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[lifeincoronatimes]

Zoom goes the dynamite

Life as we knew it changed when we returned from a week in Mexico on Mar. 8 to find that our city had been torn up by a tornado and that it had its first confirmed case of COVID-19. That first week back, I attempted to continue life as normal. Tuesday morning, I went to hear the Governor speak to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and experienced my first experience in the new Corona virus world.    

It was raining, so I valet parked at the Omni Hotel where the event took place.  So did most of the other attendees.  While no explanation was provided, I assume that they were short staffed and it took an hour to get my car when the event ended.  I ended up in line next to a man who runs Gray Line Transportation in our region.  We had an interesting conversation about how the virus was affecting his business which was minimal at that point when there were only two Covid 10 cases in Davidson County.  (Note that it certainly changed in the weeks following and their business is now suspended until June.)

I left downtown for eSpaces, the shared office space where I work, to prepare for the Advanced Public Relations class I adjunct teach at Tennessee State University.  I grabbed lunch at Panera and went to campus to teach my class at 2:20.  A normal Tuesday.  

The class meeting in the time slot before mine appeared to be relatively well attended.  My class only has 11 students, mostly seniors and a few juniors.  It is a required class for all Integrated Marketing Communications majors (IMC). At 2:15 one student arrived early and was finishing a phone call while waiting for others.  She is working her way through school as a nanny and sometimes has to leave class for 15 minutes to pick up her ward and bring her back to class.  The kid is very well behaved and is only there for a short time. Not an ideal situation but I have learned to adapt.  

As I listened to her call, I determined the student had been sick, but had still gone to her nanny job in the morning to get the kid ready for school and dropped her off.  When she hung up, I asked her about her symptoms. It sounded to me like she had the flu – a few symptoms different that Covid 19.  I put on my “Jewish mother” hat and told her she needed to go to university health and then go home and to let the family she worked for know her situation.  Her response? “That’s what my mother said.”  By 2:25 she was still the only student there. When a second one arrived and heard the end of our conversation, he freaked out.  

“Did you come in the back door that I just used?” he asked her.  When she confirmed, he asked me if I had any hand sanitizer (which, of course, I did).  He sanitized and sat on the other side of the room.  By 2:30, a third student arrived.  I told them what I had planned to cover in class – which was to watch a series of videos and discuss what marketing goals they achieved.  I gave them the option of staying (except for the sick one who I told had to leave) or watching the videos on their own and submitting a written assessment of the goals. They chose the latter. I gave the three of them extra credit for showing up and we all went home.  

By the end of the week, the university decided to suspend all in person classes for the semester, send all the students home and shift to online teaching.  

I attended on online class on Saturday to learn how to teach online.  The school uses the Zoom platform.  I spent some time on Sunday and Monday preparing for the experience, including setting up some polls for them to vote on what goals each video achieved, setting up breakout rooms for them to virtually meet with their final project team to work on their final projects.  I practiced what I could without the class in attendance and felt prepared.  

When time for the class came, students slowly joined online.  Most who joined opted not to use the video option available, but just join by audio.  When we had seven of the 11, I started.  We had some discussion about where they were and how they were doing.  I did a test poll question about their final project to try out the system.  It all seemed to work.  

Then, we got into the class material.  I put up a slide listing some general marketing goals that videos can achieve. Then, on the next slide, I clicked on a link for the first video.  Two things then happened.  First, the students said they could hear the video but not see it.  I realized later that when I went to the link, it opened the video in a new window, which I should have gone to and enable screen sharing for them .  

Second, I was using my laptop via a wireless connection in my home office far away from my wireless modem, which must not have had enough juice to handle what I had open on the laptop and my computer froze.  

I texted the class, asking them to hold on.  I took the laptop to the other side of the house and rebooted.  To their credit, they all stayed online waiting.  When we were back up, I hadn’t figured out what the video problem was so we chatted a bit more about final projects and all agreed it would be best if I sent them the video links and they watched them on their own and submitted their assessment of the goals in writing.  

I subsequently participated in another online class and help session (which is how I determined by error with the screen sharing) and I think I am ready to try it again this week.