One Done

I made some good progress yesterday, considering.

I've now put up the basic structures for all three of my courses, and did one day's teaching material for one course.  We're finishing up Persepolis, so in order to do it, I had to pdf some pages, and then made three short videos (3-5 min each), some short quizzes that don't count for grades, and two discussion areas with specific questions.  I'd love some feedback on it, but truthfully, what I want is to be told, "that'll do" and feel okay about it.

Today, I'm going to work on finishing up "The Reeve's Tale" in the Chaucer course and work on The Tempest stuff for the Intro to Critical Studies course. 

Yesterday was a steep learning curve.  I was at a meeting on Tuesday (sitting far apart in a huge room), and the teaching center director was there, assuring us all that there's lots of support available.

So, I figured out how to make my little video things (voiceover with screen pictures of the appropriate pages of Persepolis), but then I couldn't figure out how to upload the video or embed it.  I figured out how to upload it, finally, but still couldn't figure out the embedding into a page.  Turns out, the "upload video" button isn't what you use.  Instead, you use the "other media" button, and then another button, and voila it's there.

At each problem, I tried calling the Canvas support folks or the campus support folks or the on line Canvas chat, but all of them were backed up, and the chat session timed out before they got to me. 

So, I finally got desperate enough to read the directions, and that helped.  (It's a pain to have to go back and forth between screens trying to read directions and then do them on another screen, isn't it?)

A friend has been joking about starting a blog as the "Pantless Professor," but it sort of seems problematic for a female professor, doesn't it.  And problematic in a different way for a male.  Still, funny to joke about, and we needed a joke.