Well, I just finished my first week of classes back online after our two week hiatus. It was . . . hard, especially Thursday, where I have to wait to do my two classes till 2:40 and go till 5:50, but then it was hard doing that before with in person classes at the start of our semester. The difficult thing now, of course, is staring at the computer screen for so long while trying to keep the faith that the students are all awake and focused and there and not playing games or eating lunch or napping etc. And to keep faith that they are understanding when I can't see any reactions (our university wants us to do classes with videos off, for the most part, though in small classes like my nine-person seminar I'm trying to keep videos on).
A difference between this year and last year online is that this time I'm using Zoom for all my classes from the start, because it's easier to get students in smaller groups with Zoom than with Webex, and is generally easier to use it than it is to use Webex. So far it seems to be working. It feels like a miracle when all the students (almost) in a class of thirty-six or thirty-three actually show up on time. I did like doing my seminar with videos on very much more than with them off (as we did last year). I think some of the kids may not be comfortable with videos on, but they did mostly seem to smile a lot and it was great to see their faces and expressions while we were talking about The Giver. My graduate school classes are fine with videos on, I think! The students are lively and funny and sharp. Maybe the most difficult class was the Interactive English class (English Conversation basically), because I'm having the students give short self-introduction speeches and it's so artificial to do that kind of thing online in a Zoom meeting with videos off... And it does require a lot of concentration to follow the speakers and to try to get a variety of students to ask them questions, etc. Another bonus (what can I say? I'm lazy) of online classes is that I don't need to go to school but can do them from home! That means I can sleep a little later in the mornings and worry a little less about what to wear and so on. I hope Fukuoka and Japan can get the coronavirus situation under control again so we can go back to SAFE in person classes, but until then, we'll do our best online, eh?
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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