It's November Sweeps time, so here's my own cliffhanger.

Today I will be trying something that I've never done before: an online webinar. Although it's been done by other folks in CIS before, this is my first time moderating and presenting on my own, and it is also a first for my audience on the other end. So I expect a few bumps along the way... But that makes for an exciting story, right? Anyways, in the interest of not having one big long blog post, I'm going to break this up into parts (hence why I'm starting before I've even done the activity yet).

My audience is a group of 4th and 5th grade classrooms (five in total, of 15-20 students each) at the Martin Luther King Elementary School in Utica, NY. I have visited this school for the past two years, but this year it was not feasible to make the trek so instead we decided to do something remotely. This also posed the advantage that it would be a new presentation and activity for the students, as last year we did high speed video and the year before we did thermal imaging. So, this time around I will present all about cameras and then lead the students through a step-by-step camera disassembly activity.

I ordered and sent out the one-time-use cameras ahead of time, and also did a dry run of connecting with the school via the Adobe Connect webinar software a couple days ago. So, everything seemed to be in order - until last night as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I realized I had overlooked something very important - TOOLS! It seems obvious now how important they are, but in the whole scheme of organizing and ordering things, it was very easy to overlook the actual tools needed to do the disassembly. (In my defense, this was my first time organizing this activity remotely, but others who have done it remotely before had it slip their minds too - so, I'm not alone. Really!) And so came the frantic 11PM e-mail to the school principal, which also led into frantic phone calls this morning. As of yet, I'm not sure whether we might have to reschedule.

So for now, CLIFFHANGER: Will the tools get acquired on time??!? Will we be able to go forward as planned?! Find out in our next installment. (I know you're on the edge of your seats.) (Well, I actually am.)