Wednesday, April 13, 2005

How To Sell on Ebay...Getting Technology Right?

So... as many of you know... I teach a class entitled How to Sell Your Junk on eBay and Make a Profit Doing So!

I have taught three two hour sessions so far and something has gone wrong with each of the three sessions. Interestingly enough... it always involves technology...

Lesson 1 -- I was put into a classroom where each of the students would get their own computer and we would have then all follow along as we all write a listing together.

Technology Problem During Lesson 1 -- Not all of the computers worked. I had all these whiny people bitching and moaning because their computers didn't work. My solution was to have everyone huddle around a one computer and they watched it being done.

Lesson 2 -- To rectify the mass computer breakdown from happening, I asked for a room with a computer and a Power Point projector.

Technology Problem During Lesson 2 -- The projector was not functioning. It required the manager of the program to call the school's audio-visual manager at home. He walked me through the process that is special to this school and class started 20 minutes late.

Lesson 3 -- To avoid another projector problem, I was sure to bring my own.

Technology Problem During Lesson 3 -- Sure enough, the school's didn't work so I quickly set up my projector and was ready to go... except... the administrator didn't have the password for the computer. She made a few calls and promised to me in front of the group that she would find the password. 2 hours later, she never showed up. I taught the entire class without being able to even show the class what eBay looks like.

To get even with the last mistake, I asked the class to fill out their evaluation forms and "mention" that they would have liked to have had a computer screen to look at. Visual aids would have been nice. At least she left me a nice message this morning (two days later) apologizing for the debacle...

Lesson 4 is in less than two weeks. Let's see if I can get it to work this time... Actually... none of the problems have been because of me... I hope the next one can go off without a hitch....these sure didn't.

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