Dublin Core
Title
Toni Nicoletti - Audio Reflection
Creator
Toni Nicoletti
Date
5/7/2020
Rights
Format
mp3
Language
English
Sound Item Type Metadata
Transcription
Hi, I am Dr. Toni Nicoletti and I am an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Philosophy and Comparative Religion at Cleveland State University.
What are the most challenging parts of the transition?
One of the most challenging parts of the transition was trying to respond to the very different and sudden changing needs of my students and actually of myself. So, on my end, my daughter switched to online learning and I was trying to help her get started with school while at the same time preparing to study remotely. (and) Then, of course, on my students and there were just so many changing needs for a number of my students.
Some of the issues of course, as we know, had to do with Wi-Fi where some students weren't able to connect to Wi-Fi because they didn't have it at their home and other people didn't have a laptop. So, there was a little bit of a lag time there with some people getting it. Ultimately, everybody did. However, that did take some time for a couple of students. And then, on the other hand, one of the bigger issues was that a number of students had to go to work. They were in essential areas, like, maybe they already work in a nursing care facility or they work in a grocery store in food service and that seemed to be a big one where they were now having these demands to work more. (and then) In one case, one of my students, his parents both lost their jobs. So, he, actually, just had to pick up more work for that reason, and so that caused him problems.
Another student actually did contract coronavirus, so that was the reason why he wasn't responding initially to emails and Starfish or the other ways that we use to get a hold of the students. (and then) I do think that I made some implicit assumptions. For example, I had given, at one point, in two of my online classes, I had given an assignment that was on Blackboard and even though it was a classroom course, I had told them they could complete this assignment on Blackboard, which they were fine with and everybody completed the assignment. So, I kind of made the assumption, I guess, that everybody had Wi-Fi or a computer at home. However, I found out, of course, through the students, that they had been using the computers at school, and even when they have some kind of access at home, they don't always have Lockdown Browser or some of the other things that we have. Because, I will even have, in any given semester, students who have trouble with Lockdown Browser, in my online classes, tell me that they're completing quizzes that require Lockdown Browser at the school. So, that was an issue to accommodate them, as well.
Then other students actually said they were really falling apart or dealing with anxiety or, you know, maybe they already had some documented issue that required them to have a different kind of schedule or to require some kinds of accommodations and some of that just really came through on them and so they were having trouble dealing with that.
What are the most common needs expressed by your students?
The most common need was the need for more time and extensions on due dates for assignments. I had set up assignments to give students time to adjust to remote learning but even in that case, the changing needs and effort some students had to put into getting set up for remote teaching as well as changing work schedules, actually did affect their ability to complete the assignments.
There were also some students who expressed, openly, via personal conversations in an email, that they were overwhelmed or suffering from anxiety and they just really needed time to adjust. I do think the pass/non-pass option that was changed at Cleveland State really helped some of those students to succeed where they might have really had a problem. It may have even just helped them to be able to relax a little bit and know they could do it because some students who actually had asked me about the option itself ended up that currently, and we're getting close to the end of the semester, they're really back up to an “A” in the class. So, I think that just maybe even gave them that comfort that you know before that deadline they could decide if they wanted to do that.
What new teaching techniques or tools are you trying as a result of the switch to remote teaching?
I would say in a word, Zoom. That seemed, things seem, to be all about Zoom now and this has actually been a really great help to me in this climate. It allows to have some live lectures. It's definitely helping, you know, to have remote or to have virtual office appointments and I've used Panopto in the past. So, I'm pretty familiar with doing recorded lectures. But this option is really nice. So that you can do live lectures and even, for my purposes, if I am recording a lecture and I'm showing my face on it Zoom, for me, actually just made that with along with the PowerPoint slides better than how it appeared on Panopto. (and) I do think that any kind of, you know, audio or visual inhibitors can actually really inhibit people from continuing to watch something. So, I actually just think that was such a great help that way.
I do have to say I did not adapt it right away. I do have a comfort level with online teaching. But, in that mode, when you're strictly teaching online, you are using recorded lectures, and notes, and PowerPoint slides, and the readings of course and, so I did go to that most immediately. (and then) I brought in Zoom to try to get back what we had to some extent, with the live class and I really do think that helped. I even had students email me to say that they really appreciated some of those lectures.
I also ended up trying VoiceThread and I think that's going to actually be a real game-changer in my fully online courses. I didn't realize how handy that was to create a very short video answer to a question or, for example, you could use it to have students introduce themselves to each other in the class at the beginning of the semester. (and) I think that breaks up a lot of the writing they do in the online course or it could do that and it also is a nice way for them just to have practice doing a verbal response to a discussion post or just to give each other some greater picture of themselves and just to bring themselves to life for other people. (and then) What's also neat about it is people can actually respond in written form as well, to a person's video.
As far as techniques, I would say that the main technique I started to use or that I think was helpful for me, in the circumstances, was just being able to use the current situation to apply it to some of the content, in actually, several of my courses. So, in my Bioethics courses the application was pretty immediate. There’s all kinds of medical issues that are aligning themselves to ethical issues and I was able to use that directly to have students talk about how they can now see, so immediately, the importance of having a good foundation in ethics as they go into a health profession.
When I had students start doing that, I didn't realize, but one of our students had been called to active duty to go to New Jersey and work as an EMS worker. She had never emailed me to say she needed extensions or anything but here she was in New Jersey and she was dealing with pretty difficult circumstances. (and) She was the first person to post on the discussion board and I did email or respond to her and thanked her, and in my comments when I was looking at her response. (and) Then, one by one, all the other students were, they were, adding their comments. Some others were/are working in the field also. For example, in nursing care facilities and hospitals. But so many people then also got out and congratulated her, thanked her I should say for her service. (and) So that was a very immediate response there and then even in my other philosophy course, where we talk about the good life and what it is to be happy and how to deal with the circumstances we find ourselves in, we were able to discuss some of the philosophers we were talking about in class in this context.
So how do you maintain your equilibrium when everything around you is, seems to be, falling apart? And what kind of perspective could some of the philosophers that we'd been discussing; what kind of perspective could they give that could help the students? (and) Then just again thinking critically about the issues that you're discussing in class.
So, that probably was one of the techniques I could say I used that help the students to continue their understanding that they weren't getting necessarily from the lectures they would have the way they would have gotten it in class where they were asking questions.
What new insights are you gaining about teaching in general?
I would say that just, in general, one of the insights I have gained is, and maybe this is just a life lesson in general, but it certainly has worked in this environment; how much can be accomplished in a short time when everybody pulls together and pulls together all of their resources in order to make things work. (and) When you just had a hundred percent, I mean, we took a university, universities across the country, and converted them into online learning. (and) Yeah, at the beginning there were glitches, but we're getting towards the end of the semester and for most students things are running pretty smoothly. They're going to finish fine and they seem to be doing well. Now that doesn't mean they aren't dealing with something on their end, that they haven't discussed with me. But you know but in general people seem to have gotten into a bit of a routine. So that's nice. But when everybody came together with that one goal and eLearning was pulling together webinars and really pulling out the stops to help people make their courses something really good, or as good as they could be in the circumstances, and then just with, you know, learning and using technologies that maybe I've tried but now the suddenly I'm mastering within a few weeks, I just think that's a really cool insight.
I think I've also learned that because of the circumstances, I was willing to be more experimental than maybe I am at other times, (and) What I've learned in it from, in particular, is that when you were like that, and you're very up front about it, and just say, “Hey, this might not work and then we're going to change gears if it doesn't.” It works. The students really did, they adapted to that. They thanked me for my openness and I just think we all in the class started adopting even much more of a: “We're all making mistakes in here and we're just going to get through this together.” (and) That was pretty neat to see.
(and then) I would also say that I did surprise myself personally with what I could do to make things be as consistent as possible for the students. So, for example, when you sign up for an online course you have a different expectation going into it for what that learning environment is going to be like, than, when you're, when you sign up for a classroom course, even if it has a supplemental Blackboard site. So now, when suddenly that switches, and of course I have never done that before myself, where I suddenly switched an online course, or classroom to online. I wanted to do it I could to not disrupt their experience so much that it felt like it was just an entirely different class. (and) Of course, the content itself they that continuity of the content helped that but just trying to be maybe a little bit more conversational with them than I might be on Blackboard, but because they had gotten used to my personality in the classroom and wanting to share some of that. (and) When you do that it really kind of is a risk because, things don't get conveyed as well in Blackboard or online. They don't necessarily get conveyed the same way when you have the person's body language and things like that. But it really did work overall.
Then, even myself, I was teaching a logic class and that was not lending itself to even using just Zoom with me sitting at a computer screen. (and) They were used to me in front of a whiteboard, doing problems, having them do them, asking questions. (and) I did kind of surprise myself with my own resourcefulness and just pulling every tool I had to make it work. So, I ended up finding a whiteboard, setting it up, getting all the lamps in the house to try to figure out which one would give it really good lighting and I did get it down pretty well. (and) I was able to do some Zoom lectures with that whiteboard. (and) The students, I told them, you have to be a little forgiving. Like you can see in the first one, it's a little bit darker than the second and the third and I kind of moved the room, you know, they're seeing different parts of my office because of the different lighting in the day. But it worked, and again, with them being somewhat forgiving, and kind of a little bit persistent about working through having to focus a little bit differently than you would in the classroom, it really did seem to provide them with that consistency that I was trying to get.
How might this experience change your teaching when you return to face-to-face instruction?
I would definitely say that some of my new modes of communication I probably will adapt to an extent when I return to the classroom. I do try to communicate with my students. Even with classroom courses, I use Blackboard Announcements quite a bit over the weekend or if I want to tell them something, you know, before class, but I'm going to and I'll continue to do that. But I do even think I was even more proactive about reaching out to students in some cases, and not just relying on Starfish, and that seemed to help.
I actually just started texting some students and they do respond to text. I think we have this idea that students are so connected and that they know all this technology better than we do. But they're, actually it turns out, they're like us. They know it in their domain or their area. Sure, if they were on Snapchat, they would have it way ahead of me when it comes to that, because I'm not on it and I find all that very confusing, and even Twitter. But in Blackboard, even though students had access to Blackboard in the course, and some of them were pulling notes off of their, or pulling different resources that I had, they weren't proficient in navigating it the way you would be for an online course. (and) So, understanding that they don't necessarily have all of that proficiency that we think they do, that was kind of an insight. (and) Then just making sure that I'm proactively communicating with them in a way that they will adapt to. (and) So, even, and like I said in a couple cases they weren't getting emails or they didn't seem to be getting them, and texting them they came back right away and then I could find out, you know, what was going on. That was more initially, and then there also were students who, as things went along, there were some that didn't participate at the beginning. They got set up on Wi-Fi and a laptop and some of them just then went to town. They had no problem. Others seemed at the beginning like they were going to adjust okay, and they were going to be able to complete assignments, but then they kind of dropped off somewhere in the middle.
One woman said she was just getting really overwhelmed with her daughter's homeschooling as well as working in a group home. They just needed her that much more. (and) So by me reaching out to her and finding that out I was able to say, “Okay, let's make these adjustments, you know, to help you to finish.
The other thing I would also say is that, of course now we are going to have VoiceThread and Zoom and you're always picking up these technologies. However, I will also say that I definitely appreciate being in the classroom. We're hearing people say, oh we're going to all learn that we really don't need to be at work or we don't need to be in the classroom. We can do all of this online. However, I actually, I think we will and I hope we will come to a different conclusion. I think that online is here to stay. I think it could be very beneficial for students. It can even make education more equitable for students. So, I'm all about it. I'm also all about doing what we can to make that, you know, adapting things that can help us communicate differently, like Zoom. So, we can get a little bit closer to what it's like to be face-to-face. However, I do think we always have to realize that we're probably, maybe never, and we just probably don't want to, try to mimic enough of the face-to-face that we don't need the face-to-face. Because even though you have that, for example, I read an article saying why is Zoom so exhausting, and the answer was because you don't have the same nonverbal cues. People can get fatigued more quickly trying to pay attention to Zoom lectures and the answer that kept coming to my mind is, “when you are online you're very focused, you're very intense and everything is very purposeful. (and) That's different than walking into class, chatting with somebody, kind of having that wind-down, getting to know somebody in a slightly different way and then class getting started where, yes the lecture is purposeful, but it can veer a little differently than it tends to veer in Zoom. Now again, maybe we'll get used to that. However, as we adapt it more and more, but I don't think we're there yet.
So my plan is that I will use the technology I have, but I will also use it a very purposeful way, in a very self-conscious way, and not assume that, just because we have the technology, means that should be telling us how we want to operate. Because we are going to lose something. Right? We lose running into a colleague and chatting in the hallway, and whether that refreshes you, or gives you a new insight about the thing that you're doing. That is not necessarily going to be conveyed at least currently, I don't think, in these online environments as sophisticated as we get with our tools.
So, yeah, it will absolutely always adapt online. I'm going to allow myself to be a little more experimental; take some of what I learned about students forgiving-ness towards me when maybe I make a mistake or the technology doesn't work and saying “Hey we're just not going to, we're just gonna scrap that or we'll treat that as a little bit of bonus, because it didn't work, or let's just give this a try. But, even so, I want to be, I'm still going to continue to be, self-conscious about how I'm using it and make sure it's not just for convenience, but that it's serving the learning.
What are the most challenging parts of the transition?
One of the most challenging parts of the transition was trying to respond to the very different and sudden changing needs of my students and actually of myself. So, on my end, my daughter switched to online learning and I was trying to help her get started with school while at the same time preparing to study remotely. (and) Then, of course, on my students and there were just so many changing needs for a number of my students.
Some of the issues of course, as we know, had to do with Wi-Fi where some students weren't able to connect to Wi-Fi because they didn't have it at their home and other people didn't have a laptop. So, there was a little bit of a lag time there with some people getting it. Ultimately, everybody did. However, that did take some time for a couple of students. And then, on the other hand, one of the bigger issues was that a number of students had to go to work. They were in essential areas, like, maybe they already work in a nursing care facility or they work in a grocery store in food service and that seemed to be a big one where they were now having these demands to work more. (and then) In one case, one of my students, his parents both lost their jobs. So, he, actually, just had to pick up more work for that reason, and so that caused him problems.
Another student actually did contract coronavirus, so that was the reason why he wasn't responding initially to emails and Starfish or the other ways that we use to get a hold of the students. (and then) I do think that I made some implicit assumptions. For example, I had given, at one point, in two of my online classes, I had given an assignment that was on Blackboard and even though it was a classroom course, I had told them they could complete this assignment on Blackboard, which they were fine with and everybody completed the assignment. So, I kind of made the assumption, I guess, that everybody had Wi-Fi or a computer at home. However, I found out, of course, through the students, that they had been using the computers at school, and even when they have some kind of access at home, they don't always have Lockdown Browser or some of the other things that we have. Because, I will even have, in any given semester, students who have trouble with Lockdown Browser, in my online classes, tell me that they're completing quizzes that require Lockdown Browser at the school. So, that was an issue to accommodate them, as well.
Then other students actually said they were really falling apart or dealing with anxiety or, you know, maybe they already had some documented issue that required them to have a different kind of schedule or to require some kinds of accommodations and some of that just really came through on them and so they were having trouble dealing with that.
What are the most common needs expressed by your students?
The most common need was the need for more time and extensions on due dates for assignments. I had set up assignments to give students time to adjust to remote learning but even in that case, the changing needs and effort some students had to put into getting set up for remote teaching as well as changing work schedules, actually did affect their ability to complete the assignments.
There were also some students who expressed, openly, via personal conversations in an email, that they were overwhelmed or suffering from anxiety and they just really needed time to adjust. I do think the pass/non-pass option that was changed at Cleveland State really helped some of those students to succeed where they might have really had a problem. It may have even just helped them to be able to relax a little bit and know they could do it because some students who actually had asked me about the option itself ended up that currently, and we're getting close to the end of the semester, they're really back up to an “A” in the class. So, I think that just maybe even gave them that comfort that you know before that deadline they could decide if they wanted to do that.
What new teaching techniques or tools are you trying as a result of the switch to remote teaching?
I would say in a word, Zoom. That seemed, things seem, to be all about Zoom now and this has actually been a really great help to me in this climate. It allows to have some live lectures. It's definitely helping, you know, to have remote or to have virtual office appointments and I've used Panopto in the past. So, I'm pretty familiar with doing recorded lectures. But this option is really nice. So that you can do live lectures and even, for my purposes, if I am recording a lecture and I'm showing my face on it Zoom, for me, actually just made that with along with the PowerPoint slides better than how it appeared on Panopto. (and) I do think that any kind of, you know, audio or visual inhibitors can actually really inhibit people from continuing to watch something. So, I actually just think that was such a great help that way.
I do have to say I did not adapt it right away. I do have a comfort level with online teaching. But, in that mode, when you're strictly teaching online, you are using recorded lectures, and notes, and PowerPoint slides, and the readings of course and, so I did go to that most immediately. (and then) I brought in Zoom to try to get back what we had to some extent, with the live class and I really do think that helped. I even had students email me to say that they really appreciated some of those lectures.
I also ended up trying VoiceThread and I think that's going to actually be a real game-changer in my fully online courses. I didn't realize how handy that was to create a very short video answer to a question or, for example, you could use it to have students introduce themselves to each other in the class at the beginning of the semester. (and) I think that breaks up a lot of the writing they do in the online course or it could do that and it also is a nice way for them just to have practice doing a verbal response to a discussion post or just to give each other some greater picture of themselves and just to bring themselves to life for other people. (and then) What's also neat about it is people can actually respond in written form as well, to a person's video.
As far as techniques, I would say that the main technique I started to use or that I think was helpful for me, in the circumstances, was just being able to use the current situation to apply it to some of the content, in actually, several of my courses. So, in my Bioethics courses the application was pretty immediate. There’s all kinds of medical issues that are aligning themselves to ethical issues and I was able to use that directly to have students talk about how they can now see, so immediately, the importance of having a good foundation in ethics as they go into a health profession.
When I had students start doing that, I didn't realize, but one of our students had been called to active duty to go to New Jersey and work as an EMS worker. She had never emailed me to say she needed extensions or anything but here she was in New Jersey and she was dealing with pretty difficult circumstances. (and) She was the first person to post on the discussion board and I did email or respond to her and thanked her, and in my comments when I was looking at her response. (and) Then, one by one, all the other students were, they were, adding their comments. Some others were/are working in the field also. For example, in nursing care facilities and hospitals. But so many people then also got out and congratulated her, thanked her I should say for her service. (and) So that was a very immediate response there and then even in my other philosophy course, where we talk about the good life and what it is to be happy and how to deal with the circumstances we find ourselves in, we were able to discuss some of the philosophers we were talking about in class in this context.
So how do you maintain your equilibrium when everything around you is, seems to be, falling apart? And what kind of perspective could some of the philosophers that we'd been discussing; what kind of perspective could they give that could help the students? (and) Then just again thinking critically about the issues that you're discussing in class.
So, that probably was one of the techniques I could say I used that help the students to continue their understanding that they weren't getting necessarily from the lectures they would have the way they would have gotten it in class where they were asking questions.
What new insights are you gaining about teaching in general?
I would say that just, in general, one of the insights I have gained is, and maybe this is just a life lesson in general, but it certainly has worked in this environment; how much can be accomplished in a short time when everybody pulls together and pulls together all of their resources in order to make things work. (and) When you just had a hundred percent, I mean, we took a university, universities across the country, and converted them into online learning. (and) Yeah, at the beginning there were glitches, but we're getting towards the end of the semester and for most students things are running pretty smoothly. They're going to finish fine and they seem to be doing well. Now that doesn't mean they aren't dealing with something on their end, that they haven't discussed with me. But you know but in general people seem to have gotten into a bit of a routine. So that's nice. But when everybody came together with that one goal and eLearning was pulling together webinars and really pulling out the stops to help people make their courses something really good, or as good as they could be in the circumstances, and then just with, you know, learning and using technologies that maybe I've tried but now the suddenly I'm mastering within a few weeks, I just think that's a really cool insight.
I think I've also learned that because of the circumstances, I was willing to be more experimental than maybe I am at other times, (and) What I've learned in it from, in particular, is that when you were like that, and you're very up front about it, and just say, “Hey, this might not work and then we're going to change gears if it doesn't.” It works. The students really did, they adapted to that. They thanked me for my openness and I just think we all in the class started adopting even much more of a: “We're all making mistakes in here and we're just going to get through this together.” (and) That was pretty neat to see.
(and then) I would also say that I did surprise myself personally with what I could do to make things be as consistent as possible for the students. So, for example, when you sign up for an online course you have a different expectation going into it for what that learning environment is going to be like, than, when you're, when you sign up for a classroom course, even if it has a supplemental Blackboard site. So now, when suddenly that switches, and of course I have never done that before myself, where I suddenly switched an online course, or classroom to online. I wanted to do it I could to not disrupt their experience so much that it felt like it was just an entirely different class. (and) Of course, the content itself they that continuity of the content helped that but just trying to be maybe a little bit more conversational with them than I might be on Blackboard, but because they had gotten used to my personality in the classroom and wanting to share some of that. (and) When you do that it really kind of is a risk because, things don't get conveyed as well in Blackboard or online. They don't necessarily get conveyed the same way when you have the person's body language and things like that. But it really did work overall.
Then, even myself, I was teaching a logic class and that was not lending itself to even using just Zoom with me sitting at a computer screen. (and) They were used to me in front of a whiteboard, doing problems, having them do them, asking questions. (and) I did kind of surprise myself with my own resourcefulness and just pulling every tool I had to make it work. So, I ended up finding a whiteboard, setting it up, getting all the lamps in the house to try to figure out which one would give it really good lighting and I did get it down pretty well. (and) I was able to do some Zoom lectures with that whiteboard. (and) The students, I told them, you have to be a little forgiving. Like you can see in the first one, it's a little bit darker than the second and the third and I kind of moved the room, you know, they're seeing different parts of my office because of the different lighting in the day. But it worked, and again, with them being somewhat forgiving, and kind of a little bit persistent about working through having to focus a little bit differently than you would in the classroom, it really did seem to provide them with that consistency that I was trying to get.
How might this experience change your teaching when you return to face-to-face instruction?
I would definitely say that some of my new modes of communication I probably will adapt to an extent when I return to the classroom. I do try to communicate with my students. Even with classroom courses, I use Blackboard Announcements quite a bit over the weekend or if I want to tell them something, you know, before class, but I'm going to and I'll continue to do that. But I do even think I was even more proactive about reaching out to students in some cases, and not just relying on Starfish, and that seemed to help.
I actually just started texting some students and they do respond to text. I think we have this idea that students are so connected and that they know all this technology better than we do. But they're, actually it turns out, they're like us. They know it in their domain or their area. Sure, if they were on Snapchat, they would have it way ahead of me when it comes to that, because I'm not on it and I find all that very confusing, and even Twitter. But in Blackboard, even though students had access to Blackboard in the course, and some of them were pulling notes off of their, or pulling different resources that I had, they weren't proficient in navigating it the way you would be for an online course. (and) So, understanding that they don't necessarily have all of that proficiency that we think they do, that was kind of an insight. (and) Then just making sure that I'm proactively communicating with them in a way that they will adapt to. (and) So, even, and like I said in a couple cases they weren't getting emails or they didn't seem to be getting them, and texting them they came back right away and then I could find out, you know, what was going on. That was more initially, and then there also were students who, as things went along, there were some that didn't participate at the beginning. They got set up on Wi-Fi and a laptop and some of them just then went to town. They had no problem. Others seemed at the beginning like they were going to adjust okay, and they were going to be able to complete assignments, but then they kind of dropped off somewhere in the middle.
One woman said she was just getting really overwhelmed with her daughter's homeschooling as well as working in a group home. They just needed her that much more. (and) So by me reaching out to her and finding that out I was able to say, “Okay, let's make these adjustments, you know, to help you to finish.
The other thing I would also say is that, of course now we are going to have VoiceThread and Zoom and you're always picking up these technologies. However, I will also say that I definitely appreciate being in the classroom. We're hearing people say, oh we're going to all learn that we really don't need to be at work or we don't need to be in the classroom. We can do all of this online. However, I actually, I think we will and I hope we will come to a different conclusion. I think that online is here to stay. I think it could be very beneficial for students. It can even make education more equitable for students. So, I'm all about it. I'm also all about doing what we can to make that, you know, adapting things that can help us communicate differently, like Zoom. So, we can get a little bit closer to what it's like to be face-to-face. However, I do think we always have to realize that we're probably, maybe never, and we just probably don't want to, try to mimic enough of the face-to-face that we don't need the face-to-face. Because even though you have that, for example, I read an article saying why is Zoom so exhausting, and the answer was because you don't have the same nonverbal cues. People can get fatigued more quickly trying to pay attention to Zoom lectures and the answer that kept coming to my mind is, “when you are online you're very focused, you're very intense and everything is very purposeful. (and) That's different than walking into class, chatting with somebody, kind of having that wind-down, getting to know somebody in a slightly different way and then class getting started where, yes the lecture is purposeful, but it can veer a little differently than it tends to veer in Zoom. Now again, maybe we'll get used to that. However, as we adapt it more and more, but I don't think we're there yet.
So my plan is that I will use the technology I have, but I will also use it a very purposeful way, in a very self-conscious way, and not assume that, just because we have the technology, means that should be telling us how we want to operate. Because we are going to lose something. Right? We lose running into a colleague and chatting in the hallway, and whether that refreshes you, or gives you a new insight about the thing that you're doing. That is not necessarily going to be conveyed at least currently, I don't think, in these online environments as sophisticated as we get with our tools.
So, yeah, it will absolutely always adapt online. I'm going to allow myself to be a little more experimental; take some of what I learned about students forgiving-ness towards me when maybe I make a mistake or the technology doesn't work and saying “Hey we're just not going to, we're just gonna scrap that or we'll treat that as a little bit of bonus, because it didn't work, or let's just give this a try. But, even so, I want to be, I'm still going to continue to be, self-conscious about how I'm using it and make sure it's not just for convenience, but that it's serving the learning.
Original Format
Audio recording
Duration
20 minutes, 13 seconds