Category: COVID-19 Times

I’m actually writing this on the next day because Sunday was kind of a lazy day. We spent most of it watching movies and playing Minecraft. That is a game that can suck the time right out of a day. We also went to Target to pick up some items that I had ordered the night before. I kind of like this way of shopping, but I have a feeling that after this crisis is over we’re all going to go back to the way we used to do it.

The weather hasn’t been cooperating much either. Even though it is Spring, we still had some snow showers yesterday and it was rainy pretty much the rest of the day. We did get a chance to go out for a walk later in the afternoon. Exercise has been a big issue. During a typical day at school I can easily get in 10,000 steps. But with the way the weather has been recently, it’s been tough to get even 7,000 steps.

Today felt like a typical Saturday. We got up, had some breakfast then went to Lowes to get some yard supplies. The main difference was that I had ordered ahead and then we tried to minimize our contact with other people as we picked up our order. I felt as though any person that we came in contact with could have had the virus and that everyone we saw felt the same about us. Once we got home, we unloaded the truck and then spent the rest of the day in the house.

Joan and Garrett like to remind everyone that every time we leave the house, we need to start the 14 day timer for seeing if we have picked up the virus again. I’m not planning on going any where tomorrow, but someone will need to go to the store for milk and probably other supplies.

I spent a good chunk of the day getting my Plex Server organized and updated. The drawback is that I’m planning on moving it to another computer so that I can work on the workstation that it is currently on. That may require getting everything reorganized but I’m pretty confident that as long as I have my movies and episodes named right, everything should go back to the normal order again.

The other thing I was working out was being able to play some board games online, which I think I can do now through Zoom. I was trying to see what I could use so that most of the students could attempt it and that the experience would be acceptable. I think if I use my iPad, they should be fine. It may take a little longer than when everyone is present but it will work out if everyone is patient. I would also like to record it so that we can post it online for others to watch and enjoy.

Well time for regular Saturday night TV, Svengooly followed by a little Star Trek.

Today felt like everything was starting to gel into the new normal for how the rest of these days would be going. I think that we will need to take a break from school work the next couple of days, and perhaps a couple days into our “Spring Break” time.

We pretty much followed our schedule that we’ve been following for the previous few days. No one left the house today except for a short walk around the block after lunch. Still got a lot accomplished but starting to feel the “blahs” set in. With nothing to really look forward to and now where to go, it can be really depressing to just get some work done at home. It’s not like I don’t have a lot to do, it’s just that the work is mainly maintenance.

The kids have some structure, but they probably need a little more. They are just wandering from one thing to another and spending a lot of time in front of screens. Tomorrow, we’re going to focus on getting the house cleaned and organized for our next week off. The problem is that even though it wasn’t raining today, it was really cold which meant we couldn’t go out much.

I think we’ve also decided that we really need to stay away from others and just stay quarantined for a few days, may be a week. Our neighbors work in the local hospitals and we’re a little worried that they or their kids could be bringing something home. It was good to hear yesterday that our other neighbor who passed away was immediately quarantined when they returned home from their trip where they had picked up COVID-19. We were a little worried that perhaps they had be out, going to the store, Starbucks, the gas station, etc., but it sounds like they were kept isolated. Still it’s a little scary when its so close.

Today was pretty much like yesterday. A little of the excitement and adrenaline has gone out of it, but kids still did their school work, I still went in to school in the morning to work and we had a fairly relaxing afternoon.

I went in to school because I had my first video conference, a video conference that many of my colleagues were also new at. In my previous job, we often had video conferences, especially after 9/11. Our corporate headquarters were in Virginia so we either had to travel there for meetings or we could video conference, we chose the latter. It worked very well and as the Internet improved so did the quality of the conferences.

After I moved over to teaching, I’ve been trying to get my other teaching colleagues to start using video conferencing for our meetings especially when we were spread across the district, but to no avail. We had many excuses; “I don’t have a web cam”, “We don’t have have the same schedule”, etc. Now that we have all tried it and are scheduling another meeting for the week after “Spring Break”, I’m hoping we see the utility of using this technology going forward.

The app we are using, Zoom, is pretty good, and more than adequate. I’m not sure why everyone has landed on Zoom as the one to use for this since there are so many other choices out there, but I can’t complain about it. The one thing that I don’t plan on doing is having a Zoom with any students. If its a group that would be one thing, but one-on-one is just opening myself up for potential liability. I would like to check it out for creating how-to videos and see how it stacks up against Screencast-o-matic which I currently use.

The first day of being on COVID-19 Break from school went pretty well. I started the day by going into school and getting some work done in preparation for if we happen to be out for another month. The beauty of making these kind of preparations is that they work even if we come back to school. Everyone was kind of freaking out about online learning, but I’ve been doing that with my classes for years. In fact, I believe this is the future of teaching. As technology gets more sophisticated, this will be the way most of us go to school or at least learn content in the future.

After that I came home and got my own kids started on their assignments. We are all mainly working in computers even though my middle-schooler brought home his iPad. Things just work much better on a PC or a laptop than on a tablet. Even a Chromebook, which I use for a lot of my work, is a better option than an iPad.

After we spent a few hours on school work, it was time for some board games. We played Settlers of Catan and Galaxy Trucker. Then it was time for dinner and a movie on Netflix. So overall not a bad day. Tomorrow is looking to be pretty much the same.

We are planning on working some exercise into our schedule so that we don’t spend most of the day on the computer. So far its feeling like any snow day or extended weekend, we’ll see after we’ve spent a week together.