Shame Shame Shame...Shame On Moi

Friday was the cut-off day for mid-quarter progress reports. And because that's when some teachers (not Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, of course) are rushing around trying to come up with grades that they have not posted since the first week of school, and have them entered into the computer gradebook system by Monday morning at 8:00...somebody had the most scathingly brilliant idea to upgrade the computer gradebook program Friday at 4:30. It was expected to take considerable time.

Being an overachiever, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom not only had all of her grades done and input by 3:10, she also made a printout of her rosters and assignment scores JUST IN CASE. You never know.

This morning I fired up my laptop as usual. I signed in and opened the program for taking attendance and doing just about everything else except giving the stinkeye. WHAT'S THIS? A dialog box popped up telling me that I could install the new version of the computer gradebook program, or click to use the old version. Hmpf! I didn't really have time to deal with that. But I knew if I used the old version, I would not find the time during the day to install the new version, and why would we all get the new version if we could simply continue using the old version.

So I did it. I clicked to install the new program. There were five steps. I muddled along. It didn't really do what it said it was going to do. Then I saw that I had tried to finish by saving the program instead of running it. VOILA! My new computer gradebook program worked like a champ. Like a former champ resting on his laurels, because I'll be ding-dang-donged if I could see anything different besides a bit spiffier cosmetic appearance.

I set up my assignments for the day, so I could just commence to entering new scores as I got them graded. Then I checked the announcements to see if anything new had suddenly come up. Then I opened my email. WHOOPS! There was an all-call message to all faculty, forwarded from the tech guy through the superintendent, that teachers SHOULD NOT TRY TO INSTALL THE NEW UPDATED COMPUTER GRADEBOOK PROGRAM until notified by the technology department. That we should just click on the old version until further notice.

Sweet Gummi Mary! Ain't THAT a fine how-do-you-do? Shame, shame, shame...shame on me!

Right away I dashed off an email to the tech guy, apologizing for going against instructions, hoping nothing was amiss, but with the explanation that I always log onto the main doing-things program first, click on the gradebook-opening box, then go to sign in to email. And that, by the way, my gradebook program was operating just fine.

You can't tell me I'm the only one who did that!