No real reason for this photo – clean desk(top) clear head? Saw this sculpture in a museum at the cabanas in Guadalajara.
Despite not having workshops or studios there was enough to do to keep busy this week, but also a little time to a some physical and digital cleaning up. I had a few un-filed files and things thrown on my desktop, and my desk that I put away.
I went into the office on Tuesday so that I could hand off a laptop dock to Margaret and set up my own. We had a socially distanced conversation with Gerald, the Health and Safety Manager who lives across the hall (for now). Looking forward to seeing the NIC branded masks.
The Spanish class I signed up for has started. It’s a distance section but will probably have some synchronous clarification sessions. When I was a student, I was a student for a really long time. I hope I remember how…
There were a couple of instructor conversations early in the week but that has slowed to crickets (as of Thursday afternoon) I expect more around mid-term and/or when the first of the grading starts. That kind of information – marking and grade center – doesn’t stick until one has to do it.
I spent a good portion of my Thursday just playing around with Kaltura Capture and trying to get a screen cast for how to turn on captions. I had a few false starts and managed a couple of ‘not-bad’ versions. Most of the issues were around getting the frame for the recording in the right place or not being able to grab the recording control to drag it out of the way in time. It was kind of fun to watch the recording and see where the Kaltura captions were different from the BlueJeans captions. Bluejeans came out as ‘bleaching’. I will work on enunciation while trying not to sound like a robot. I will also try not to let perfection get in the way of good enough but I know I can do better. It gets easier every time. Practice, practice, practice.
Friday was the first Education Council meeting of the term. We have lost our Chair due to the faculty lay-offs. I’ve resigned from Planning and Standards and from the Fast-track Committee but since EdCo was an elected position I’m going to stick out my term. I’ve been thinking that committee work is going to look different going forward – along with everything else.
A few requests came in on Friday afternoon and all were (nicely) directed to help desk.
Things are busy, but calm for now. Next week we set sail.
Ready! Le’ts go! Got right back into workshops on Tuesday morning. That was a good way to start. I spent some time on Monday getting ready and catching up on last week’s email. Monday wasn’t an official work day but I needed to make up some time and I wanted to feel ready to go on Tuesday.
Welcome back, but again, not quite a full week. I had two work days and half a vacation day so my work week technically ended on Tuesday.
This bell is in the garden of the Villa Ganz in Guadalajara. Just ring if you need me. Feels for this week.
Officially the week work ends on July 22, but for consistency…
Another busy week comes to its conclusion. 
It was another good week of learning. More hands-on studios for Blackboard Learn and Kaltura. The studio course spaces that I created seem to work well. I can make everyone an instructor and they can create things, then, they can use the student preview to create a student user and experiment with the tools from that perspective. It’s useful to see how the tools work from both sides – that way we can remember how to create really clear instructions when things aren’t intuitive. The preview user allows them to add to each other’s discussions and submit assignments and they can see how that looks in grade center as an instructor. It’s good practice for me too because I can talk about the tools, how and why to use them but I don’t use them in a class type setting and see the functionality (or lack of) first hand.