Dr. Neil Hair

OK, right at the start of the entry I want to make one thing absolutely clear. I had permission from my wife from the get go and we were several hours away from delivery (honest!). OK. So – its official I LOVE technology. To cut a very long story and even longer process shorter – we went into hospital on Wednesday night as soon as I finished my last undergraduate class (an amazing one with some great people in it at that). Thursday was my last taugh class for my MBA's and with it being week ten the materials were rather essential. So, what to do. I called on the help of two previous online learners of mine – Ashley and Kate – to help me set up class virtually. Everything was in place by 5.45pm and we were ready to go by 6pm despite being ten miles away and kind of tied up with my wife showing very early signs of labor. So this is how it worked. We managed to pull off a whole session using my office hours Adobe Connect Meeting room, I presented my slides and debriefed class as I usually do, with a two way camera conference call complete with text chat for questions and URL links. Despite a few audio glitches their end the session went really well. I took questions over the phone in our delivery room, my wife waved enthusiastically at the crowd (this proved popular!) and we managed to complete class without incident (including the wife going into full labor – that happened a few hours later and Id like to think my lecturing skills had nothing to do with it!). Amusing, whilst I was lecturing, I had three resident nurses come in to see what was going on (seems the news we were lecturing in the room spread pretty quickly), Roses Doctor, and then two OB residents! I can tell you honestly that this proved to be one of the most distracting teaching situations I think Ive ever been in!! But I persevered and it went well – lots of interaction as usual with me asking class questions and then calling on individuals to provide answers. Overall I was really pleased to be part of that experience, my class was fantastic – motivated as usual and seemed to enjoy it all. Amusingly, last night I saw one of our nurses who stopped me and affirmed one of the comments I had made in my lecture to class – 'youre right Neil, there really is only one best way to make money, have more than one job!' She also confirmed that she'd really enjoyed the lecture of course – I also recorded it for my students

Thanks connect, class, Rose and of course little Lillian who is now the most important student to me in the world.