Distance Learning

We are all coming to know what distance learning looks like in these days of staying home.

Oh, I took online classes way back twenty years ago when I went to graduate school as a 'non-traditional student.'  I would log on to my school course site from my home office and complete my work and submit it to my professor at the university and wait for a response from my professor.

I have facilitated professional development as online courses which last for six weeks and teachers will complete a project each week to earn their professional development credit. They might be at home in their PJs on a Saturday morning and I had posted the instructions and checklist for their project earlier in the week from a district school.

This week, however, distance learning took on a new dimension for me.

I got a text message from my mother who lives across the county.  She asked about logging on to a Facebook Live event that was a virtual tour of a historical spot nearby.  I had been trying to join it myself and was having poor results.

I'd never joined a Facebook Live live.  I mean, I had watched the videos of a broadcast hours after it had taken place but never joined one while it was actually taking place.  I could see what looked like a video but it wasn't playing and no matter how many times I tapped the start arrow, it just sat there or I got the circling wheel of death.  So, I called my daughter to see what I was doing incorrectly.

Do you see the circle of life happening here?  Anyway, she assured me that I was probably doing the right thing but the broadcast was glitchy and not going well.  The broadcast was just jerky, intermittent, and not going well at all. So, I passed this info along to my mother.

Then, she texted me back that she had a problem with her phone.  She was not receiving calls and didn't think she could call out either.  So, began a distance learning experience - all in text messages.

 I probably did a big eye-roll at that point.  So, I told her to go to her computer and was going to do a Google Hangout or Zoom session with her.  She asked if she could use her iPad.  So, I said, sure.  After a few minutes, she lets me know that she needed to add an app but didn't know her Apple password.  I KNOW I did a big eye-roll at that point.  I also know that she has all her passwords written down on some scrap of paper in a higgledy-piggledy fashion and stashed that scrap somewhere.  So, we continued to text message - her via the iPad, I guess, and me on my phone.  I sent her this screeenshot with my drawing atop it:

At this point, I was looking into my phone's settings, making a screenshot and drawing, opening text message stream, and pasting before sending.  So, I was back and forth.  But, mother was just looking at both screens at the same time and not giving me time to send both text and photos.

I thought for a bit and pondered what might be lost if she just reset everything.  Then, decided I'd better go for it because she really needed the phone to communicate with the outside world beyond just text messaging.  So...

I don't know what the semi-colon message was about but I do know there was a l-o-n-g pause.  So, I decided that I'd take a bit of a break and went into another room.

Then, I came back to this:

I gave her a call and could just hear the relief in her voice.  What is so funny to me is that it sounded just like countless teachers and students who I work with every single day.  They encounter a problem that is a pretty simple one but they cannot figure out what on earth they should do.  Sometimes they try several options just like my mother and I did and sometimes they are just crippled and reach out for support.  Sometimes I'm not sure what to do and we just troubleshoot together till we figure it out.  These encounters are just run-of-the-mill happenstances for me and I don't consider them breakthroughs.  I'm going for the big cheese.  I want to see that light switch go on that true learning has taken place.  I want to see a revelation or epiphany that someone has moved to a new place of knowledge.  I want to see an evolution in practice.  I want to see a new level of wisdom.  I want to see dawning of understanding of new and difficult information. I want to see transformation.

However, sometimes it is just the little things like clicking reset that make all the difference.