Strange week this week. Things were very up and down. This is Luna, she gets it.
My one participant for Monday’s session cancelled so I spent a bit more time working on the OER presentation content. I want to have enough (read: too much) to cover whatever questions might come up but package it so it’s not overwhelming.
I went to campus for the welcome back lunch on Tuesday. It was nice to see some people and I got to meet Joel and Neil in person.
My ‘day in the office’ on Wednesday didn’t work out very well. I managed part of the morning but stupid things kept happening and I was getting easily frustrated. I think it was mostly because I knew I had the afternoon session and I wanted to feel relaxed and prepared. The office was not relaxing – rolls of paper were falling over, usb cables were the wrong size (universal my ***) , my monitors would not show my open programs… things like that that on a normal day I would have just dealt with but on this day, were driving me to distraction. So, I went home. I delivered the session in the afternoon with Neil and one other participant and I really enjoyed it. The attendee was really keen to try new things and we had a great customized kind of session where we talked about OER, possibilities, authentic assessment and other things. I had a nice talk with Neil afterwards and that turned the down morning back up.
I ran the accessibility session in sort of a ‘back-to-back’ format on Thursday. I had one participant cancel and one faculty member ask if they could join so – 4 people. 2 showed up late and since we had covered most of what the accessibility checker could do, the early people left and the late people stayed and we did it again. I got to meet a new instructor and she brought up a great question about accessibility and voice over with PowerPoint. We had a quick look together and it looks like it may be possible to caption voiceovers but maybe not easy and maybe not without additional software. So, that’s something I’m going to look into for next week.
I helped a couple of people with some course related Blackboard questions so between that and the sessions, and the welcome back lunch, talking to, and sharing with, other people were the highlights. There is some overlap in my 3 session which is fun to play with when the numbers are small as they have been.
Lots of on and off anxiety this week that I am attributing to a few things – first ‘the news’ . My week started with this article from the CBC: Western provinces driving Canada’s 4th COVID-19 wave as physicians warn cases ‘out of control’. I think I was also picking up on the stress in the air after the president’s conversation as well as my professional network – people are not feeling great about a return to campus. The first week back is always a bit weird anyway when you live on an academic calendar and then add a layer of pandemic fatigue to that…
So, yeah… Onward. Next week I’m going to look into that PowerPoint question and look through teach anywhere to see what kind of resources I can add/create that come out of my sessions. One more session to deliver on the Open ETC and I’ve got the ‘Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone’ book to go through and looking forward to talking about UDL. Also hoping for some kind of happy news (I can hope right?) and planning on focusing on mental health this long weekend.