Welcome to week 3, where I am sharing a photo of Amber's very fancy bed desk. 

Amber shared that she may need to carve out another spot to work, as the bed desk isn't always working for her. I also want to give a shout-out to the EI chart that Amber has hanging on her wall. Look for it over her shoulder next time she's in Zoom!

Reporting Spring Student Attendance

The feds have given us special permission to modify how we report student attendance for spring quarter, given the Stay Home, Stay Healthy orders. I am adopting a modified version of the existing distance learning policy, which gives you three options.

• Clock-time: Assign hours based on the amount of time students participate in "live," synchronous learning, such as lessons in Zoom.
• Teacher-verification: Assign hours based on assignments that you, as a teacher, can see that students have completed. If you mailed a packet to students, for example, you might determine that the packet contained 10 hours of work. If you determine that a student completed the entire packet, assign 10 hours. You may determine completion via email, phone conversation with the student, student returning the assignment via photo, or whatever manner you devise.
• Learner-mastery: Assign hours based on the student passing a test of the content. A high percentage of correct answers (70-80%) might be assigned full attendance, with lower percentages resulting in lower attendance.

You can use just one or a mix of the options above. You will be required, however, to report attendance as you would any other quarter. The SBCTC has also announced guidance for summer, but I'm saving that for next week, because I don't want to confuse the issue.

Spring Resource Page Now Fully Functional

Click here to visit the spring 2020 remote learning resources page. It's now fully-functional and you can find links to these topics:

I will update this further as new topics arise. 

Mailing Packets, Part 2

For those of you mailing packets to your students, you can begin to upload your second packet of work to the packet site this week. As with last time, I'll be asking Zahra to help coordinate with the copy room, so please be responsive to Zahra if she has a question or needs some info.

BTS Budget Meeting

As many of you have heard, the college is facing significant budget challenges. Deans have been asked to model reductions of 10% and 20%. The last time we faced a 10% reduction, we closed New Holly for the summer, revised the EI process, dropped some faculty coordination positions, and made some other cuts. Most of these cuts remain in place, and we are being asked to reduce a further 10% or 20%. I am holding a BTS faculty meeting to discuss how we should approach this challenge. Please join:

Friday, May 1 at 1 pm

https://zoom.us/s/96181431404?pwd=azE4bGxrNkoyRHREeXRqaFNJZXNKZz09

You should have received an Outlook invitation to your work calendar. 

Storing Student Information on Personal Devices

As we move to remote learning, I want to remind everyone about the state policy on recording protected student information on your personal devices. In short, you want to avoid doing this. Here are some key points.

• Protected student information would include things like student names, SIDs, attendance records, grades, and similar information.  
• This information should not be permanently stored on your personal device. If it is, your personal device is subject to state sunshine laws. 
• You can temporarily store student info on your personal device, such as downloading an attendance spreadsheet, updating it, uploading back to your work server, and then erasing it from your personal device. 
• The policy addresses where this information is "stored" for record-keeping purposes, which is different from email.
• Emails may contain protected student information (and often do), but as long as the information stays within your work email, it's correctly protected with no issues.

So, what should you do? Here are some options:

• Log into MyDesk, which gives you remote access to your work desktop. For more info, visit the spring 20 remote learning resources page, and click on MyDesk.
• Store student records in your One Drive account.
• Purchase a USB drive and store student records on that drive only. If the college has a request to surrender records, you would only have to turn in that USB drive (not your laptop, etc.)
• Temporarily store a file on your personal computer, email that file to yourself, and delete the file that remains on your computer. (I have been told that this is acceptable, even if a file remains in your computer's "downloads" folder.)

Let me know if you have questions. I may need to consult with IT to give you final answers. 

Zoom Fatigue is Real

Thanks to Carolyn and Arleen who have shared articles they found on Zoom fatigue. I'm finding that I'm regularly booked for 4-6 Zoom meetings a day--with many back-to-back. I'll try to avoid scheduling back-to-back faculty meetings in the future. 

Here's an article from National Geographic.

Here's another from the BBC.

Optional Research Study (reminder)

For those who didn't participate last week, I wanted to send a reminder that Troy Nickels is a doctoral student at Walden University conducting a study titled "Teacher Perceptions of Leadership Styles and the Relationship to Job Satisfaction in Adult Basic Education Settings.” He would like to survey faculty. If you're willing to participate, click the link below. 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9MQX6M9

You can email Troy at troy.nickel@waldenu.edu if you have questions.

YouTube fun

A few weeks back, Daphne shared a video where an instructor re-wrote the lyrics to "I Will Survive" with tons of references to the struggle of suddenly teaching online. My wife found another short video on that same topic that I found very relatable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy_y9yOrgxk

That's it for me! Have a great week!

John