⚙️ Work

Getting ready to enable “live transcripts” in our campus zoom environment, going live during reading week later this month.

The profile for our new Learning Technologies Specialist - Program Innovation position is under final review by HR. I’ll get to post that ASAP, likely early next week. Looking forward to the hiring process and growing the team.

Some details of the new Program Innovation Hub initiative are outlined in the president’s Congress website. I’ve been working on some strategic planning projects, and I’m guessing things are going to change substantially as the president’s campus engagement ramps up and our new provost starts. Probably best to pause some of this planning and refocus on participating in these engagement activities…

⚙️ Work

Revising a profile for Learning Technologies Specialist, with a focus on program innovation, to be posted asap…

Preparing for the LTAC meeting next week.

Some analysis of D2L data, to figure out how often the “no backsies” setting in quizzes is being set. Turns out, about 7% of quizzes are configured to not allow students to review previous questions…

Planning classroom AV prototyping and evaluation in the TI, and how to design technology to keep it mobile and available for use across campus.

⚙️ Work

When we eventually, some day, transition back to working on campus, I’m going to miss 1) having an office, and 2) having an office with this view:

🤔 PhD

Still working on the COVID chapter(s) restructuring, and coding transcripts.

📚 Reading

• Alex Usher: MEMO TO MINISTER NICOLAIDES - a great description of the province’s current stance against higher education. It didn’t need to be adversarial. The UCP (and their lapdogs McKinsey) has caused so much damage in this province.

⚙️ Work

This week, I mixed up the days/times for 2 meetings. One, I showed up 5 minutes late (after a HOLY CRAP THAT’S NOW moment). The other, I completely missed because I thought the meeting wasn’t until tomorrow, despite it being in my calendar, and my calendar clearly displayed on my screen. I don’t know what’s going on. My sense of time is shot to hell. A result of reliving Groundhog Day for 10 months and counting?

When I use my MacBook Pro¹ to share content in a Zoom meeting, it occasionally seems to get stuck. Sharing the screen works fine, for a bit, then it freezes, and then it gets replaced by a black box. I don’t find out until a minute later, when people politely cough and say “so… we can’t see what you’re doing anymore…”

The first time, I figured something just got crosswired somewhere, with Zoom and YuJa and Sidecar all trying to do things with my display. I rebooted, and the problem went away. Then, it happened again, and I figured I should try to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Well, week 1 of 2021 was tacked onto the end of week 53 of 2020.

⚙️ Work

• onboarding a new team member, and looking forward to helping him get settled into the role and working with the rest of the team
• I tried setting up a MacGuyver Standup Desk in my home officespare bedroom, using the box from a bread maker with a laptop on top. It kinda sorta works, but doesn’t have enough room to take notes etc. (I’ve used the DIY Standup Desk exactly… once… while testing it to see if it worked…). I gave up on using my office 27" 5K iMac at home. It’s getting creaky and slow enough that it’s frustrating. So, I’m trying to work exclusively on my 15" MacBook Pro, with an iPad beside it using Sidecar to act as a second display. The change in screen size is pretty significant…
• zoom pushed out an update over the break, with a panic button to stop Bad Things™ during a zoombombing or other incident. Maybe they read my blog?

Trying to track major media consumption throughout the year. I’ve done this for a few years now, but it’s kind of a chore.

Anyway. Here’s most of the media I consumed in 2020.¹

I’m not going to do a big “2020 Retrospective Extravaganza” post, but it might be useful to capture what the end of 2020 was like.

In general, 2020 fucking sucked. I’m not going to dwell on that. Everyone knows it, and everyone knows why. I’m pretty tired of the pandemic, and look forward to things starting to return to normal sometime in 2021.

But, 2020 had some high points as well. Top of the list for me was completing my PhD candidacy in August. That was a pretty amazing burst of academic productivity, doing the whole thing in under a month, over the summer, during a pandemic, while working full time to help support the COVID Pivot™.

Martin Weller’s book 25 Years of Ed Tech is a great people’s history of educational technology, covering the major innovations over the last 25 years. He published it through the Athabasca University Press under a Creative Commons License. As a result it’s been adopted by the edtech community, who have produced an audiobook version, as well as a “between the chapters” discussion series.

Chapter 7 is on Learning Objects, read by Brian Lamb. I was part of the Between the Chapters discussion for the chapter, with Brian Lamb, John Robertson and myself¹, hosted by Laura Pasquini.

So. It’s been awhile. I tried taking some time off last week - reading days meant it was a quiet(er) time of the semester. I was hoping to prevent burnout and recover a bit. I realized after the fact that “preventing” burnout isn’t possible. It’s happened. As it has for all of us. Everyone I work with. Everyone I know. So, the question isn’t “how do I prevent it?” but “how do I recover?” (channelling a great conversation with Gardner about this very thing - but I still don’t have any answers)

This amazing letter written by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse, read by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Hesse was frustrated by a creative block and self-doubt¹. LeWitt would have none of it. I’ve had it on playing on loop.

Get out of your head. Just DOOOOOOO.

you are not responsible for the world. you’re only responsible for your work, so just. do. it.

(via BoingBoing)

Awhile back, Ian Linkletter shared links to videos that Proctorio published to their corporate YouTube account. Proctorio apparently wasn’t aware of how the internet works, nor about what YouTube is for, nor how to manage confidential resources (which may be an interesting tell regarding internet security awareness and infosec practices in the company?). It’s a platform for sharing videos. If you have confidential videos, don’t publish them to YouTube.

Anyway. Proctorio could have said “oops. holy crap. we didn’t realize those were public. sorry! hey - would you mind deleting those tweets?” and delete the videos from their YouTube account. They didn’t do that. Or, maybe they did - after they had a public freakout and sued Ian for sharing links to the videos that they had published on the internet for people to see.