Personal Blogs

Did Covid take the wind out of your sails? Physiological or psychologically? Just a matter of timing, circumstances or health? Have you reassessed? Personally, I could never go back to full-time work, even before the pandemic a 4 day week job and some additional freelance work was enough - variety matters. These days a 3 day week, or 2 job shares and some freelance bits and pieces suits me. Lockdown has shown me categorically that I am ill-suited to an office job, that I am content in my own company for much of the time - getting on with a thing, with moments of intense activity during the week and month. Project work.

What about you?

Has reading, thinking and writing up ideas got you?

Have other matters taken priority?

I lost a sister in April. More so than my parents dying (it happens to all of us eventually, it has to) I felt gutted, turned inside out and determined to live in a different way and at a different pace. I am doing what I dearly wish all my siblings had found a way to keep doing: art. I would have been my sister's salvation; it is what our late mother gave us - teaching us to draw and paint long before we could read or write, establishing our skills and interests many years ahead of our peers.

The dry weather has helped create a semi-permanent studio/workshop. Attending life drawing classes since November 2016 I have finally thought about working some of these in paint; watercolour for now, though there are pastels, acrylics and oils waiting to be deployed once I have a more permanent set up. 

And if someone is going to pay me to do a thing, then I volunteer. I teach and coach swimming anyway but will be working with primary school kids outdoors on a nature reserve and have taken on some social media tasks for the Green Party.

Busy in a way I like.

I'd study for a Masters in Fine Art if I had the money. Had I taken my late mother's advice I would have done this 20 years ago. I'm a year through the PGCE she said I'd find handy to have. Then again, this is the person who tried to persuade me to return to school, four A'Levels completed, to add science qualifications and become a doctor ... 

We are all influenced and persuaded one way or another. 

Who have you influencers been? Parent? Grandparent? Hero? 

Covid Free (mostly). It has taken 16 days of testing positive. Fatigue was the most prevalent symptoms: I needed a siesta - usually for a couple of hours, then an early night; one day I slept through pretty much to the following day. No fever, no loss of taste. Heightened allergy symptoms but hay fever and being in bed a lot would do that, however the aggravation of tickly cough has persisted now for a further week. I'm on antihistamines and nasal sprays and for the first time in a decade or more have a reliever inhaler - not that using it makes any differences at all to the wheezyness.

The testing was interesting. On Day One, -1, I tested negative with a lateral flow test. For a couple of days I took the symptoms to be hayfever. Then I got a positive PCR test. As part of the Zoe Covid Research I log my symptoms everyday and 'they' had prompted me to get a test - still free at the end of March. The first positive lateral flow test produced the two line indicators within seconds. By the end of the infection I had to use a timer as the second line would appear 15 even 28 minutes after doing the test. Finally, there was no second line at all, ever, not within the 15-30 minute window, not overnight. This restored my faith in these as for 18 months I had been testing negative; obviously because my asthma/hay fever symptoms are possible indicators for Covid. 

Having had two vaccinations and the booster I assume I got off lightly. 

There were nights when my breathing become very light and my blood oxygen dropped to a level that required me to get in touch with my GP. I did breathing exercises to make sure I was filling my lungs, not something you want to do when you feel you lower chest is wrapped in elastic bands ... or your are wearing a corset.

Others have been dropping like flies; two council members recently, many others too. I went in, masked up, windows open, to make up the numbers for the Landport Bottom Committee. (Apparently Government guidelines permit this and the Town Clerk provided the advice. We've already had this meeting postponed twice). I wanted to steer the inventive ones away from complicated responses to a bench with a dedication; my thinking, based on 50 or so photographs of benches from across East Sussex, was that something simple can be suitably aesthetic, easy to maintain and not too expensive to purchase and site. I also wanted to share my insights on signage (information boards) and rules/guidelines about dogs on leads around sheep. 

I have watched a lot of TV, and far too many videos on Instagram and TikTok. 

I will be deleting social media once more now that I have my brain back. 'Brain fog' was an interesting one because it was some imperceptible; I could work where this required proofreading i.e. a mindless repetitive task, but I was disinclined to read or write. Interestingly, which might be indicative of brain fog of sorts, my scores for the language app I do several times a week, LingVist, dropped to an historic low of 26%. On a good run I get 80%+ consistently. I'm still floating around the 50% mark. It's as if my brain is unwilling to retain new information. 

I used the fact that I am watching masses of TV and film to revive an interest in storytelling; once again I am spotting opening scenes, 'beats' and turning points in scripts and stories. 

Unhealthily I had been spending an hour or more in a local wood seeking out bluebells, wood anemones, wild garlic and marsh marigolds. For someone who gets seasons hayfever this has probably not been a great idea! 

Education coming out of Covid will put 25% to 100% of their content online, whether or not students come in for classes or workshops, the go to place will be digital and online. It can therefore be used as flipped or blended learning and will replace textbooks. In some instances colleges will go down the Open University model and close their estate and put everything online. 

The role of marketing to sell digital to students and staff, or at least the skills of advertising, marketing and PR to get and then hold the attention of users is becoming all the more important. This is not just a case of getting the message out on digital platforms, but getting our wishes in front of students the traditional way too: in posters, displays and with electronic signage - but in a coordinated rather than a fragmented manner. 

Teachers will have to become facilitators and moderators of content created by others. For example, taking Geography in the UK. How many teachers does it take to get 240,000 students through their GCSE in Geography? And how many of these also support the 36,000 students at A'Level? In the physical world I'm guessing 1,300 or so? 

Online Barbara Oakley created 'Learning How To Learn' module on Coursera. 2,649,556 have enrolled on the course. A handful of people created the content, with Barb as presenter, writer and lead producer, a resident expert to offer further weight to the science, some greenscreen presenting and some simple graphics and animations. There has been a 'moderator' role - I have done this on a volunteer basis having taken the course but it is being down played and even discontinued by Coursera. These are designed to be self-paced courses. It's simple and it does the job. Why look elsewhere to 'learn how to learn' ? Who is doing this for other subjects? Well, there the Khan Academy for Math. What about History, or Biology? 

Ok, we cannot have 75% of students dropping out in the first week! This doesn't mean we can't use the very best online content out there, it simply means that the role of teachers should be collectively to make the experience even more engaging without simply recourse to holding the interest of a captive audience in a classroom.

And a module on Coursera is not two years of education delivered over three terms a year. It will take time an investment to create the content. Are the likes of City & Guild Kineo, and Pearson not doing this already? And what about universities that have committed to 100% online, such as the University of Coventry in the UK and Duke University in the States - and not forgetting the Open University (as everyone does) who have been online since 2001.

If teachers are creating their own content from scratch, beginning when they set out as trainees, are they not reinventing the wheel every time? Have their predecessers not produced materials already? Lesson plans to follow? Top notch resources? If not, why not? I see the value and pride of ownership of this work, of reliance on it to deliver in the class. Can one standup comic hand their material to another? Or might I be saying, the comic presenter has his or her team of writers? What if teachers deliver scripts others have written and that we all work to perfect? 

The model and financing will be more like the Open University producing high quality and engaging content. The issue for teachers is if this is seen to undermine their role, their lead role in the class and their pay. The issue for college is paying the licence fee for such content - unless of course it is pre-paid for and offered as a free Open Education Resource. 

I'm hazzarding a guess that if we with with the Bell curve of normal poplatoin distrubution in a cohort of teachers 70% will find a way to treat going digital and getting it online as part of their job, the rest will split into two camps: 15% who would prefer to leave - to take early retirement, the resist the change and technology absolutely - while the other 15% of ‘outliers’ are already ahead of the curve when it comes to creating content. They may even feel the benchmark has been set too low.

There is a need to collaborate with others in order to deliver the class. Teachers should not be expected to achieve the Google Certified, Microsoft Certified or Apple Certified Educator Level I, II or II but rather educators should be supported by a larger team of coders and designers in order to deliver content, but rather they feel supported by someone with the skills: like a director working with an editor to deliver the content. 

There are some who think that the creation of materials should go down the OER path. There are issues with IP over content created by teachers. They want to be paid up front for their time, not put on some option or share deal.