Because of COVID, a lot of great instructors that teach face-to-face and take assignments on paper were forced to suddenly switch to online over the course of two weeks. And then a lot of schools just gave up and went pass/fail.
Imagine you’re a teacher. Imagine one day you’re told you have two weeks to translate all of your courses into Korean. Some folks would be great at it (those who were fluent in Korean), most would be writing gibberish using Google Translate or copy/pasting modules from Korean websites, and some people would have nervous breakdowns and quit.
That’s basically what happened. Except it wasn’t into Korean, it was into “computer”. A surprising number of people don’t speak computer. At least I was surprised how many.
I’ve had several people recently tell me that I should do such or such at the college this summer and fall because I am. “internet savvy". I realize this is most likely false praise meant to get me to do jobs no one else wants to do. One colleague told me that I was on the vanguard of online teaching.
Vanguard… hm…. like in the Space Federation I guess. I don’t so much feel like I am a brave banner carrier running at the front of a charging mechanized brigade as I feel like that poor schmuck who ended up getting shoved to the front because he liked to sew and brought his craft flag project with him to the fight.
The Spring semester is over (thank you, passage of time) and I was able to help out a few people worse off than me and barely able to switch over my own work. Now I’m looking at the summer and fall being 100% online.
I took a year of “How to teach online” courses online through the U of Illinois (I’ll save you time: be organized, learn your LMS, be accessible and don’t break copyright law). I like making youtube videos because of the global audience (I had a user from Norway last week!). I’ve also been primarily communicating through computers with the rest of the world since I became disabled in 2002. And I’ve had hands-on experience with computers since 1979. Not really cutting edge. And I’m pretty sure that in the 21st century “Intel Inside” means tiny magical fairies are in my laptop because 0s and 1s can’t possibly render my animations that fast.
Anyway, for the fall the people with online experience will have a definite advantage over those who work paper and pencil. It’s a little unfair, I think, to laud older teachers with internet talent on par with my 12-year-old niece and to denigrate the instructors that were concentrating on their students and not updating their home computers. But it is what it is. I hope we go back to face-to-face in Spring so we don’t lose those (often older) adjuncts.
Off-topic, Oakton did something classy most other schools didn’t, which was to offer students FULL REFUNDS if they dropped because of COVID. I was taking two courses myself but I felt so bad for the school I didn’t take the refund. My ceramics instructor gave us great lectures on history of pottery and students even pitched in giving lectures on topics of interest. I mean, there was no actual playing with clay but I feel I got some good content for the dollar. I was auditing a colleague’s path course and he put all his lectures online that I’m listening to while I work on my craft project of the week.
Regardless, I’m setting up my two summer courses right now… if I can get them together I’ll use my 1337 skillz to make them interesting and maybe even gamify those suckers. I’m gonna vanguard that sh-t, b-tches! DERP DERP DERP.
Well back to sewing that flag. It will say something like, “Oakton Online Pharm!” (in Korean?),”짱 Pharm, B*tches!” or “Pharm! It’s good for you!”
Today I Learned that Adobe Photoshop has a half-dozen fonts into which I can copy-paste Korean characters from Google Translate!
Disclaimer: I do not know how to speak Korean beyond what I know by rote from listening to K-Pop.
Hopefully I have not mistyped, “My hovercraft is full of eels.”
Norwegian Word of the Day
Koreansk popmusikk Translation: Korean Pop Music
Use in a sentence: I sing along with my K-Pop music if I am alone; I love EXO!
Jeg synger sammen med K-Pop-musikken min hvis jeg er alene. Jeg elsker EXO!