Gosh those were easy days.
Guy
1 Like
My uni just announced we will be online for the rest of the semester.
How are things going for the rest of you?
Guy
1 Like
They haven’t announced anything beyond the next 2 weeks online, but I’m still planning for the third week online. My non-credit teaching with degree students is postponed. Faculty and staff still coming in as usual, for now
2 Likes
Why do you need to wear headphones?
Just use the speakers abd built-in microphone.
Not all laptops have decent microphones with helpful noise cancellation. So some environments will need headphones.
My classroom has issues with road noise so I need headphones.
1 Like
We’re currently only next week online.
I’m still doing it. If you’ve gone completely online at least you are free of that. Trying to teach a hybrid class in-class and online in a mask is like teaching with one hand tied behind your back. I taught my first completely online class this week and I could at least ditch the mask for that one. Small consolation.
1 Like
Not sure what you are referring to. I teach from a desktop in the classroom. The software only allows me to speak to students online through the mic in my headphones. I have a handheld mic for the classroom but online students would not hear me using that.
We have had a mix of online and hybrid. Junior classes are online due to lots of case as are graduating senior classes for another week but everybody else is hybrid. No new announcements recently. My uni wants to get the grads out so I think they may move finals to online at the end of the month.
And I think the H.S. and Jr H.S. entrance exams are the end of next week so some schools have a vested interest to stay open if they are exam sites.
It depends on how the system is set up. With the classroom computers at my school, the online students do hear me from the microphone; if they use their mics, their sound is sent out through the classroom speakers (and fun feedback may ensue). But of course, systems are going to vary.
Good luck with the hybrid teaching. I had to do that briefly last year and fortunately the school quickly abandoned it and made us entirely online.
2 Likes
Right, mine is kind of funny. One way only for sound so it’s either talk or listen (not that I ever get questions online 
).
Thanks, I need it. The only consolation to not being entirely online is having some students in the classroom to interact with at least, formally and informally. I mean, that’s the best part of teaching, right? Teaching to a bunch of little squares on the screen in a deserted classroom is a rather empty experience.
I have found online to be both more difficult and easier at the same time. For hybrid classes there is so much more to need to pay attention to: Am I presenting or not and what (Google Meet)? Can they hear me or what I’m presenting? Last week I had a microphone issue as the school installed new cameras and didn’t properly adjust the computer settings. I lost almost a whole period doing trial and error until a couple of students in the classroom figured out the setting problem (as usual, when encountering a tech problem get a kid to help). Can they see what I am presenting? The text is big enough on my screen but how about theirs if they are on a phone or something? I am constantly typing in the message box to confirm. It’s more exhausting that in-person teaching.
But on the easier side, it is impossible to monitor whether students are being active or not so that burden of pushing students to participate is lifted. But the education experience suffers on both parts.
2 Likes
My uni is online until the end of the semester. It was inevitable. There are some advantages to online teaching.
It’s better than hybrid.
Guy
Hybrid teaching is the worst of both worlds. I can write 5 paragraphs about why it is awful but I’ll spare everyone the details. Work has been three times as stressful and draining lately and every teacher has been receiving some complaints about class quality. Meanwhile the bosses want to know what’s going on, because complaints were so rare before even during all online classes last year.
It is physically impossible to keep tabs on a physical class of young children and make sure every student at home is paying attention and participating (or even has their camera on). The venn diagram of activities that work for online and offline students at the same time is a sliver. You focus on one group, and the other is ignored, there is no way around this.
Since hybrid classes are here to stay for business reasons, the answer is only ‘what is the solution to this problem?’.
The solution is to clone myself or buy the kids tablets so they can follow along with a fully curated online class, but realistically both have the same likelihood of happening. Can’t wait for this to pass, but I’m pretty sure hybrid classes will continue through the entire summer.
2 Likes
We’ve finally gone completely online for the rest of the semester. It mostly blows.
Agreed. I have to fill more time because there are no pair or group activities.
Uh-uh. A kid who has chronic attendance and tardiness issues showed up in his online class this week. After I ended the class I kept the link open and his icon remained online for a couple of hours afterwards until I finally closed it. He did not respond to my questions asking why he was still online. Obviously sleeping or just logged in and left.
Yeah, there are some. Since I’m helpless to enforce students being active in the class it relieves me of that duty. I can only throw my hands up and hope they are doing something or paying some attention. Since they are going to refuse to turn their camera on I feel I can shut my off while book activities are going on and go pretty much off duty for a few minutes. Apart from those, the downsides of pretend-teaching into a screen of little squares in an empty classroom through a headset on a deserted campus, far outweigh the good sides for me.
Where do you do this? On MS Teams? I tried breaking groups into instant meetings on Google Meet this week and it had limited success.
1 Like
Oh, fuck that shit. I have raised my participation grade from 10% to 20%. You look at the book. You write down your answers. I will ask every single one of you. Go “um, ah”, you haven’t done it.
I always compliment the ums and ahs on how much they love me that they want to see me again next year.
2 Likes
Depends on the subject I guess. I am teaching a class where the final is a group presentation. There are no book questions to answer. They have to work in groups to organize their presentations.
That’s been a favorite joke of mine for a long time too. Every time a kid does some kind of a major screw up like being absent for a month I just say “Ok, see you next year.” It gets their attention quickly.
Yeah, Teams. It works reasonably well.
2 Likes
Thanks, I’ll have to investigate if things go on beyond this semester, God forbid. It’s been enough of a hurdle getting the hang of Google Meet.
On another note, should I have to do this again for whatever reason, I am considering instituting a “no camera presence = no class participation/attendance score” and maybe even for the rest of this semester. Seems to me a camera should now just be another requirement as it’s not that expensive.
1 Like
One of my grades was a group presentation where they had to make a movie telling us why one of the team members is a superstar. I just simply changed that to solo presentations where they speak about their favourite superstar. They can make a movie, do a PowerPoint of just blather at the camera for two minutes. They don’t HAVE to be doing group stuff. Most of them are going to fuck it up anyway, or one poor sap will end up doing everything.
I teach freshman basic English, public relations and media studies. Makes no difference what the subject is.
2 Likes