[Haley23]

We are in person. But due to Covid rules, every meeting is on zoom. I am SO over it. Today I had 3 IEP meetings. I feel like I'm in the old "can you hear me now" commercial. There are constant issues. The sound distorts, someone can't hear anyone, someone's video cuts out, someone's mic cuts out, someone freezes, someone gets kicked out entirely. Fix that and someone else starts having issues.

In addition to the 3 IEP meetings I had a short meeting with a dad to go over an amendment. I felt so badly for him. He kept trying to ask a question, but his sound was so distorted we had no idea what he was saying. I kept asking him to type it in the chat, but either he didn't hear me or didn't know how to do that. After several tries he said "I don't have any questions" because I'm sure he was just tired of trying.

And all year of this. I have a hard time picturing what the "end" of this pandemic will look like. Will there even be an end? Will there ever be a day again where we can all cram into our tiny conference room and talk to parents face to face, and be able to see and hear each other the entire time? What a novel idea!

If (let's be honest, when) we go to remote learning much of it has to be synchronous. You guessed it, via zoom. I will literally lose my mind. It is so frustrating to not be able to do just the most basic of tasks. I could run an annual IEP meeting in my sleep. But now it is a big to-do with all of these technical issues. And I'm not even typing out all of our issues with getting paperwork digitally signed.

[cdeteacher]

I’m with you except mine is Google Meets. We are all virtual and it is the pits.
Sending positive thoughts that tomorrow will be a better tech day for you.

[Izzy23]

Ok, does every meeting HAVE to be on Zoom? Can you just call him? Put him on speaker phone? That poor dad!

[2teach2]

You just stated what I wanted to VENT about! It's so frustrating trying to teach 2nd graders on Zoom with all of the Internet issues. With the lag in internet, it took one student 5 minutes to read one page of easy text in my guided reading group today. And getting everyone to actually hold up their white boards to show me their work so we can proceed with our lesson.....forget it! Ugh!

[GraceKrispy]

Oh wow, I feel terribly for that dad, too! I agree that a phone call should have been made. I've been doing Zoom for meetings and teaching since March pretty much nonstop and luckily have grown to love Zoom (because I understand it and it works for most of us- finally- after some troubleshooting here and there). I definitely had to adjust to things, though. Kids and parents need access- I hope things work out.

[dee]

It was refreshing being able to hear everything!

[Tawaki]

My smart phone over heats during Zoom meetings.

What my doctor does (big deal university MD, with a big legal/compliance department), is have you run the streaming video part long enough so he "knows" it's actually you. Then I click my thumb nail picture/avatar. It shuts off my video, and I can do Zoom like a "phone call". I can still see his video stream, but he just sees my thumbnail.

This way the tech isn't trying to over reach what it is doing with limited capabilities. The video part at the beginning is enough for the legal/insurance department to know that the correct person is on the other end.

My doctor legally can not do office appointment phone calls. He lost a ton of telemed appointments because most people don't have a high end smart phone or a computer with a web cam. The streaming then switch to thumb nails lets most people participate.

[caseycat]

We use freeconferencecall.com
It is truly free. Once in a rare while last spring someone would have to hang up and call back in. I also found that without the f2f the meetings went much faster.