Day 133, July 27, 2020

Brave Little Tailor

Today's Soundtrack: The Allman Brothers Band, Live at the Atlanta International Pop Festival, 1970

The other day we had a sudden proliferation of house flies. They were bothersome enough that I went and found the flyswatter from the basement stairwell where it lives with the brooms and mops. They were bothersome enough that Franklin was snapping at the air around his head like a Venus flytrap. I killed three or four in span of twenty minutes. It was the kind of infestation where one starts to wonder, where do houseflies come from? After pondering that for half a day, I then turned to Google for an answer.

That was not so pleasing. I searched the house for a potential source of flies, but then decided that it was much more wholesome to figure they had followed us into the house while bringing in the groceries, or while I was taking the dog out for a walk. Or maybe they snuck in through the air gaps by the window AC unit. 

Sometimes it is better to keep things a mystery. It is good enough to know that house flies are dirty things, and despite the bad karma of killing living things, probably it is better to smash the creatures with a fly swatter than to endure the constant bombardment of the little buggers.

I do worry a bit about such things even as I brazenly participate in them. The carpenter ant crawling on the wall, the sugar ants on the counter, the tick pulled off the dog... all of them are killed, crushed, or drowned with impunity. Except, there is a little punity. There is the thought that there was a life that was extinguished with little regard... and that we are also as susceptible. 

Yesterday, I passed a car accident. It was a large relatively new SUV that had somehow crossed the road and hit a telephone pole. I could see that all the airbags had deployed and there were rivulets of car fluids starting to stream across the street. A man in overalls was waving traffic by, and a small chorus of neighbors were warily walking up towards the car. A woman unsteadily retrieved her purse from the passenger side door. She seemed a little unsteady on her feet and her purse was a coarsely woven bag like you might get from Guatemala, or a hippie store. In the rear view mirror, I could see the front of the car was ruined and I hoped that she was the driver and shaken, but unharmed. I hoped that the driver was not still in the car.

A few years ago, on the same road, but on a different stretch, we passed an accident where a man in a pick up truck had hit a deer. His truck had careened off the road a good way down from the accident, so he must have been going quite fast. Passers by had stopped and a big pickup truck had stopped right in front of the deer and the driver got out and waved cars around his truck and the still alive animal. It was a buck and had been hit so hard it had lost its horns and I think all its legs were broken because it just sat upright on its chest, its head right at eye level of my passenger window where I looked out into its dark eyes. There was no struggle, just a returned gaze. And I thought, I was one of the last things the animal would see before a police officer came to dispatch it. 

Life is simultaneously so treasured, so valuable, and alternately, so brazenly relieved. Are we so different from the flies, the ants, the injured deer in the face of riot soldiers armed with batons and worse? Are we any more meaningful for the politicians fearful about enforcing mask policies, or closing bars?

We are, and that is clear. It is just sometimes, we are twisted and corrupted by society, by circumstance, by the failure of systems, and we forget. But, we are more meaningful. Or maybe, as meaningful. All of us.

Take care and stay safe,

Leo

From Our Friends:

From Academic Impressions:

The Words We Use: How Higher Ed is Responding to Calls for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Article | Academic Impressions

Increasingly, faculty leaders are responding seriously to the call for more “culturally relevant pedagogy,” referring to more inclusive classrooms and pedagogical styles. This article draws on findings from a recent inquiry into how institutions are thinking about equity within pedagogy. Read more.

Learn more:

• Inclusive Pedagogy in Higher Education: A Mindset and Continual Practice |Virtual Training

Strategically Integrating Experiential Learning Into the Curriculum July 30 - 31, 2020 | Online Create a plan to align stakeholders and drive progress towards the implementation of your experiential learning initiatives.

View The Program

From Tara Parker:

WEST AFRICAN DANCE onZOOM with Tara

 

 -- Light up the world with your dance --

Join us!!

 

MONDAYS at 6:00-7:15 pm (Class may go over)

 

Please email info@ammaya.org for Zoom info by 5 pmon Monday. Zoom info will change each week.

 

Tara Murphy is giving FREE beginning West African inspired dance classes on Mondays until August. Join us to raise our energy and spirits during this time! Donations are welcome if you wish to give. Payment information is listed below.

 

West African Dance Class: With great recorded African music, contemporary and traditional. BEGINNING/OPEN level. Let your spirit fly with this dance, which opens the heart while working every muscle in your body. Dancing brings you to a place of joy, health, connection and unity. Participants will learn the basic styles of West African dance as well as a traditional dance from Mali or Guinea, West Africa. 

 
Donations are welcome: Paypal: info@ammaya.org; 
Zelle: info@ammaya.org; Venmo: @Tara-Murphy-122

From the Five College Center for East Asian Studies:

War and Peace: Voices from Japan, Sept. 7-Nov. 15, 2020. In this 10-week online seminar, we will consider the experiences of the people of Okinawa, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, both in war time 1945 and in post-1945 peace time. The objective of this course is to carefully consider the experiences and voices of the people in Japan who were impacted by the events to be discussed. Application deadline: Monday, Aug. 10, noon EDT. Limited to 30 participants. More information.

From NPR:

The Black Lives Matter movement is changing the way our country talks about racism, social justice and having hope for the future. NPR spoke to five Black couples about how their family conversations have changed and how they support and inform their children despite their own misgivings about the slow pace of progress. 

From ProPublica:

What People Who Live in Mostly White Towns Need to Know About History

How can white people elevate stories of people of color? Are there ways residents of small towns can address structural racism? Here are more answers to your questions about sundown towns and a video of our event.

by Logan Jaffe

Today's Online Teaching Tips:

From Colleen Caffery, Coordinator of Disability Services at GCC:

Some things that we can do to ensure accessibility in the remote environment:

• Follow the principles of Universal Design for Learning—in a nutshell, using a variety of ways to present content, assess learning, and engage with students.
• Make sure that video content is captioned.  If you are unable to find captioned versions of the perfect video, I.T. can send it out to a vendor that can add captions.  Gary Ackerman has created videos on uploading videos to YouTube and editing the auto-captioning that YouTube creates.  https://online.gcc.mass.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=373042

https://online.gcc.mass.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=352670

• Provide transcripts for audio content.
• Create accessible materials—Word documents, PDFs, slide presentations, images (alt text descriptions), etc.  Gary Ackerman is presenting a workshop On Monday, August 3^rd, on just this topic (including making videos accessible).  Details:  https://online.gcc.mass.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=384789 
• Use descriptive language for hyperlinks.

 

Here is an excellent, very comprehensive website for designing an accessible online course:  https://exploreaccess.org/accessible-online-course/  Much of the information is applicable to other needs—marketing materials, presentations, website content, and more.

FromYamaha:

Resources for Online Teaching Guide

We want to do our part to help music educators as you explore options and search for resources to facilitate online teaching. Updated weekly, discover the new resources recently added to our online teaching guide:

Access Guide

From Academic Impressions:

Responding to Microaggressions in Online Learning Environments During a Pandemic
Article | Academic Impressions

With faculty and students both stressed during the pandemic, microaggressions may become more frequent in our online learning environment. Here are some practical strategies for mitigating the impact of microaggressions in online and remote classes. Read more.

Learn more:

• Identifying and Removing Microaggressions | Bundle of 2 Recorded Webcasts
• Understanding and Addressing Microaggressions | Short Video Lessons - Exclusive to Members

From Campus Technology:

Updated: Free and Discounted Ed Tech Tools for Online Learning During the Coronavirus Pandemic

• As more and more colleges and universities have shut down their campuses to curb the spread of COVID-19, education technology companies have stepped forward to help move student learning to the virtual realm.

  More

From Desire 2 Learn:

The University of Arizona (UA) has been expanding its online presence and has doubled its course sites per semester while using fewer resources. Faculty can now create and update their online course offerings without the need for permission or technical support. Learn how UA improved its support for online programs and how it’s empowering faculty to teach the way they want.

Read the story

From EducationAdminWebAdvisor (Who names their organization like this?):

Tips for Preparing for and Teaching Your Live Online Video Class Lesson Friday, July 31 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!

REGISTER NOW

From The Online Learning Consortium:

Designing Game-Based Learning Starts September 14, 2020 Game-based learning and gamification are two very different–if very effective– instructional phenomena. In this workshop, the companion to Designing Gamified Learning Environments workshop, you will implement the theories, principles, and specifically the mechanics of gamification to create your own games on a topic of your choice. By building an educational or serious game, you can leverage the power behind our innate desire to play. Learn more.	REGISTER
Designing Courses with a Multimodal Approach Starts September 21, 2020 Through online discussions, student-student and student-content interactions increase, and both faculty and students collaborate in the learning process as they explore unique perspectives. Join an expert facilitator from the OLC Institute in this seven-day asynchronous workshop to learn strategies for engaging learners in effective discussions as well as tools that can be employed to foster learner engagement and improve learning outcomes. Throughout the workshop, you will develop a plan for creating engaging and effective online discussions in your courses. Learn more.