"One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure." John Gardner

I'd just like to go on record today saying that I am a mature person.  Or certainly give a passable imitation of a mature person, and I now have ample evidence that I have not stopped learning.  The iPad initiative offers me opportunities every single day to fail.

Monday was the setup day for this week's opportunity to experience failure.  I could see it as it was unfolding.  It is a particularly unsettling sensation to watch the opportunity for failure develop.  At first, there is just a gentle sense of unease, an awareness that not all the information you are hearing is really being understood.  Next, there are moments that are true tests of your "maturity" - opportunities to bravely speak up and admit that you do not understand what is being explained or asked of you.  Then, eventually, there is the climactic moment when you realize you have attained failure.

Allow me to introduce you to this week's agent of failure and, hence, my learning experience:

Looks  benign enough, eh?  Don't let its sleek design deceive you.  This "appliance" is designed to confound.  What is it, you ask?  And why do we have one?  Lightspeed offers us internet content filtering for our iPads.  It is an absolutely critical component to our initiative because its presence and operation assure our students a safe internet experience when they use their iPads on or off campus.  

Like all network related "appliances", it requires configuration and setup and that's what began at school on Monday.  As a "mature" individual, I am generally able to assess when I am going to need some help and it was clear to me from initial research about this device that I was going to need help negotiating my way through this process.  I invited two technicians from TAB Inc. to join me for the conference call with the Lightspeed Engineer.  Thank goodness I did.  After getting off to a good start, we had our appliance connected to our firewall and our new wireless network switch when we noticed that we lost all connectivity.  Our "installation" call rapidly transformed itself into a trouble shooting technical tango that involved lengthy discussion of things like ip addresses, pings, dns, etc....  It was like visiting a foreign country.  Have I mentioned that the technicians from TAB are just invaluable to us?

Eventually, all was resolved and we proceeded along and I was able to create and assign some rule sets and block some objectionable sites and add some words to a blocked keyword search list and all in all, really, I was feeling pretty good about some of this.  Remember that adage - "Pride goeth..."?

Today, armed with a sheaf of notes I had scribbled by hand, I began creating an Evernote note about the whole process and thought I'd just access the Lightspeed "dashboard" to take a look at some of what I had done.  Imagine the grand moment of failure ----I am unable to figure out how to sign into our dashboard.  No amount of cruising around the Lightspeed website shows me a login screen, I have only a vague recollection of how we "shared" our session yesterday and since that required a code, I don't think it's an option today.  After fiddle-faddling away too much precious time, I threw in the towel. 

Tomorrow is another day and another training conference call.  I will bravely admit I cannot find my dashboard and then, I'll drive on.  Confident of one thing, at least - I am still learning.

If you'd like to learn a little more about Lightspeed, though not about how to find the dashboard, click here.