that was resolved.

If you read my previous post on long distance teaching, you recall my overwhelming pride in the careful organization of materials.  That feature also went awry when this kid’s game section had fallen out of his binder and all the calling cards became separated from their matching bingo cards.  The calling cards have various types of syllables which make no sense unless you have the matching bingo set.  They were color-coded but two were yellow and neither one matched, for some odd reason.  I would liked to have put my hand through the screen and… (you thought I was going to say something else) checked the bags for myself, but we moved on to a different game.

Oh, Google Hangouts does not have an on-screen timer like Skype.  Or at least I couldn’t find it.  I did play around with the accessories, adding a halo to my student since he was so awesome.  That was when I “lost” my microphone, so perhaps that glitch was my fault.  Probably not.