But I have never been so busy at home, first, the University may be closed, but only for face to face teaching, we have moved to the cloud and that means holding lectures online, getting students onto the preferred sharing platform, ie Microsofts Teams, and to a very small extent Zoom, plus whats app, text and mobile.
Next, it's the slides I use, most are great for general lecturing but needed to be updated to account for presenting online, so a lot of lecturer notes and individual video's for each slide, plus a complete video of the lecture. I am also sending out mini-blogs organising the lectures and in my case organising the linked lectures related to my module IDD or Integrated Digital Design.
I am also quite busy updating mt slides, I intend to retire at the end of this semester, and want to hand over to my successor a well-formulated and complete module. so lots of thinking, and updating to be done.
Next comes the usual University group meets, Teams is incredible for this, do you notice I have not mentioned Skype, it does not come close to the services Teams offers, and the ease of use. OK there is a learning curve, but the more you use it, the more you learn and use. The Uni team meets are essential as we venture into this new way of teaching, and the group meets are essential for sharing experiences and lecture methods.
Students are also demanding, and time has to be put aside for one to one meets to help them understand or use the lectures in their module and course work. so I am booking time slots for over 200 students all within the built environment. Then there are research students, who just by there very nature, need a lot of conversations to discuss a paper or theory of a new paper.
Its a long day in front of a screen, and although its once working from home it's also tiring. I spent a long portion of my career, working from home being a tech guy for Dow and I should know how it works, but this is so different.
I am also reviewing my web site Scays.co.uk and updating the layout a little, plus writing notes for up and coming papers, oh and walking my dog Barley. and it's here where I can indulge in my love of blogs. I listen to about a dozen different producers, on a range of topics and walking Barley is my blog time. I have also begun buying my books as Audible files, yes I still order the paper version, but so often I am taking offers to get the Audible file, it's part of my dog walking experience now.
But walking and listening, does not allow the making notes, so I get back and try to make notes, not easy and certainly not the best way, but it makes me rethink a little. Plus I have made Sunday afternoon a time to reflect on these badly written notes and try to correct and update. Kindle does have a great way to highlight a passage and retrieve that text, Audible has a clip feature that I have found so intent to test it out.
I have just finished "The order of Time" by Carlo Rovelli, and have just started "21 Lessons for a 21st Century" by Yuval Noah Harari. It's too late for the Order of Time and I will make use of the clipping in 21 lessons. Both books I have added to the Scays.co.uk web site book list.
Saturday and Sunday, have always been my days for buying the weekends papers. I started doing this in my early teens and never really stopped, except for the times I live abroad and English papers were very expensive. I started clipping articles and adding them to my little blue book, a ring clip binder I used. But now I tend to use an app on my Pixel mobile to scan as a pdf article the item I want to clip, far more efficient way to clip as I save it to my Google Drive and the article is OCR'd so searchable.
So there we have my update on home Lockdown, stay out of the way, and keep up with Uni life. Oh and try and get a Tesco or any other slot for home delivery, almost impossible, so might have to visit the local store.
Today's photo is my loan Brompton I have from the University, so good to get back into the sale, and on such a nice bike, I am now looking for one to buy.
No comments:
Post a Comment