Where is our Zoom link?

I will get this question several times during the semester. “I have to be absent on Friday. What’s the Zoom link for that class session?”

There isn’t any.

During the pandemic quarantines, we got used to the idea that “going to class” meant turning on the computer and logging in (and often it meant turning off the camera and microphone and leaving the room). It was pretty rare for those sessions to be very productive or educational, and every teacher I know agrees that those Zoom students really didn’t do too well.

Setting up a Zoom session so I can do a “talking head” presentation from home is pretty simple, but doing a classroom session is much more complicated. (When I taught at the University of Akron, I did two semesters of similar teaching, and the university supplied a technical assistant to simply manage the equipment and software for the whole class session.)

So the answer to the question is that we don’t have a Zoom session for every class period. Almost all the material is available on Blackboard, so if you keep up with that, you won’t suffer too much from missing a class.

Comments

Getting Your Computer Ready for School

Back when I was a student, everyone packed up their portable typewriter for the move to campus. Lots of people got a new typewriter as a graduation gift, but I didn’t. I ended up using one we bought when I was in high school. The story is probably the same for you, except that it’s a computer, not a mechanical typewriter. Whether you just bought a new one or kept your old faithful companion with all of its stickers, you need to do a few things to get the machine ready for college. Getting Old Faithful ready for college Is Old Faithful sick? If the machine crashes a lot, has trouble (and takes a long time) doing things, or pops up weird ads to play poker or look at porn, you probably have a virus. (You just had to download that fancy screensaver, didn’t you?) Take a deep breath—bite the bullet—pay the computer repair shop to clean it up for you. Now that Old Faithful is feeling better … Back u...

The Writing Teacher in Summer

It has been a long time since I had the self-discipline to simply stop for the summer. There were always summer courses to teach, curricula to rewrite, etc. I promised myself, however, that this summer would be different. Yes, I’m spending a lot of effort on this blog, and I’ll put in big time preparing for fall classes, but this will be a more relaxed summer than most, time to do some other things: I started the summer running sound effects for Mid-Ohio Opera. When the phone rang on stage, I was pushing the button. When lightning flashed and thunder rolled, I was pushing the button. I spent a week at Disney in Florida with grandkids, my first trip there. I get the idea that I’m one of the last people in Ohio to get there for the first time (probably not true). The highlight of July will be a bike trip on the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, about 45 miles of riding a day. Fun stuff! ...

Our Future Word Processors

The rumor from my secret sources is that Ashland University will soon make a transition away from Google Docs (and Google Drive, etc.) to a Microsoft product. Here are my early (and very personal) thoughts about the transition. Google Docs was always “word processing lite” Though it is getting better, Google Docs never gave much help with spelling or writing style, and its approach to page formatting was very primitive. Paragraph styles were especially weak. Docs was one of the first programs to automatically save your work, and that was a great advantage, but many other programs do that now. Its file format is unusual and hidden, so one result is that I keep getting files I cannot open from students who don’t really understand how it works. In general, Google Docs is OK if you are not too fussy about your final product, don’t want to learn how to use a better tool, and need something fast, free, and undemanding. I don’t think many businesses would use Google D...

English 100 at Ashland

Search This Blog