Problem(s) Encountered:

For some reason, you can't switch from one desktop to the other on the 1.3m machine by clicking the little cartoon at the top or bottom of the screen. Ricky found by accident that it IS possible to switch by scrolling the center mouse button, which isn't as precise.  We did go down to the 1.3m and tried it on the actual console, and the problem recurred there, so it is not a VNC problem.  

Solution:

Swapping between workspaces failure is a new one to me!  Just “pressing buttons” for a minute got the one on the top taskbar working again somehow, but the one on the bottom taskbar continued to be nonresponsive.  Reboot the machine and all is well again.