Dear Community College,
Those summer online classes for middle schoolers look pretty interesting. Good on you for subcontracting with a real service provider who seems to know how good online education and picks something great.
Best,
Polly
Dear Service Provider,
I was really happy with how well set up is this week before the course begins. You communicated appropriately on timing. The materials to get set up prior to Monday's class were clear and it was a nice touch to have both video and written instructions for most steps. The organization of your webpages are wonderful and it's very clear how to proceed through the steps to get set up. It's clear you are a professional online learning provider that put a lot of resources into what normal people need.
My complaint is that the classes that logically go together (i.e., my kid is signed up for all of them across the summer) require different versions of the necessary software. Thus, I just spent two hours detangling the various versions of Java. Were I a less techy parent, I wouldn't have even known anything was wrong because I wouldn't have known to check the error console to discover that what looked like the Minecraft screen I expected and that allowed interaction was not actually the Minecraft that was supposed to launch on successful completion.
I am not happy that the first course we were set up to do uses the most modern version of Java while this course requires such an outdated Java version that you had to provide it.
I'm really, really, really unhappy that the absurdly old version of Java didn't also come with clear instructions on how to manage the fact that we have multiple Javas now installed and your freakin' program refused to pick up the right one, despite all the indications on the rest of the machine that we had indeed defaulted to the correct version for this program. That indicates to me that your program saved a default that we were unable to change except by complete uninstallation and reinstallation.
I suppose I could thank you for my new knowledge in the intricacies of JDK and JRE along with parts of my machine I had never before visited. However, my professional life that involves substantial programming never needs Java. This would have been much more useful as the gory details of Python, you know, the actual language used when the kids get programming in these courses. We only need Java for your tools--tools that could have been packaged as standalone executables that didn't need a Java installation, as some of the courses had.
I have to get some work done today, but I know this saga isn't done because it's very likely that my kid will want to use all these tools after all the classes are done, so I have spend even more time to figure out the way to make all these tools work together while having multiple JDKs installed, switchable, and usable with your tools. It's possible that I'm going to have to hack your tools so they work as my kid needs them.
Having content experts work independently instead of as a logical curriculum has created extra work for me. At least I can do the work. I don't know what happens for the kids who were really excited and then don't have adult help for the other parts. My bet is that this is again a situation where the kids who would benefit the most from a formal experience get less out of it because the formal experience doesn't go far enough.
Not a happy camper,
Polly
