Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Questions I'm obsessing over right now


Will recording Zoom class sessions inhibit student participation?

How inhibited do I feel when I know I'm being recorded?
Is this why I refuse to use video in Zoom and why I rely entirely on audio instead?
Will I ever get over my horror of being recorded?
Does this stress me out more than any other aspect of online teaching?

What about privacy issues? Does random noise from the student's household need to be recorded in perpetuity?

At this chaotic point in time, do I really need to learn to use a video editing program to delete the unnecessary sections from the class meeting recording?

It's helpful to have a recording to share with students who have tech issues and miss the class meeting, but if I make the recording widely available, will this encourage students to skip the class meeting and rely entirely on the recording?

What kind of class discussion can we have if no one shows up?

Instead of cancelling our student poetry reading, why not move it online? 
Wouldn't lots of people enjoy watching students read their creative works in front of cool virtual backgrounds?
If an online poetry reading is such a great idea, why didn't I step up and volunteer to organize it?


If I had to take an exam online, would it totally creep me out to know that an electronic proctoring program was monitoring my every move and even taking control of my computer to limit access to other programs? 

If such a system would creep me out, why would I expect my students to welcome it?

Is it possible to adapt my exams to make such invasive monitoring unnecessary?

Am I a fool to have spent time submitting my fall book orders? 
Is it safe to assume that we will have some sort of fall classes regardless of circumstances, or is that assumption unreasonably optimistic?
Does that little frisson of pleasure provided by crossing fall book orders off my to-do list offset the possibility that it's a total waste of time? 

Will my wrist and elbow ever stop aching? 
Will my eyes ever un-blur?

Will I ever stop obsessing over everything that could possibly go wrong in my online classes?
 
 

2 comments:

Katy said...

Yep, I'm obsessing over some of those, too. Although only my elbow hurts, not my wrist :)

As a fun distraction, I am thinking up new dog tricks to teach Allie and Obi. Want to contribute to my list? Also the dogs are why I'm not planning to Zoom from home, because I don't know what havoc Allie's pawing at my computer will wreak.

We will get through this.

Bev said...

I am confident that within a few weeks you'll have taught your dogs how to teach your classes.