Resources for Teaching Online

My department (Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University), got together and did a little skillshare on teaching online. Or rather, we broke into groups, people did homework, and then reported back. The resulting document is our best attempt to produce something useful for ourselves. It still leaves open questions about office hours and other …

Recording Your Lectures 2: the one thing you can do to improve your recording experience

Tl;dr: record in segments of 5-10 minutes. Never record a full class’ worth of material in a single take. That’s the short version, but there’s a bit more to it than that. — Slightly longer summary: Plan your class as you would normally (making whatever adjustments you make for it being online). Using the plan, …

Locked down reviews: Jewish General Hospital + some good news

This morning I arose an a frankly disgusting hour (or so said by body) in order to get my blood drawn at the Jewish General Hospital at 7:30am. I wasn’t sure what to expect. JGH, which is where all my cancer treatment happens, is also one of the hospitals in Montreal designated to deal with …

Academic advice from cancer for the COVID-19 epidemic: let it go

Compared to the massive life and death issues people are facing, this is a tiny thing, for a tiny segment of the world. But with that caveat, it is still worth saying. In 2009, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive version of papillary thyroid cancer. I had to bail on my courses, and lost …