I live in a Continuing Care Retirement Community just south
of Chapel Hill, NC, a CCRC as it is now common to say. When people ask me what it is like I say it
is a collection of upper middle class old white people well looked after by
working class black and brown people.
Pretty much all seven hundred residents are over seventy, many like myself
are over eighty, and a considerable number are over ninety or even one
hundred. Most of us have “underlying medical
conditions,” and many of us have “compromised immune systems” as well. In short, we are a nightmare target for the
coronavirus.
At the moment UNC Chapel Hill is on spring break, but we
reconvene on Monday, and my course on Marx is due to meet at 1 pm on that
day. I have been stewing for days over
the advisability of my spending two hours in a small seminar room with twenty
young people who have just returned from God knows where. I have been worried not only for myself but
also for my wife and for all the other residents of this CCRC. Today, I resolved my anxieties with a giant
leap into the twenty-first century.
It seems UNC has something called Zoom, which I am
apparently the last person on earth to hear of.
Tomorrow morning I will be tutored in its use, and starting Monday,
until the end of the semester, I will teach my seminar from the desk chair
where I am now sitting. My students will
be able to see me, and I believe I and the others will be able to see a student
who asks a question or makes a comment.
If this works, I could teach a course at any college or
university in the country! Any takers?
8 comments:
Prof. Wolff: You can teach anyone anywhere in the world, from your chair through the Zoom Conference Call. Participants can listen,either live or off-line, if you were record and post them on your website. How about your Hume lectures on Zoom? Thank you.
American University in DC today suspended classes through April 3--to resume April 6 if all is well. Classes will be done online for the next four weeks. OLLI at AU is doing likewise. How all of this will work out is unclear at the moment. Both decisions were taken after meetings today.
Thumbs up! Go for it.
They are all closing. Here's MIT's wonderful letter. Other places aren't being as smart (Texas A&M said first not closing, then closing for two days, .... Dunderheads). NCSU instructors were told last week to have thoroughly worked out contingency plans for remote teaching. They probably (if smart) close campus once break is over. People in the bench sciences have a lot of worries--places like the Rockefeller have to close down mouse using labs (support staff may not be able to come in) and worry about maintaining cell lines. Liquid nitrogen supplies are crucial and may be interrupted. etc. Research projects usually don't have convenient pause buttons.
Us little people would like to hear the lectures too. Is there a way? Or do you have to pay the dollars to join the club? The hypocrisy of it all.
It isn't dollars so far as I am concerned. It is technology. I am using UNC's system, and you have to be in the system to access the feed. It is different from YouTube. When I post a lecture there, it is available to anyone for, in effect, forever.
I'm very in! First time I've ever heard about this too.
NP
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