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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

All hail the time of the bunny!

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

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Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19

You are here: Home / Archives for Healthcare / COVID-19 / Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19

All over the country, schools and universities are suddenly moving to distance teaching, at least for the short term, with little or no preparation because of the pandemic.

If anyone has experience being a single parent and working from home with small children, please consider writing up a guest post.

Please contact WaterGirl if you would like to contribute a guest post.  Contact information is under Contact Us.

Oh, and here’s an inspirational song from a teacher:

I Will Survive, Coronavirus Version (for teachers going online)

‘Interesting’ Read: ‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say

by Anne Laurie|  November 26, 20234:39 pm| 74 Comments

This post is in: Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Excellent Links, Science & Technology

Since videoconferencing skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic, use of such technology has soared. So have anecdotal accounts of what some call “Zoom fatigue” — a unique state of exhaustion reported by those who feel wrung out after video calls. https://t.co/V9tUN9aqmH

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 26, 2023

Small study, biased observers, all the usual caveats. Still… From the Washington Post, “‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say” [unpaywalled gift link]:

Does a session on Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams leave you drained and listless?…

A recent brain-monitoring study supports the phenomenon, finding a connection between videoconferencing in educational settings and physical symptoms linked to fatigue.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked for physiological signs of fatigue in 35 students attending lectures on engineering at an Austrian university. Half of the class attended the 50-minute lecture via videoconference in a nearby lab and a face-to-face lecture the following week, while the other half attended first in person, then online.

Participants were monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) instruments that recorded electrical activity in the brain and their heart rhythms. They also participated in surveys about their mood and fatigue levels…

There were “notable” differences between the in-person and online groups, the researchers write. Video participants’ fatigue mounted over the course of the session, and their brain states showed they were struggling to pay attention. The groups’ moods varied, too, with in-person participants reporting they felt livelier, happier and more active, and online participants saying they felt tired, drowsy and “fed up.”

Overall, the researchers write, the study offers evidence of the physical toll of videoconferencing and suggests that it “should be considered as a complement to face-to-face interaction, but not as a substitute.”

They say the research should be replicated in business settings and homes to get a more accurate sense of how such sessions affect participants, calling for further studies that include more portions of the brain and a broader participant base…

If nothing else, it’s probably useful to know there’s actual physical effects, if only to be prepared in advance.

‘Interesting’ Read: <em>‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say</em>Post + Comments (74)

Today In Very Stupid Shit

by John Cole|  September 1, 20223:20 pm| 61 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Assholes

Data has been released that to the surprise of absolutely no one, test scores dipped over the past couple of years during the pandemic. These statistics are being used, of course, in a vacuum, to bash teachers and unions with no mention of the 3 year drop in life expectancy over the past two years and the fact that OUR FUCKING ENTIRE SYSTEM OF MEDICINE WAS ON THE VERGE OF NATIONWIDE COLLAPSE AND IN SOME PLACES HAD or that none of the teachers signed up to work in a BSL-4 without PPE and that gathering in enclosed areas is the worst way to spread covid and that kids would then spread it to their parents, grandparents, and caretakers and that 50% of school districts have HVAC systems from the 60’s and 70’s and that none of the people bitching about this were willing to do the bare fucking minimum to wear masks or get a vaccine so it would be safe to reopen schools. So, yeah.

Today In Very Stupid ShitPost + Comments (61)

UNC hit by a clue by four

by David Anderson|  August 18, 20208:00 am| 79 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, COVID-19, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19

The University of North Carolina (UNC) wanted to have Fall 2020 look mostly like a normal fall semester with students on campus, kids in classes and the football team playing.  Sure, there might be a few modifications as everyone would be encouraged to wear masks, and parties would be strongly discouraged, but things would look 85% normal-ish.

Undergraduates moved in about 10 days ago. Dorms were open and at nearly regular capacity. Everyone was finger-wagged on good behavior. There was no entry testing to establish a baseline of community infectivity nor isolate random individuals who were infected and potentially infectious before they could come in close contact with other, susceptible people.

Classes started last Monday. Everyone was asked to report symptoms (although by the time symptoms are differentiable from a hangover, there have been several days of plausible infectivity). Everyone was asked to be socially distanced and there were some huge parties and also the normal day to day interactions of campus and dorm life.

Reality hit on Monday:

UNC hit by a clue by four

Case count in the UNC community went from 11 for the week August 3-10, to 135 for the current week. Four major residential facility clusters had been announced since last Friday. The case count is likely to be low as this dashboard only reports individuals tested in the UNC health system. Individuals who got tested off-campus are not included. There are also likely to be many individuals who are currently non-symptomatic but either in the early part of their infectious period or entering their infectious period who have either not been tested, or are waiting for test results to be returned.

 

BREAKING: One week into the semester, UNC-Chapel Hill announces that it is transitioning all undergraduate classes to fully online instruction, effective Wednesday.

Story to come. Check this thread soon.

— The Daily Tar Heel (@dailytarheel) August 17, 2020


Last night, UNC decided to stop getting beat by a clue by four.

As long as we have broad, unconstrained community spread, we don’t get to go back to 85% of normal.

My big worry right now is are we creating a dispersed, super spreading event. I am assuming that there are a large number of individuals currently on UNC’s campus that are undiagnosed but infected. If they were infected over the weekend or late last week when the clusters were first being identified, they are entering peak infectious period just as many may be  leaving Chapel Hill to return home.

There are few good options to manage this self-inflicted gunshot wound to the foot. Locking down all on-campus residential facilities for several days in order to do community wide screening testing is a possibility.  That might allow for the safe return of dorm residents who have negative results while the university could isolate and quarantine any potentially positive individual for the serial period. However, it does nothing about the off-campus residents and the community spread risk that they pose.  Some may stay, some may go.  I think if Orange County and Chapel Hill go back to late March regulations, local spread may be contained, but again, state and national spread is likely as people disperse from campuses.

UNC is getting hit by a clue by four early.  However it is not the only university that is convinced that it could resume operations at 85% of normal. Duke has students on campus.  Duke has a far more aggressive testing plan but higher density residential situations for more students who live off-campus.  Notre Dame is seeing high positivity rates of 11.5% of diagnostic (not general re-entry screening) testing since August 3.  Positivity rates above 5% is a very strong indicator that a population is not testing anywhere near enough and targeted measures such as tracing and isolating potentially infected individuals are logistically challenging if not impossible.

UNC is the first major university to try to resume business as mostly normal and failing miserably.  It will not be the last.

 

 

UNC hit by a clue by fourPost + Comments (79)

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Fairchild

by WaterGirl|  March 19, 20208:00 pm| 54 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Information As Power

This is our sixth Guest Post related to the impact of school and university closings that are catapulting schools into distance teaching on the fly!

Guest Post from Fairchild

My name is Kevin Fairchild, and I am an Instructional Technology Coordinator for a public K-12 district in California.

Watergirl asked me to write a bit about Google Classroom. I’ve been using G Suite tools for a decade now, and teaching teachers how to use them for 9 years, some as a Teacher on Special Assignment, and now as Instructional Technology Coordinator for a public K-12 district in California.

Opinions: Distance Teaching and COVID-19 (a lurker)

Google Classroom is an increasing popular tool for teachers in K-12 schools. This is partly because of its minimalistic design and ease of use, but also because it’s included at no cost if the school or district uses the rest of G Suite (Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Meet, etc.). Google Drive was designed for businesses, not schools. It works best when a few people are sharing files with a few others. For a high school teacher trying to share documents with 150 students, Drive is impractical. Hence the development of Google Classroom.

Classroom began with a very sparse feature set, but has grown over the last few years to be a nearly complete Learning Management System. Originally, Classroom was little more than a management system for Drive, making it easy for teachers to share files with students and receive work back in return. They have since added a gradebook, co-teachers, conversation forums, organization tools, quizzes, grading rubrics, plagiarism checking, and integration with other systems.

A typical workflow goes something like this. A teacher can create a classroom, and is given a “join code” that they can give to students. Students sign in, enter the code, and they’re in the class. The teacher can then create an assignment, with as many file attachments or links as necessary. Classroom can then create a copy of each document for each student, so they are working on their own, and each student’s document is automatically named for them. (No more receiving 150 emails with files all titled “My Paper”.) Students do whatever work they need to do, using whichever Google App, and click “Turn In” at the top of the page. The teacher can then grade, comment, and return the work. There are other options, but this is the prototype.

In my district, we have been teaching Google Classroom to teachers for five years. We’ve seen the most uptake at the elementary grades. Our secondary teachers tend to prefer using our full-scale LMS, with its additional features, and additional learning curve. But as Google has added feature after feature to Classroom over the years, we have seen much more usage at all grade levels.

Teachers who have been using Classroom already are well prepared for our sudden-onset distance learning. In the past few days, I’ve been working (remotely) with dozens of other teachers who want to get started using Classroom and other Google tools. There are some excellent videos and tutorials out there for learning how to use Classroom, but always be sure to look at how old the resource is. Even when they’re not adding features, Google loves to redesign and move buttons around, so anything older than a year or so is just as likely to confuse a novice user as to help them.

Note from WaterGirl:

For sharing, and for future reference for yourself, you might want to bookmark the whole series.

https://balloon-juice.com/category/health-care/covid-19/distance-teaching-coronavirus/

You can also find it under Featuring in the sidebar (it’s in the menu bar / hamburger on mobile).

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: FairchildPost + Comments (54)

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Martin (Assessment)

by WaterGirl|  March 18, 20208:05 pm| 81 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Guest Posts, Healthcare, Information As Power

This is our fifth Guest Post related to the impact of school and university closings that are catapulting schools into distance teaching on the fly!

It’s our second post from Martin.  (Thanks, Martin!)

Opinions: Distance Teaching and COVID-19 (a lurker) Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Martin 2

With all the great information we’ve had so far in these posts, I am wondering whether we’re still in the “dog” phase, or if some of you might at least be approaching the “cat” phase.  Perhaps that’s too hopeful – what with this being the first week of Distance Teaching for some – but we’ll get there.

For now, we’ll consider the cat as aspirational.

Take it away, Martin!

Online Teaching in the Trenches – Assessment

Pushing your presence out to students is one thing. You probably have Canvas or Blackboard to help you with this. You can publish lectures on YouTube or your campus’ video hosting platform of choice, you can do live lectures or discussions on Zoom. But maybe you’re accustomed to collecting student work on paper and returning it that way, and you’re almost certainly accustomed to doing exams on paper.

Formative Assessment

This is a bit easier to handle becuase you can often forgo any serious grade  consequences here. If you have a standard textbook, see if the publisher has an LMS service like WileyPLUS. I’m generally not a fan of these for a variety of reasons – I don’t like the publisher lock-in, their software is almost universally terrible, and students usually hate it. That said, it does usually work, and you get the benefit of large problem libraries and automated grading. But if you need to get something going quickly, it succeeds nicely at that. We’re after ‘good enough’ solutions here.

show full post on front page

If you have Canvas, use its built-in quiz tool. It can do automated grading, or you can grade manually. It’s pretty good. Students like it because its right there in the course space. The downside is that it’s not a great fit for most STEM courses. If you need to do multiple choice, or even short typed answers, anything from Google Forms to Canvas can work very nicely.

For traditional STEM courses where problem solving is the goal, you’ll need to do a bit more work. One of the simplest solution is to have students take a photo with their phone, convert it to a PDF and then upload it through your LMS (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.) Recommend one of the free apps that make this easy. I really like Scannable for iOS – it adjusts contrast, perspective and cropping automatically, and automatically stitches multiple pages into a single document. There are similar apps for Android. In fact, I’ve stopped using my big office copier/scanner because my phone and the app was faster and gave me similar quality.

Jupyter notebooks are also quite good for this as well, particularly if you’re replacing a lab assignment. Students take photos of their work and add them to the notebook, provide their formal report, and can do data analysis and the like in the notebook if they has experience with python, etc. Or just have them assemble them in their tool of choice (Office, Google Docs, etc.) and send you a PDF.

One of the bigger challenges with large classes is simply organizing the work that comes in for ease of grading and returning it to students. That’s really what your LMS helps most with, but if you don’t have one, and need to rely on emailed assignments, etc. make sure you give them some hard rules on file naming and such. One of the big challenges at my institution is each student has two IDs – their numerical student ID and the first part of their campus email. Different systems sort on different IDs. Do yourself a favor and have them name the file [ID]-[Assignment Number] so that you can easily organize the assignments into different folders and sort them on your computer to match your gradebook. If you have TAs, that can help divide up the work if you normally work with paper assignments.  Consider a file sharing tool like DropBox that allows you to do file requests so their emailed files will all drop into a folder for you: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/create-file-request#filerequest Students don’t need a DropBox account. You can put a deadline on the request and submit to multiple people so you can dump your whole roster in there.

Writing assignments are always challenging. Consider a service that can help with peer grading for formative work. Some LMSs have this built-in, Turnitin offers it as a service and there are 3rd party services such as www.peergrade.io. Find the ones that work best for you. Peer grading can help reduce the amount of review that you need to provide. There are a number of studies that show that peer grading does a servicable job at giving students feedback. In fact, you can shift your approach a little bit and use the quality of peer feedback the student gives as part of the grade, just to ensure they take it seriously.

My instructors really like Canvas Speedgrader once they get it all set up. It’s a bit of work to get set up, and required them to change their approach a little bit, but the payoff was worth it. Students upload their assignments as PDFs, my instructors use an iPad Pro with Pencil to load the assignment, mark it up just like a paper assignment, submit the grade, and return the work to the student. It removes a lot of the administrative overhead of grading, and works very well for both writing and for traditional STEM problem solving assignments. It also works well for take-home exams.  You really do want a tablet with decent pen input though – iPad Pro, Surface Pro, some Samsung tablets, some convertible laptops all work well. Not a cheap setup, but we’ve been able to reduce the number of graders and readers doing this becuase a surprising amount of their workload is actually just taking a stack of paper assignments and sorting them, etc. and here the computer does all of that adminsitrative stuff for you and allows everyone to focus on assessment and grading.

Summative Assessment

Here’s where things get hard. Test taking services like ProctorU are appealing and do work pretty well in most situations, but have a few drawbacks you should consider. These services work by having students install a piece of software on their Mac or PC that takes control of the computer, preventing students from switching into other apps. It also take over their microphone and camera so that a person at a workstation can monitor the student, just as you do when proctoring an exam. The student needs to show the proctor they have no study aids around, that there is nobody else in the room with them and the proctor enforces a time limit on the exam. The exam is in a web browser and students submit their answers online, which you get in electronic form. The caveats:

1) I do not think they can scale to the current situation. Unlike Zoom which is a matter of spinning up new servers, ProctorU and similar services need to have a person monitoring students – they usually monitor roughly a dozen students at time. I’m skeptical they can staff up and add workstations for the current situation given that almost everyone holds exams in the same few weeks. I would do extra effort to ensure they can handle your course.

2) It works well for multiple choice, short answer, essay – things that can either be easily typed or run through a scantron. It does not work well for problem solving, equations, sketching a diagram, etc. We have worked around that by having the student type in the final answer to each problem, and then taking a picture of their work product with their phone as I describe above and upload that with the exam. They have to do this within 15 minutes of completing the exam. It works, but we’ve never tried it a scale more than a few dozen students, and you don’t get the benefit of easy organization of work materials that your LMS offers.

3) It costs $15-$30 per exam. This is a serious issue at my institution where we have a tremendous number of low income students and being a public, we don’t spring unexpected costs on them. Putting out up to $120 for a set of four finals is something we don’t ask students to do.

We’re advising switching to a paper/project final if you’re about to start a new quarter. If you can make the quiz tool in Canvas work for your final, that’s another good option. Otherwise we’re advising designing an open-book final that students upload through the LMS as a PDF. You may still want a timed final during your scheduled final exam window, and for our instructors they can still do that, but we ask them to give students some leeway on time due to problem with uploading, etc. For project courses we’re adapting an existing strategy that we use. Our project teams normally make a weekly 2 minute presentation on the status of their project, what they did in the last week, and what they are working on in the next week, and noting any new problems that developed. It’s designed to be short so they’ll have to actually put effort into it since they can’t just ramble, and the instructor has a few minutes to ask questions. It’s our way of keeping projects on track. We’re expanding that concept to the final project – students will either put together a video showing their project, addressing specific requirements as part of the course, or doing an interactive Zoom presentation where the instructor can ask questions. The former for larger courses, the latter for smaller ones. Basically, an oral exam. My son is currently doing an animation in Blender illustrating how his project works. You’ll be shocked at the skills your students have if you give them room to be creative.

There’s a lot of other cool ideas and services out there, but they require a lot more prepration and rethinking of how a course is taught. Continuous assessment is the future in a lot of areas, and I’m a big fan, but that’s for another day.

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Martin (Assessment)Post + Comments (81)

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Continue On or Stop Here?

by WaterGirl|  March 17, 20207:25 pm| 39 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Healthcare, Information As Power

We started this series on Thursday, March 12, which almost feels like a month ago.

With all the new developments this week (can it really be only Tuesday?) some have had immediate concerns more pressing than teaching.  I know distance teaching/distance learning must still be an issue.  I know this because I called my niece today and they were having fits at their house related to distance learning, technical difficulties with a printer cartridge, no ability to go out and get another cartridge, unrealistic instructor deadlines and expectations.

We do have one more post in the can, from Martin, on Assessments.  And we were planning on separate guest posts on individual technologies: one on Zoom and one on Slack, and likely others.

We had lots of ideas in 2020 BL (Before Lockdowns)  The question is, do you want us to pursue them, or has life “provided” higher priorities? Is distance teaching still a priority for any of you?

Opinions: Distance Teaching and COVID-19 (a lurker)

Here’s what we had planned lo that long ago… on Monday!  Take a look, and share your thoughts in the comments, please.  It’s up to you.  Should we stay or should we go?

Several people have stepped forward and shared what they know about distance teaching.  If you indicated last week that you might write something up, please don’t be shy.  Just do it!

·  Do you have experience being a single parent and working from home with small children?   Please consider writing up a guest post.

·  Is there some aspect of distance teaching, not yet covered, that would be helpful?  Please mention it in the comments below.

·  Are you particularly experienced with one of the major distance teaching tools?  Please consider writing up a guest post on that one tool.

·  If you think this series has run its course, please let us know that, too, in the comments.

Upcoming Posts:
· ZOOM – Immanentize
· Slack – Martin

Any interest in a post on these:
·  Blackboard
·  Canvas
·  Google Classrooms

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Continue On or Stop Here?Post + Comments (39)

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: Pika

by WaterGirl|  March 14, 20209:00 am| 40 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19, Guest Posts, Healthcare, Information As Power

This is our fourth Guest Post related to the impact of school and university closings that are catapulting schools into distance teaching on the fly!

This guest post is from commenter Pika, who wrote this in the earlier guest post from A Lurker:  (Thanks, Pika!)

Most of what I’m hearing from the students–especially as Lurker put it, the graduating seniors–is grief.

I asked Pika if she might be willing to write up a few things about connecting with students emotionally as so many feel adrift, ripped from friends, communities, and their physical connection to an institution about which some have complained bitterly but yet still find themselves mourning the loss of.

Take it away, Pika!

*****

Beth A. McCoy
SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor
Department of English

I’m an English professor at a public liberal arts school in Western New York. Technology is something with which I’m pretty comfortable, but like so many others I was not prepared to go all-remote for the rest of the semester.

I really appreciated A Lurker’s counsel about the perils of perfectionism, about counting what we are doing in this crisis as real LABOR, about being transparent with students, and most of all about being kind and not leaving students in “radio silence.”

show full post on front page

As it turns out, I’ve been sick and isolating at home since Monday, and so I had to transition to remote even before students left campus.  I’ve thus had a few intense days of immediate immersion in online teaching. I’ve been reminding myself both to choose my words carefully and emphasizing building and creating right now and for after this crisis resolves. I’ve asked them to think about what world they want to build and create going forward. I’ve tried to remind them that regardless of discipline, they all have a stealth major: learning to deal with complicated institutions, for with very few exceptions, they’ll be involved with such institutions long after they leave campus. And even as I’ve shared explainers about ‘flattening the curve,’ I’ve tried hard to remain in my disciplinary lane.

My campus uses Canvas, and so for the first time I’m trying to take advantage of the discussion forums and chat function. The chat I’ve used just for students to tell each other where they are, what their physical surroundings are (e.g., cat, no cat), and what they’re thinking and feeling.

It’s been kind of funny, dashing virtually from the chat function to a discussion forum and then back to chat so that we can bookend the academic work in the discussion forum with the feeling work in the chat.

But the bookending with emotion is important no matter the discipline: biochemistry, business, sociology. Students have just lost their peer group. Some fear for themselves, their families, their towns, and their countries. And so if you are in this situation, I guess my best counsel is to decide what emotional marks you want to hit and then hit them often. Remind them that whether in an accounting, dance, or history course, they are in this together, and they’ll get through it together.

Here are some concrete examples:

I offered the following Canvas questionnaire:

Can you please tell me a little bit about what/how you’re feeling right now? Knowing this will help me bend the course around you.

Can you tell me a little bit about the internet access in the place you stay when you’re not on campus? Do you think you’ll be able to access Canvas and Google documents, for instance? Feel free to tell me about any other tech concerns you might have, including laptop/device access.

Is there anything else you think I should know, anything else you’d like to express?

And in one of my classes, I offered this discussion prompt:

Please read this article reflecting upon Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel lecture and listen to the speech (audio embedded in the article).

“How lovely it is, this thing we have done — together.”

As the world as it is has prevented us from meeting face to face to reflect on the last collaborative process, we have to adjust to our new circumstances. I ask that you take some time to craft a careful, thoughtful response to the following:

Did you learn anything about yourself through the process of contributing to the first collaborative essay? What will the challenges be as you embark on the next collaborative process amid circumstances that have radically changed in practical, technological, and emotional terms? What steps do you commit to taking to explore what is possible and offer hope during a challenging time?

Please use class time to write your own response and post it.

Over break, please read your peers’ responses and write back meaningfully to them. Make each other feel heard and seen. This is a way to maintain the fabric between you so that when you return to take up the threads of the next collaborative essay, you won’t be strangers.

Carefully crafted words that flower in the fullest, best parts of humanity can be packed up and taken with you wherever you go. Work your magic.

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

*****

Note from WaterGirl:

For sharing, and for future reference for yourself, you might want to bookmark the whole series.

https://balloon-juice.com/category/health-care/covid-19/distance-teaching-coronavirus/

You can also find it under Featuring in the sidebar (it’s in the menu bar / hamburger on mobile).

 

Distance Teaching (Surprise!) and COVID-19: PikaPost + Comments (40)

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