No Throwing Trash on the Ground
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| "No throwing trash on the ground." |
My father sent a picture of himself this morning wearing a mask standing in front of the rusty remnants of some kind of pier-like structure and open water. He titled it fishing during social distancing. My father has always loved fishing, as long as I can remember. Back when we lived in Quincy, maybe before my brother was born, I remember him coming home from a fishing trip with a striper that was so big that it was too big to lie flat across the back seat of the Ford Galaxy 500 with its head and tail stuffed into two separate garbage bags. We marveled at the immensity of it on the kitchen table, and then it was divided up and everyone in the fishing party went home with a section.
Trips to the ocean always involved a stop at a bait shop to pick up worms and raw chicken wings for the crab traps. While my brother and I poked at washed up fish carcasses, collected sea glass, threw sea weed at each other, and played with driftwood like they were spaceships, my grandfather and uncles cast out from the piers with their long ocean rods.
The funny thing is, I can't ever remember them catching anything while I was with them. I once reeled in a lion fish, but that was it. I know my father came home with flounder, sea bass, all kinds of treasures, but maybe I was too impatient to wait and witness the catch. I wanted to play in the waves, and the sand worms creeped me out.
It seems like the perfect thing for the pandemic though. I wonder how I would act once I had the line cast out into the sea. Would I sit and stare out into the horizon, watch the seagulls, smell the ocean, and close my eyes? Or would I pull out a notebook and write for a bit, or maybe crack open the novel I've been meaning to read? Or... would I pull out my phone and get sucked into what the New York Times called doom scrolling (see below). I don't really just doom scroll, but I do get sucked in, whether it is reading every article on the pandemic in the NYT, NPR, and Apple News, or comparing three different models of archtop guitars and weighing the pros and cons until I am no longer able discern which is which.
Technology is a wonderful thing, and thank goodness we have it in the midst of the pandemic, as someone said to me today. But it is also an all consuming thing. It is my entire interface for work now... the paperless office finally a reality, except for the 3x5 cards I scribble notes to myself on. It is a wonderful thing that we can delve into rabbit holes and emerge a few hours later a little wiser in some esoteric minutae on the scale length of jazz guitars. Of course, I think while fishing, I'd rather be immersed in a notebook, or a novel, or the horizon. That's the crux, isn't it? Trying to find that balance, to keep the idea of technology as a gift rather than an all consuming curse.
I remember when we first got an iPad with cellular service, back before Leverett had high speed internet, and before I had a smartphone, the kids would ask a question about something over dinner, and suddenly we could look it up and continue the conversation, everyone a little better informed, and a little more engaged in the process of learning. That is how I ended up with kids that made posters proclaiming things like, "Trickle down economics doesn't work!" I hope we kept that poster somewhere. Before the advent of the iPad, as a parent I was infallible. I could proclaim things like the novel, Ben and Me (a book about how all of Ben Franklin's inventions really came from his friend Amos, a mouse who lived in his hat) was true, and the kids had no recourse but to believe me. After the internet, we had to admit our ignorance and demonstrate how to check our facts.
That is a good thing, to be recognized as fallible, because we all are. Some of us, more so than others. Sometimes, technology reveals that in ways that are embarrassingly clear. And other times people can hide behind it and allow technology to become the avatar veneer that everyone thinks is the real self. In any case, I have tomorrow off and aside from a few moments on my phone, I look forward to stepping away from Zoom, email, and all the assorted shared drives, documents, and spreadsheets.
Take care and stay safe,
Leo
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Sometimes the eggs come out looking a little funny.
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From Our Friends:
From the Greenfield Recorder and our own Moonlight Davis:
The novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, but Erving resident George Moonlight Davis says there is another deadly virus that has plagued this planet for much, much longer. “(Racism) is a world pandemic,” he said last week.
Read more here.
From the It Gets Better Project:
From the NYT:
The world is upsetting these days. And it’s easy to angrily scroll through Facebook or panic-read the news until you’re a bundle of anxiety. I’ve done it. |
My colleague Brian X. Chen offered advice in his latest personal technology column for breaking out of “doomscrolling.” He talked with me about his personal quest to change his digital habits by adding more structure to his day and making time for hugs. HUGS! |
From the AAG:
Charting "The Geography of Despair" in Academia, and Beyond
From Rural Assembly:
Recording: A Conversation on Rural Schools as Infrastructure"On July 10, The Rural Assembly, the Daily Yonder, and the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative hosted a roundtable that brought together key rural stakeholders with advocates to examine opportunities to advance rural public schools as part of national infrastructure legislation. Presenters included Congressman Bennie Thompson, Laura Jimenez of Center for American Progress, and Mary Filardo of 21st Century Schools Fund.
Read a summary of the roundtable conversation and more about the issue of rural school infrastructure in the Daily Yonder. You can also watch a video compilation from the roundtable and read the transcript of presentations at the link below. |
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Today's Online Teaching Tips:
From Education Admin Web Advisor:
Tips for Preparing for and Teaching Your Live Online Video Class Lesson Thursday, July 23 3:30 PM Eastern; 2:30 PM Central; 1:30 PM Mountain; 12:30 PM Pacific Veteran educator Dr. Robert Hill will show you how to prepare live online lessons infused with the best instructional practices. You will learn how to ensure that your students will get the most from your online synchronous instruction. Please join us! | | |
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From the Chronicle of Higher Ed:
Collaborative Note-Taking
Students come to Brielle Harbin’s introductory American-government course with a wide range of background knowledge. Some passed the Advanced Placement exam, while others haven’t studied the topic since they were freshmen in high school. That leaves Harbin, an assistant professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy, looking for ways to level the playing field.
One approach she’s found helpful is collaborative note-taking, in which students rotate note-taking responsibilities in a shared Google document (Harbin has the rest of the class take their own notes by hand). As Harbin describes in a recent article for College Teaching, the approach has several benefits. It strengthens students’ note-taking abilities, in particular letting those with less background learn from their classmates. It gives Harbin, who creates and owns the note-taking document, a window into how well students understand the material throughout the term. That’s especially useful at a service academy, she says, since students’ schedules make it hard for them to attend office hours.
From Campus Technology:
- Sponsors: Lenovo, Connection, Kivuto and OpenStax
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- Sponsors: Lenovo, Connection and Kivuto
From Magna:
This 20- to 25-hour course is your surest path to online teaching success! You’ll get core principles and best practices in online teaching to get you up and running fast, without detrimental and challenging false starts.
From Invoke Learning:
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