It Takes a Village

 

white roses

Like so many teachers, I have had to jump into the world of Zoom and adapt my approach to teaching.  I was pretty good at setting up Power Point, but from there a whole new world was entered.  

Power Point presentations are fine, as far as they go, but they can't do everything.  I tried adding video but either they didn't run, or ran so poorly it wasn't worth adding them.  So then I had to figure out other ways to show what I wanted to show.  Back to the good old white board.  Which worked, sort of, but I'm not an artist, and sometimes pens didn't write or they didn't show up well, etc.

Enter the villagers.  People with more expertise in using Zoom or other on line tools, ready, willing and able to help this 'old dog'.

One person off handedly mentioned the white board option built into  Zoom.  It took me a few days to absorb the fact that I didn't need any additional software, it was a feature built into Zoom that I could use.  

As I worked through options for continuing to teach, I knew that I had to do something other than offer long form presentations.  As covid ended, people were not going to have long chunks of time, nor would they want to do that sort of learning on line, once in person events began opening up again.

However, most people are willing to view a short video if it is to the point.  So I began to rummage through the long form presentations and work out how I could present bits of them in a short form.

But for that, I wanted to use my desktop as being easier to work on than the laptop that I use to run the loom.  However, my monitor doesn't have a web cam/microphone, so on one of my rare forays out of the house I went and bought a web cam.  Then couldn't make it work with Zoom.  It rook a more tech savvy person than I am to help me get that sorted.

Also, it was pointed out to me that I really needed to use captions for accessibility.  The challenges to be overcome kept piling up.

Then I discovered the 'personal room' on Zoom, so I could go in and do practice runs of things, like their white board.  It quickly became obvious that trying to draw diagrams with a mouse wasn't going to work well, so then I tapped a couple of people for info on drawing stylii(?)   I found a cheap one on sale locally and asked Doug to go pick one up so I could try it out.

There has been much poking at buttons and gnashing of teeth and many times I have been very tempted to throw up my hands and move on.

But my giving up now would be a disservice to the folk who have helped answer my questions.

I'm still working out the details but I'm getting there.  Now the big challenge is to start fleshing out the content for the short form presentations and how/where I will launch them.

Ko-fi has a subscriber option so the plan now is to offer the information to my ko-fi subscribers.  A subscription can be as little as $3 per month (Canadian, so less than a latte in most places).  

The reason I keep pressing on is the feedback from the attendees of my long form presentations.  Yesterday there were at least half a dozen who commented that the information from that presentation answered so many questions they had about why things might be going 'wrong' in their weaving.

I really hate to see people floundering when I might be able to help them sort out their problems.  So I guess I will keep relying on my 'village' to help with the technical stuff in order to help people pursue one of the most ancient of crafts...weaving...

Today's goal is to thread the loom for the next (blue) warp.  If I can shift myself down to the studio, I might even get it sleyed and tied on.  It is also supposed to be the last 'nice' day with several days of rain predicted.  Guess I'd better plan on walking today, too.