I experienced Murphy's Law again this morning

This morning, I experienced Murphy’s Law again.

Earlier on, I had invited Miss Angel Yu to join this morning’s Zoom class session to share her experience in flipped learning with the teachers enrolled in my Master’s course. I had sent Angel the Zoom link and password three days before, scheduled her sharing to start at 11:15 this morning, and was assuming that she would be able to join my Zoom session at the specified time smoothly.

At 11:10, I still didn’t notice Angel’s request to join the Zoom session. I checked my Messenger and Whatsapp, and was shocked to see that Angel had just texted me urgently, as the Zoom system rejected her entry, on grounds that she was not a registered member of the CUHK Zoom system.

I was caught totally unprepared for that scenario. I literally freaked out as her sharing should start in a couple of minutes, and I absolutely had no idea how to fix the problem. In my confused mental state, I just sent her the Zoom link again, and of course to no avail. I was just totally stranded and couldn’t figure out what to do next clearly.

Luckily, at this point, one teacher in the class suggested that I ask Angel to create her Zoom session and that we should all join her instead. I followed his suggestion, and Angel’s sharing got off the ground, albeit ten minutes later than scheduled.

I’m aware that technical problems may arise when I use technology in my classes, whether online or face-to-face. So I always turn up in the classroom, or open a Zoom meeting, at least 25 minutes before a class starts, to check the technical set-up. But on this occasion, I was still not careful enough, and didn’t do something to ensure that Angel could get access to my Zoom session smoothly.

Hence, this morning’s scenario is a good reminder to me: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”