Zoom Meeting Notes: Adult Education

Teaching ESL in Adult Education means teaching with many older teachers. Many over 60. Some over 70. A few over 80. I love all my colleagues. Some of them, as you might have guess, have trouble with Zoom!

Planning meetings all week for teaching online next year. Took some maneuvering, but N can watch RH for most of this week. I race out of the shower and heat up some food. Forget my phone. Come back to garage. Forget my headphones. Come back. Sit down.

First topic: Using Google Docs with student writing. Oy. I feel like how RH must have felt when she got smacked in the face with a rubber dog fetch disc at the park. Now a presenter is confused about how to deal with screen sharing. Hooray!

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The 2nd meeting hasn’t officially started yet. People have joined this meeting but it doesn’t start for five more minutes. I’m hearing coughing. Someone is eating something crunchy. Sounds like someone is vacuuming. Meowing. Somebody just farted. What a grab bag of sounds.
This is an extremely low-stakes stakeout.

***

“You either need to move your face or the computer.”
“Eating…trying to hide my mouth.”

***

In the middle of the meeting, an 84 year-old teacher calls the meeting moderator:

“Hold on, Bob is calling.”
“How do I get in to the meeting?”
We all listen as the moderator gets off the phone and the…