Friday, March 21, 2014
I rolled over at 3:00 am and realized that today was the day Glass was being delivered! There was no going back to sleep at that point. I got up, got some coffee and spent the next few hours designing this blog. I knew that my students' parents would want to be a part of the wonderful project that they had helped fund, so I thought this would be a good way to keep them involved.
I checked the UPS tracking email and it told me that Glass had a guaranteed delivery of 10:30 am. That excited me, because even though I knew it was next-day delivery, the school closes at 3:30 and I was afraid they might come after that!
I can definitely say that karma was in the works yesterday. I teach 6 classes of technology, and one of them went on a field trip. Guess what time I normally taught them. Yup, you got it. 10:30! I spent the first two hours of my school day refreshing the shipping page, even though the email said, "Refreshing this page won't make Glass come faster." I thought that was cute on Google's part.
At 9:30, I refreshed the page one more time, and headed downstairs to grab my morning snack. I looped through the teachers lounge, headed towards the front office - just in case - and it was sitting on the receptionist's desk. She said, "You're lucky. He just dropped it off!" Lucky doesn't even begin to describe it.
Well, I had a class to teach. I texted my husband a picture of the box, and he commented that he was surprised it stayed in the box long enough for me to take a picture. Smart-aleck!
So it sat there for an hour. I went and grabbed my son, Daniel, who is a 5th grader where I teach. I would definitely say he was excited. I think he was vibrating. I had him video the "unboxing".
I let my son try them on first so I could get a picture to post. I told him he must be pretty special to get to try them on before I do! The look on his face is precious.
To get Glass to take a picture, you tilt your head up to wake it up, then say, "Ok, Glass, take a picture." Here's the first picture I took. Not real exciting, but it's still the first. I keep the lights off in my classroom, so that's why it's dark.
You can also add what's called a vignette to the picture. It adds what you were looking at on Glass when you took the picture.
I got the Glass hooked up to my phone. From there, it can use the phone's data. Luckily, my district provides Wi-fi for our personal devices, so I am not using up any plan data while at school. I then shared my first picture with my husband via Google+.
That was all I got done in the first hour. I then had to teach 5th grade, so I put Glass down to charge, as it has a reputation of having a short battery life.
Needless to say, I ate lunch in my classroom while playing with Glass. I used the video call function to talk to my husband while I ate. I was able to see him through the glass just like Facetime/Skype/Google hangout type applications. He, however, could not see me. He could only see what Glass saw. So he saw my desk, and my food.
One issue I encountered was the Glass kept trying to connect to the school's guest wireless. However, our guest wireless requires you to sign in on a webpage, which Glass cannot do. It would connect, but not get Internet. I finally figured out how to tell it to "forget" the guest network and just use my phone.
I was also able to share it with a parent who had been interested in it since I started my project. I am looking forward to putting some apps on it and letting him see what else it can do!
All week, my son and a friend had been helping me after school by putting away my laptops to charge. (I had wrist surgery, so picking up heavy things was not an option!) So, as a reward, I let the friend use the Glass after school. He took a video of Daniel, and then played it back while wearing the Glass. You get full color and sound, so it's pretty impressive. The look on his face when he played back the video made my day. The past three months have been hard work with the fundraising and getting approval, and his reaction made it all worthwhile. It's moments like that which solidify your decision to become a teacher.
Here's the video he took:
I sent a late day email inviting teachers to try it out after school. I didn't think I'd get any takers, as it was Friday. Friday afternoon at a school is often a ghost town. However, I had three teachers show up. We had a spectacular time with lots of belly laughs! One teacher was having trouble with the "look up to wake up" function, so she ended up looking a bit like a Saturday Night Live skit:
(Just a disclaimer here - this is a short portion of the SNL skit. If you go searching for the entire clip, I'd like to warn you there is inappropriate material in it.)
We then left school and I turned on the navigation to home to see how it worked. I had to use the earbud to hear the directions over the "Frozen" soundtrack being played in the van. Normally, the sound comes via bone-conduction vibrations from the Glass. But with the road noise and "Let it Go" I needed to use the plug in earbud.
I was unable to use the video provided with the navigation. I'm not sure if it was too bright, or the angle of the Glass was too high. But I could hear the directions. My husband called while I was driving, and I was able to read the directions to answer the phone call. He said he could hear me fine, but could tell I was using the Glass. He said there was just a bit of extra background noise.
I did use the "active shade" or clip on sunglasses that were provided. (I missed them in the unboxing video).
The Glass ran out of charge halfway home. I got home, plugged them in, and took an hour nap. (Remember what time I got up? 3:00 am!) My husband tried them out for a few minutes then we left to take the kids to Grandma's so we could go out on a date night. I left the Glass at home. I really hadn't had enough time to use it to explore it's features yet, and wanted to do that undistracted. I also knew that people (strangers) would want to try it, and I wasn't ready for that yet. I hadn't gotten to use it myself much yet!
Here's all the pictures that were taken with Glass the first day. If they seem random, they are. It was people just trying to figure out how to take a picture!
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| Glass Day 1 |
My goal for today is to explore all the features, and get more comfortable using it. I also am going to sit down and plan out my week and how I am going to introduce it to the students. It's going to take a while to let all 650 students try them on! I might go out in public today wearing them. I'm not sure yet. A quick trip to Wal-Mart should prove pretty interesting!
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