Last week I had an online school visit with a great group of students, but our time was cut short because of some tech issues. Our test visit the day before was fine, but on the day of the actual visit, either I could hear them or they could hear me, but not at the same time. We finally gave up on trying to connect via webcam and they instead put me on speakerphone. It was already kind of a short visit, one of the 20-ish minute Q&A sessions that I offer to classes that have read Chained, so by the time we connected, there wasn't time to answer everyone's questions before the students had to leave for lunch.
I told them that if they'd email me the questions that were left I'd reply back, and I decided later that answering on a vlog would be more fun than an email reply; this offers more of a school visit-ish follow-up to the Q&A session that was cut short. Plus, other classes who've read the book can use the video also, and post questions to be answered in a later video. It's also on TeacherTube, for those of you who can't access YouTube at school.
So, if you like the vlog, the tech problems will have turned out to be a good thing!
