No YouTube at school? No problem.

 Yesterday, I wanted to show my class a brief clip of Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor. After all, this is the prelude that enchants Edna Pontellier, protagonist of The Awakening, and stirs her passions.

Too bad our school’s filter blocks YouTube.

Sure, I could have downloaded the video the night before and come to school prepared. But sometimes, ideas don’t happen that way. Good teaching sometimes happens in the moment.

So instead of nixing the idea — or playing just the audio — I just found the video on my phone, put it underneath my document camera, zoomed in, and pressed play.

It worked perfectly.

My students didn’t care that the video was coming from my phone.

Sometimes, workarounds are easier than we think.

It’s easy to complain about technology in schools — how we’re way behind, how the filter blocks too much content, how it isn’t worth it to use technology in our classes.

Maybe that’s all true. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be resourceful and figure things out. Sure, it’s hard to find time to seek grants and to post projects on DonorsChoose. But for right now, what’s the alternative?