RhetoricVille

I was doing some of that grading the modern way this afternoon when the server at my school went down. So I have the work graded, but can’t return it online until the server comes back up. This is not a big deal for me; I did not promise to have all the work returned today.   But this is final exam time, and I can imagine some students may have lost their connection during the middle of an online exam — through no fault of their own or their ISP. I am always easy-going when my students report technical difficulties. Even when I suspect the problem was of their own making, the fact is, taking a class online or partly online adds another layer of potential problems. Sure, some student claims of technical difficulties are just more of the old “the dog ate my homework” type of excuse. Teachers have a right to be skeptical. But like everyone else, they ought to fight against being cynical. There may be a  homework-eating dog out there somewhere.  For sure, there are servers that go “poof.”