the last eight days

This was an unusual week for me - hard in some ways, and unstressful in others. Sunday last I edited a video that turned out rather well.

And also this week I went above and beyond the call, to give teachers as much support as I could with their summer school students, using networked Chromebooks and Moodle. It was hard - getting 210 some odd students to navigate wireless network login, Chromebook login, and Moodle login is hard. Also, I had to set up the Moodle course and copy it out into sections for individual teachers.

So it was a busy week, but I'm feeling twice as good about my job as I was earlier, for several reasons: 1) working hard is an antidote to worry; 2) working hard makes me feel valuable, and makes me feel less disposable; and 3) giving service to teachers and students directly is very rewarding. Being in the same room with the people I serve is wonderful (most of the time :). Also, I learn so much from the successes and failures in the classroom. Usually I'm far away, in my little office, and things that seem simple in my office can wind up being really hard in the classroom, when unforeseen problems happen.

And this coming week, I'm helping out at a special summer program where kids put together Raspberry Pi computers and do projects with them. That should be fun. And, I'm responsible for audio & video at a teachers' event with a really good presenter. I have to handle sound reinforcement, shoot a video, and capture digital audio for the video. That should be fun.

And I'm going to become a Canvas admin. I need to move quickly on that.

It's nice to not think so much about scary things, like being unemployed, and more about how I can help people at my job.

Also, my wife is recovering nicely from having fractured her ankle. She's improving every day. No surgery necessary, thank God...