Welcome to The Spaces in Between, a weekly newsletter on culture, language, and technology written by Stephan Caspar. If you’re new here, then welcome, feel free to subscribe.
There has been more snow this winter than in any of the past two since we moved to Pittsburgh. More shoveling. I’m a dab hand now (see last week’s post on shovel technique) and have even volunteered the services of my eldest son to help clear some of our neighbors’ drives, those who are spending the winter in warmer climes.
Meanwhile, news of impeachment 2.0 has included shocking footage of the capital riots and the closest of close shaves of many inside. Some say there is the possibility of conviction, but I don’t think that will be the case. Republican senators are unwilling to act. There is a cult-of-personality so great that many fear for their futures if they turn against it.
Elsewhere at home things seem a little more settled, although lockdown conditions are still in force and households are unable to mix. At least we’re able to share film and tv recommendations, and we finally finished The Queen’s Gambit. There’s so much to watch, but we’re tired in the evenings. The boys want to get online and play Minecraft with friends, and occasionally we’ll put on a film or comedy show that we can all watch together.
This week I have a few things to share from my teaching, and notes on how it’s all going. Otherwise, it feels like all the deadlines are arriving at once, for grant applications and conference proposals, interspersed with occasional zoom meetings with colleagues and possible collaborators.
Thanks again for your support and encouragement, I had a flurry of emails last week and it is always so lovely to hear from you.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
In this week’s LangTech class we had the privilege to talk to my friend and former colleague Fiona Harvey about her work as a Learning Technologist and Education Developer. Fiona spoke brilliantly about the shift in attitudes to technology during what she and many others have referred to as the great pivot. It is clear that technology now plays a vital part in the delivery of teaching, and many academics have needed to learn new skills. These extend not just to the technology, how to edit text online or set up breakout groups, but more thoughtful considerations about the wellbeing and mental health of our students at this time.
Fiona helped us to think about the question of what we might return to post-pandemic. Some academics will hope to abandon the technology that they have found painful and intrusive during this time and gladly pick up where they feel they left off. The world won’t be the same though and students won’t want to forget some of the more positive aspects of their time learning remotely. The work needs to happen now to record what we think these good bits might be so that we might preserve them. Personally, I hope that we won’t forget the need for compassion and also, that some of the considerations that have forced changes to workload, use of high stakes assessment, and the frequency of deadlines might endure.
Thankfully I’ve received three calls this week for articles addressing remote learning during the pandemic. I have a few ideas and have published elsewhere, but now that we’re almost a year into this, it probably is time to have a rethink and reflect on the good and bad.
I should say that this semester’s courses are gathering pace. I step in next week in our larger course and hope to introduce concepts around immersion, virtual reality, and augmented reality. I love these Nasa images of experimental headsets used for training and simulation.
Life Lessons
I added a few sketches to Instagram this week, including one of actor and model @darylhembrough from a live drawing session on zoom run by London Drawing.
Daryl has a rare condition called Pfeiffer Syndrome which causes the premature fusion of certain bones in the head and face. It was fascinating drawing Daryl and learning a little about him throughout the session.
I’ve been encouraging all my students, especially those on making courses to pick up a pen or pencil and draw. It teaches them to not be precious with results, that each drawing is one in a series that they will continue (possibly forever). This image doesn’t have to the one! Love sketching and drawing, it is just so good for you.
Lost and Found
We had fun in our lesson with High Fidelity, the latest in a series of proximity chat platforms that are being rolled out. The concept of this technology is that all the participants of a call are dotted around a screen, but you only hear the people within a close radius, and you can move around to talk to different people or gather as a group where you can all be heard. As an educator, this feels familiar and feels as close to work in small groups, where you as a teacher might walk by and listen in every now and then, perhaps to make a comment or suggest another question. There are apps popping up everywhere, including spatial.chat and gather.town (which is like teaching in Zelda); and I understand from my boys that there proximity chat mods (modifications) for Among Us and Minecraft.
Last year, just before the election Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar played Among Us. It is good fun to watch.
You might find it odd that I’m adding all this to my lost and found list of technologies and platforms, but a great deal of work in TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) is in eyeing up the potential of particular technologies for use in the classroom. In fact, I’m sometimes suspicious of technologies that have been designed specifically to support teaching and learning because they are often extremely prescriptive about a particular pedagogical approach. That, and they’re not often designed well.
Finally, I must be the last person to realize that the apple logo on the iPhone can be set as a secret button, in fact, the phone will respond to a double-tap on the back even with a case on it. You have to scroll through the accessibility options and choose touch, then back tap to choose the shortcut. You could set it to take a photo, screenshot, scroll, or open apps…almost anything.
Thank you
I enjoyed listening to Adam Buxton this week talking to writer Elizabeth Day. It was an emotional and moving conversation, dealing with death, infertility, and miscarriage. I downloaded a couple of episodes of Elizabeth’s podcast How to Fail and immediately subscribed to the series. Failure is such a part of life and how we recover and succeed and fail again is what makes us.
On a lighter note, Adam plugged an animation about David Bowie created with the wonderful Brothers McLoed, there’s a link to it from his website. I won’t post it here as it includes VERY strong language and don’t want to risk offending anyone. Instead here’s another animation from the Brothers McLoed that my colleagues in the English department might enjoy, particularly those working on Shakespeare and VR projects.
That’s all for this week.
Thank you for your support and encouragement. Feel free to drop me a line and I’ll see you around this time next week.