31Dec2020

San Diego, California

It's certainly been a wacky year (what an understatement, right?)

Nothing like what we expected life in 2020 to be like this time last year.  I'm curious, now, what I was thinking a year ago this time.  

I was under the impression that it was going to be my last semester teaching full-time at the college.  Turns out that won't be the outcome, either.  According to plan, I should be retired by now.  That will wait for a bit.  

TEACHING ONLINE.  Before Covid-19 hit I wasn't a big fan of teaching online.  Oh, I'd used it throughout my career, from Blackboard resources when I taught in the CSU, and other augmentations in the decades since then.  Our campus went through two of three types of software over the years, the last one being Moodle.  But I never went all-in with any of them because the system was constantly fraught with reliability issues.  Server can't handle the traffic, software can't handle the amount or type of graphics, students can't get access to the page when needed.  It was a constant laundry list of poorly designed computer support of education.  I wasn't interested.  In fact, I found a nicely simple site, and free, called ClassJump.  It was fantastic, mostly because the person who ran it keep things simple.  I used that for over a decade, as I recall.

Well, recently, our campus adopted yet another platform, called Canvas.  And just in time, too.  I'd already been loading up my basics, as usual, such as the syllabus, copies of all the assignments, etc.  Did Canvas "come to the rescue" for us in the months leading up to Summer 2020!  Like everyone else around the nation - -the world, really -- we had to go completely online.  So, we managed to take crash courses in online instruction using Canvas.  I'm sooooo glad I did.  Even as frustrating as the rush-job of teaching us in 6 weeks what we need to do so we could immediately turn around an design our own 6-week summer course!  Everyone in the class, even those who'd used Canvas a bit already, were sweating bullets.  We made it, though, and managed our own 6-week course, just in time to prepare for Fall 2020.

As I teach Public Speaking, among other human communication courses, I was NOT convinced Public Speaking could be adequately delivered fully online.  But my experience with Canvas changed that.  I came away really pleased with the platform (a first for me), and pleased with how my students were able to adapt to it.  

Yeah, it's been a wacky year.  

RELOCATION TO SAN DIEGO.  The move down to San Diego DID go according to plan.  A pleasant outcome, for sure.  

It's a home-coming, of sorts.  Because that's where my wife and I met, where we got married, where our first child was born.  It's where my academic career took off.  Many very good firsts here.

I've been searching my area for Fire Departments and retirement homes.  Been tracking the paper for articles about ministries to the homeless and displaced.  In Monterey, where we came from, there was an excellent network of food distribution to the poor.  That usually began at the local Food Bank, which was so well run.  I had several groups of students from my courses go and help out at the Monterey County Food Bank. And other teams of students (as part of a Service-Learning team project) helped out at local homeless shelters, where Food Bank resources often ended up, such as Dorthy's Kitchen and Meals On Wheels.  I plan on checking for those same sorts of resources here in San Diego County.  

We'll see what turns up.