I watched the speech from home, live online at CNN.com Worked fine.

WWWHHHOOooooo caressssss?????

And then when you log on to the NY Times website to read the lead story about the speech......Bess the brilliant filter blocks it because it thinks its a blog....Go figure.

If the government hadn't taken away our analog system, they could have just wheeled in a cheap TV!

Mike: You care, apparently. Not only did you take the time to read the blog, but you felt it warranted submitting a response. That's a lot of work to put in over something you don't care about...

Mike:

I think it's a sad day when someone asks who cares about kids listening to the President of the United States. I have over the past 40 or so years listened to a few speeches from the different Presidents - some I liked, some I agreed with, some I hated and protested about, but all I listen to with respect - the respect that is due from all Americans when the President talks. Listening and giving some thought to what the President says is what gives our country power and is the difference between the United States and other countries. And when it comes to the kids who are in the City Schools - majority African American - who have never seen someone with the same skin color they share holding the highest office in our land, leading the most powerful country in the world, I think that we should be encouraged that so many were interested in hearing what he had to say, discussing his ideas and his life story and thinking about their own responsibility as they attend school. I was frustrated that we could not access this for our kids and for the rest of the community. I am not sure if this was simply a local ITD overload issue (had something to do with it) or if it was simply that the places where we wanted to view this from where overwhelmed, but either way we showed respect by being willing to listen.

I hope others are willing to do the same.

I pride myself on how I was raised - both at home and in school. I was taught that to engage in the process, to engage with others, to engage in the discussion is a special part of being American. I want to give my students the same opportunity to feel a part of something, to form opinions not based on 3rd party analysis but on first hand understanding of what people say. To hear the President is a special thing. To be able to read his words, talk about his ideas, argue the points he is making - these are the things that make us great. I did the same with President Bush and would do the same no matter what party or platform the President belonged to. This is a country of ideas.

Our school had the same technical difficulties with the internet feed. We're going to show it tomorrow.

C-SPAN, the channel it was aired on, is on cable - so "wheeling in a cheap TV" wasn't the sole answer here. I have a "cheap TV" in my classroom and we just don't have it hooked up to cable (although new TVs are being installed in our rooms eventually this year).

I'd rather stream it through the internet anyway because then we can project it onto our awesome, huge, Promethean boards! I just wish they had had enough bandwidth.

Yeah, I could only get the audio of the speech at my school, and even that was intermittent. I figured there were too many people trying to tune in over the net.