Yesterday marked our first official day "back in session" for college. Like many colleges across the country, my school gave everyone a second week of spring break in order to allow all the professors to move the remainder of their course online. Our college has opted to then extend our semester by an extra week so we technically won't lose any instructional time.
I say "technically" because with the shift to online learning we actually lose a ton of instructional time. As you probably know, I teach math which is a subject that's rather tricky to learn online. Furthermore, this semester my course load has Calculus I with a corresponding lab (we use Mathematica). I can't force my students to buy that program on their own at home and so I had to basically ax the lab component for the remainder of the semester.
All that said, even with the cutbacks I'm happy to do what I can for my students. I actually think many of them are happy to have some sort of normalcy as well, though for the seniors losing out on the last half of their senior year is definitely a heartbreak (and it might be even worse if graduation gets cancelled, something that is looking more and more likely with every passing day).
For now though, I'm happy with the fact that I got the first week's worth of materials all online. I ended up using my in-class PowerPoints and recording a voice lesson for each slideshow. I've also recorded some video updates for my students (posted on YouTube). For assignments, I've used our course management software (we use Moodle) to create online quizzes and exams. Finally, I've posted a number of extra answer keys as well as additional practice problems (and some video solutions of me solving certain problems). It's not perfect but I think all of the resources are there for students to succeed if they so choose. Oh yeah, I also set up some tutoring sessions via Skype.
As for the baseball cards scattered throughout this post? Well, they all came in a surprise envelope from blog reader Bob. While the cards I scanned are all awesome, the real prize of that particular PWE was this:
That's a Press Proof parallel of Barry Larkin (numbered 21/25). I don't own very many numbered Larkin cards - and very few at all of cards numbered 25 or less. Thus, this is much, much appreciated and made for a nice prize to tuck into my binder tonight after a full day of online work!
More coming next time I can go to the Post Office
ReplyDeleteIt has to be really crazy for college seniors and high school seniors. A lot of them are looking at not having graduations and not really having a chance to say goodbye to their friends and teachers.
ReplyDeleteI remember taking calculus courses back in college (integration, differentiation, etc.) but have forgotten most of it, lol. Congrats on getting a #'d Larkin.
ReplyDeleteI teach AB Calc and BC Calc and thankfully I was through most of the material before we were forced to move to "eLearning." For the the couple remaining lessons I didn't cover I've been assigning them YouTube videos to watch. The College Board has set up an AP classroom to help us review for the exam, which has been truly very helpful.
ReplyDeleteOur local university has already cancelled graduation. So sad for those seniors.
My friend and I were just talking about how bad it sucks for seniors (we were actually referring to high school seniors... but it applies to college as well), since a lot of local schools have cancelled graduation, grad trips, proms, and balls. Heck... I even feel bad for my 8th graders, since they won't be able to attend their end of the year field trip or our promotion ceremony.
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