I have been spending a lot of time playing around with Zoom, coming up with the best way our tutoring center can use it for online tutoring.
I thought I had everything figured out, but I neglected one small detail: one person cannot host concurrent sessions.
Our students do not have licenses for Zoom; that privilege is for faculty and staff. So, I was planning on creating all the meetings for each of our tutors\’ shifts. However, I can\’t host a meeting while I\’m running synchronous class. That fact sent me into a quiet anxiety attack.
My colleagues called an emergency Zoom meeting to discuss Zoom meetings\’ limitations. In the 20 minutes from that message to the time of the meeting, I set to email.
In my last entry, I mentioned our CIO being attached to email. He was also an early champion for Zoom. I emailed him directly.
After a few emails, I thought all the work I did (written procedures, in-person training, screencasts) was about to be scrapped, and I was going to have to start over with Google Meet.
I felt like I had failed. I took a leadership role on this endeavor, and I spent a long 20 minutes trying to not cry. (Though, I\’m not sure why I tried to not cry; I\’m in my own living room.)
4 minutes before our emergency Zoom meeting, I got the message that my fantastic CIO was going to buy additional licenses for our tutors. It\’s a good thing we are working remotely, because I would have forgotten to ask for consent before I hugged him.
So, instead of my fabulous colleagues having to talk me off of a ledge and remind me that I am not a failure, I was promised a congratulatory ice cream cake.
T minus 39 hours before we go live. I got this. I think.
