Snow Days / Snow Daze [status, work]
Feb. 23rd, 2026 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterSince we are 150 miles north of Manhattan, we are not getting impacted by the current blizzard to the same extent as the city. Nonetheless, we're seeing a fair amount of snow and blustery wind, and this time at least my institution decided to cancel all classes up through noon. They issued the cancellation message last night at 9 pm, which made for a pretty quick pivot for me. In turn, I canceled my plans to try and go to rowing practice this morning, and instead got up early to start making Even More Lecture Videos for Animal Physiology.
The problems are, videos are large files, and my home upload speed is pretty throttled, so it has taken almost an hour to upload the first, shorter video (~1 Gb file; 15 minute recording). I have downsampled the video quality for the second, longer video accordingly (30 minute recording), but I am barely going to have it uploaded ahead of the scheduled start time for the class. In many respects that doesn't matter, because when classes are canceled technically we cannot hold a scheduled class session. But on a more practical level, that means I really can't go anywhere until the video finishes uploading.
So far it looks like the plows have hit the primary roads (emergency vehicle access for fire fighting and hospitals), but not yet the secondary or tertiary roads; I can see one of each road type from my windows at home.
...and as the morning progresses, I'm also noticing that unmistakable throat lymph node sensation suggesting I'm fighting off illness. Quick, to the medicine cabinet! That also means it's probably most prudent to just plan on staying home and recording and uploading yet another lecture video to replace my afternoon bicycling class meeting.
...and now there's another long wait for that one to upload, too.
Here's hoping that people actually watch them and find them useful. It's not an ideal method but still far better than nothing!
There are a lot of things these days reiterating the points that doing things like reading real books and going to class in person work better and have more benefits than over-reliance on digital learning tools. To many of us, this is not a surprise. I treat the digital learning tools as accessory to learning, and that seems to be a reasonable approach, based on my learning assessments.
The problems are, videos are large files, and my home upload speed is pretty throttled, so it has taken almost an hour to upload the first, shorter video (~1 Gb file; 15 minute recording). I have downsampled the video quality for the second, longer video accordingly (30 minute recording), but I am barely going to have it uploaded ahead of the scheduled start time for the class. In many respects that doesn't matter, because when classes are canceled technically we cannot hold a scheduled class session. But on a more practical level, that means I really can't go anywhere until the video finishes uploading.
So far it looks like the plows have hit the primary roads (emergency vehicle access for fire fighting and hospitals), but not yet the secondary or tertiary roads; I can see one of each road type from my windows at home.
...and as the morning progresses, I'm also noticing that unmistakable throat lymph node sensation suggesting I'm fighting off illness. Quick, to the medicine cabinet! That also means it's probably most prudent to just plan on staying home and recording and uploading yet another lecture video to replace my afternoon bicycling class meeting.
...and now there's another long wait for that one to upload, too.
Here's hoping that people actually watch them and find them useful. It's not an ideal method but still far better than nothing!
There are a lot of things these days reiterating the points that doing things like reading real books and going to class in person work better and have more benefits than over-reliance on digital learning tools. To many of us, this is not a surprise. I treat the digital learning tools as accessory to learning, and that seems to be a reasonable approach, based on my learning assessments.
