Coming to you live from the trenches [teaching]

[rebeccmeister]

This week we've had the first two campus-related cases of the Disease pop up. Because it is important to respect the privacy of our students, we aren't informed about who has it. But we are informed when students in our classes go on medical leave, which could be because they have the Disease, or they have been put in Precautionary Quarantine due to contact tracing, or because they have had any other condition come up that warrants medical leave.

So yesterday, I received word that two students from one of my classes who sit next to each other were both put on medical leave. One of them got in touch with me right away, in a bit of a panic over it all, so I did my best to reassure them that things would be okay with academics. This is a class that's mostly freshmen.

I contemplated this information on the bike ride home, and eventually came to the decision that it might be a good idea to hold today's lecture completely on Zoom, rather than having half of the students attend in person, half online. My main thought was if my class wound up being the epicenter of a larger campus outbreak, I would be upset about that. The hard part is that our information turnaround time for the Disease still isn't really fast enough.

If we're still at two cases early next week, I'll relax slightly and will go back to the hybrid mode.

I can't say that I enjoyed teaching 100% on Zoom. Instead I would say that it was exhausting and the limited interactivity was challenging.

I am still personally in an "allergies, or..." sort of dilemma, still taking full standard precautions (mask, distance, hand-washing, etc).

A whole bunch of really good articles have come out or have come to my attention this week in the scientific literature, about Henrietta Lacks's cells, about what the NIH needs to do with regards to the use of race in science, and about archosaur lungs. And more. It's interesting how that often happens in cycles - long spells where nothing looks that interesting, then periods where a whole bunch of interesting articles pop up.

My eyes are a bit tired from a lot of online grading. I provide a lot more feedback when grading online because I type so much faster than I write. Do the students actually read it? That remains to be seen.

Comments

[shalpacafarm]

A friend of mine had to buy blueblocker safety goggles because Zoom was giving her visual migraines. The effect is that she now looks like a mad scientist who happens to teach Spanish so that’s a good thing. No one wants to mess with Señora Walter White.

Everyone feels sick because there’s so much smoke in the air.

Also D vitamins, B vitamins, potassium, and iron, or a CSA subscription and liver liver liver.

I just spent ten minutes on the phone and I’m dizzy and have to lie down.

[rebeccmeister]

Oh yeah, I forgot that the smoke has reached us here!

Good thought on the vitamins. I should tank up.

[moodyduck]

There are also apps that you can use to change the color temperature of your monitor, including according to time of day. Very helpful for my eyes.

[twoeleven]

It's interesting how that often happens in cycles - long spells where nothing looks that interesting, then periods where a whole bunch of interesting articles pop up.
Sure: when there's nothing interesting in the journals, people skim the table of contents and go back to doing research and/or writing. At some point, they all publish, and all scientific progress grinds to a halt as people suddenly develop keen interests in subjects they'd never heard of before. :)

Ha-ha, maybe serious. :P

[mallorys_camera]

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack was a great book.

I got winded this afternoon walking up a hill I can usually run up. I could not figure out what was going on! But, yeah. It makes sense if the air quality is bad.

[rainswolf]

How is your university deciding who to test?

[jameswatriss]

Not knowing what the class is... would you have the option to just go hold court outside on the lawn, in an appropriately distanced way?

There have been some interesting articles on my radar, too. One was about the discovery of a mammoth graveyard...