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You are here: Home / Politics / Education / Open Thread: Absolutely Unsanctioned Online Instruction Tips

Open Thread: Absolutely Unsanctioned Online Instruction Tips

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30Comments

  1. 1.

    Major Major Major Major

    Fortunately, as a member of the small East Coast component of a West Coast team, I’m very used to working remotely. I can’t imagine how disruptive this must be for everybody who isn’t.

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Half of my job requires access to a VPN that I’m on the lowest priority list for. 🤷‍♀️

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    The most important issue in the election that almost nobody is talking about

    Steven Mazie @stevenmazie 2h
    A very happy and healthy 87th birthday to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  6. 6.

    Eljai

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: For my last birthday, my friend gave me a scarf which has images of RBG wearing a crown.  Every time I look at it, I imagine her at the inauguration of our next Democratic President.

  7. 7.

    cs

    In response to the tweet above about using WoW, I hope instructors around the country know about Discord. It’s a chat client primarily used for people in games. It’s robust. Already serves millions of users. Flexible. Integrated voice & video. You can stream whatever you’ve got up on your desktop.

    You can create a channel, then create multiple chat rooms within that channel. Someone could create a channel for their class. Then have chat rooms for lecture discussion, q&a, virtual office visits, etc.

    The best thing about it is that many of the kids already have it installed on their desktops and mobiles. They wouldn’t need to break in anything new.

  8. 8.

    Martin

    Former Obama official:

    Last night I was on with state & local officials around the US well into the night. By March 23 many of our largest cities & hospitals are on course to be overrun with cases.

  9. 9.

    JaySinWA

    Okay are you and Watergirl gonna duke it out about whether this should be education or covid-19? Cause this looks like a turf war.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    @cs

    The best thing about it is that many of the kids already have it installed on their desktops and mobiles.

    The worst thing about it is that it is – ugh – Discord.

    Intrusive (the tech folks can expound in more detail about process logging vis-à-vis spyware), insecure and sells data it collects on you and what’s on your device to third parties.

  13. 13.

    piratedan

    @JaySinWA: i’ve seen where a large number of meeting apps experienced issues towards the end of last week, i.e. zoom, gotomeeting, webex, skype… possibly because of the exponential amount of new traffic and increased volume of requests.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    @JaySinWA

    Have next to no familiarity with Zoom but my immediate (caveat: and limited) understanding is they do not commodify collected data in the sense of packaging it as product for sale directly to third parties.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Also (again, I could be mistaken but don’t believe so), unlike Discord, Zoom does not send out feelers into your device to collect and log data as to everything installed on it, what else is running on it or what else has been run on it.

  16. 16.

    Chetan Murthy

    @piratedan:

    possibly because of the exponential amount of new traffic and increased volume of requests.

    I”m reminded that when Skype started they were peer-to-peer, and hence only used central servers for auth and location.  But when MSFT bought them, they rapidly switched to fully-centralized, assuring everyone that it would be NO BIG DEAL.  Ah, well.

  17. 17.

    Brachiator

    @cs:

    In response to the tweet above about using WoW, I hope instructors around the country know about Discord. It’s a chat client primarily used for people in games. It’s robust. Already serves millions of users. Flexible. Integrated voice & video. You can stream whatever you’ve got up on your desktop.

    You can create a channel, then create multiple chat rooms within that channel. Someone could create a channel for their class. Then have chat rooms for lecture discussion, q&a, virtual office visits, etc.

    There is also Slack, Microsoft Teams and even Skype, which can be used to create channels.

    A good number of robust choices.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    Everything old is new again. Some 40 years ago was part of a group investigating and documenting uses and utility of Bell Labs’ electronic blackboard for long distance learning and for teleconferencing. Right before the entire electronic blackboard division and program was eighty-sixed.

  19. 19.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I’m a bartender in NYC and watched the bar fill up today with people who were talking 2 inches apart. Young people don’t care and aren’t listening. Staff are at risk. I am uncomfortable working. #shutdownNYC
    — William Kulp (@willkulp) March 15, 2020

  20. 20.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Eljai: That would be the Notorious RGB image.

    I forget why she was in the news on a particular week, but it was the first time a friend of mine had really paid attention to SCOTUS. He asked me about her. I said, “Oh, yes, huge fan. You should see her workout. We call her the Notorious RGB.” He was like, “Say whut?” So I pulled the image up on my phone and handed it to him. My hip-hop-fanatic friend fell off the recumbent bike.

    When I quoted her reaction to the comparison to him, he fell in love with her, too.

  22. 22.

    Martin

    South Korean testing data suggests that the virus is primarily being spread by young, asymptomatic or nearly asymptomatic people. They aren’t getting tested in the US because they don’t feel sick, they go out to the bars or go to work, spread it, bring it to older individual who fall ill.

  26. 26.

    Immanentize

    Thank you Mike in OLY!  Encouraging that Spring is on its way.

    My forsythia are blooming and my dogwood is budding.  A month early.  I certainly hope we do not get a long freeze again….

  27. 27.

    Immanentize

    Where are the garden threaders?  Like AL said — everyone can still garden, even if you are a Cactus Mom.  Yes that is a thing.

    So consider on this sunny (if chilly) day here near Boston getting out into your yard or field or ranch or on your porch and clean stuff up.  Like Cole says, get outside and avoid others.  And make beautiful things grow.

  28. 28.

    Betty

    @Martin: I saw a German study that indicated people are extremely infectious early on and less so as they can sicker. Virus was spread in a work setting without sneezing, coughing, etc. Just sitting together in meetings. It was a small study, but wow.

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