Week 1 Reflections

 It's important to take time to reflect.  Fall 2020 is starting off with quite a bang.  The week before class began I was told that due to social distancing I needed to divide my hybrid class into 2 groups.  I considered making my lectures available via Zoom so both groups could "attend" the classes, but a colleague wisely pointed out that Zoom might not be able to handle it if all classes were offered that way.  

He was very wise--Zoom crashed the first day of classes and I'm so glad I went a low tech option instead.  I chose to essentially make this class a 75% online and 25% face to face class but I'm being very careful not to overassign lots of work.  I'm also promising that their time with me will be the very best it can be.

I'm backing up my class slide shows.  I hadn't thought to do this in the past, but I'm making a point to do it.  I have all my slide shows on a flash drive and if I lose it so much work would be gone.

I'm making screencast videos of each lecture.  It's taking a good deal of time, but this way if a student has to miss a class due to illness or self-quarantine he isn't penalized.  I'm working hard to make them ones that I can use again so the time invested will serve for future semesters.

I'm teaching in a mask.  Boo.  I asked for help from our tech dept for my voice to be amplified because the cashiers at the grocery can't even hear me through my mask.  Luckily, I have a headset I wear with a mic connected to a speaker that I wear on a necklace.  I look like a really ridiculous excuse for a rapper, but it's working.

I'm having tech issues with my curriculum.  I had everything linked and ready to go for class but 3 of my 4 sections are having sync issues.  Luckily I've figured out work arounds and they're OK, but it's frustrating and causing more work on my end.  I'm hoping it's fixed soon.

Puppets.  I had shied away from some of my natural silliness in lectures because in semesters past students seemed to roll their eyes when I would play the guitar or do silly things.  I've started reading an ebook by a law professor who says the more engaging we can be the better students learn.  He's right.  I brought out my Jorge el Curioso and Dino el Magnífico puppets and the students didn't throw anything at me.  I used them to really teach a grammar point.  It was fun.  Fun=good learning.

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