Hello,
I’ve been slightly nervous writing this as a follow-up to last week’s issue, which was the first to take a new direction and spin-off from our successful Languages & Culture Digest. This is a good space to land at the end of the week, to be able to write down a few thoughts and reflect on what has been rewarding and challenging.
I wanted to say thank you for your kind comments and encouragement, so many of you have leaped across from the previous newsletter to this one. I said that I would write from a more personal perspective and share my experience of being here, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - so that’s what I’m doing.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with my story, here’s the abridged version.
I originally trained as a filmmaker after university and worked in design and media production. I started teaching when the local further education college needed a photography lecturer for a couple of days a week (I knew how to work a darkroom), and those hours steadily increased as I completed my teacher training. I became a Head of Department in the Arts, enjoying working with brilliant teachers and students in a variety of subjects until the opportunity came to move across from FE to HE. In my new role within the University, I managed the Digital Learning Team, which I enjoyed very much and introduced me to a wonderfully interesting group of people working across many different disciplines and subject areas. Then, just as everything was working out and we were feeling settled, a colleague noticed a position advertised in a newsletter that she thought I might be interested in. It was the opportunity to come to America, to teach and deliver creative projects using new technologies but specifically focussed on language and culture.
The rest, well you’re reading about it. Any questions? I certainly have a few…
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
This week my class enjoyed a zine workshop. We spent some of the time looking through examples before trying our hands at making our own. We all managed to get a few pages done and hopefully it inspired some to complete them, with the possibility of one or two zines as final projects for the course.
We shared some resources for making your own zine, their handmade, DIY nature means that they can be used in almost any context, simple and are straightforward enough to incorporate in your lesson. We all agreed that the best thing about zines is that you can make them about anything. You just need some paper, scissors, pens, and anything else that you want to make marks with or stick to the pages. There are of course many zines about zines.
Here’s a link to the Zine Libraries of the world.
Life Lessons
Last week when I wrote we were waiting for the results of the election. Now the people have spoken and it’s clear that there will be a new president, the old president just needs to come to terms with that. What’s depressing is how much disinformation is floating about on social media, we already knew it was weaponized for use in such a time, we saw it coming but it happened anyway.
I’ve had to manage a retreat from the news and Twitter, it really was getting to me, doomscrolling and checking live feeds for updates almost every spare moment. I slept a little better last night, but the break is only temporary - I still need to stay informed, but I’m also no good if I’m tense or anxious.
Drawing, painting, listening to music or the radio, reading, walking, watching, cooking, playing, talking - all those things that make me a better person to be around.
Here’s a sketch I did when we returned from a short break, the colors have been bright this year and it was a treat to see the different shades and enjoy being outdoors. Every weekend now my job is to rake the leaves in our garden, we pile them along the side of the road and every week a lorry arrives to vacuum them up and take them away. It has been unseasonably warm lately, we hit high temperatures and back into shorts and t-shirts for a few days, only for warnings of snow on Monday. That’s how it is in Western Pennsylvania.
Lost and Found
Students need support, the pandemic has left them isolated for large periods of time, in halls or at home with their families, their independence curtailed, routines disrupted. I can understand the urge to dance, play sports, and meet with others. It’s just so dangerous at the moment and the priority has to be staying safe. Here’s some advice that you might want to share with them, especially with Thanksgiving very soon and many returning home. Many universities are creating voluntary “departure testing” plans that you may want to signpost to students.
I’m not forgetting the toll on teachers, too, here’s an excellent article from Durham University on Resilient teaching in a hybrid world.
Here’s something useful that I learned this week. How to embed Instagram posts in your Canvas VLE. I quit Facebook a long time ago (best decision I ever made) but still have an Instagram account, which is only just clinging to its “happy place” tag and also somewhere educators share, although seemingly not as much as Twitter.
In a new Canvas page, switch to HTML editing, paste the following code. Then go to the Instagram post, and look at the URL. It will have a /p/ followed by a series of letters followed by another /. Copy that code and paste between /p/ and /embed/.
<p><iframe src=”//instagram.com/p/______________/embed/” width=”612″ height=”710″></iframe></p>
Lastly, I submitted a piece to the Digital Library Pedagogy Group which publishes the #DLFtoolkit of session plans that are free to use and adapt to teaching. I shared a lesson on Teaching Culture in VR that I have my fingers crossed will be used in the next version of the toolkit.
Here’s are some interviews about some of the sessions that we’ve been running in VR.
Thank you
That’s it for this week, I hope that you’re taking care of yourself out there.
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