Coral Sheldon-Hess Coral Sheldon-Hess Tech teacher, data geek, maker, bird nerd Slack-like tools in the online classroom A Slack-type tool fills in a really important gap in student-student and student-professor communication. Without something Slack-like, your choices for communication are the learning management system (LMS) discussion boards or email. I think it's uncontroversial to say we all hate LMS discussion boards. ... As for email, I'll go out on a limb and say that I suspect most professors do not enjoy answering multiple versions of the same question over and over, one by one, especially when they have to choose between knowing in their hearts that some students aren't asking and won't know, versus making yet another LMS announcement to address any given issue. The Online Unconference of Niche Interests If you're looking for a fun and educational thing to do this weekend, you might consider attending the second quarterly(??) Online Unconference of Niche Interests ("OUNI" for short), scheduled to run from 2pm until a bit after 5pm Eastern Standard Time, this Sunday, November 29. We have a set of volunteer presenters who will each talk for up to 15 minutes about a niche topic they're into. What I’m telling family about COVID-19 A family member asked me to tell them about COVID-19. It was a general question, which I chose to interpret as "how does transmission work, and what is the real risk?" This is what I said. As I told them, I'm not a biologist of any sort, and I will accept corrections (both from people who are biologists and from those who can cite sources), of course. Both this person and I have autoimmune issues, so I take that as a given in this post. What I’ve been up to during all this How my household is doing Perhaps the best place to start writing about what I’ve been up to is to be really clear: I’m OK, and, at least for now, so are my loved ones. My spouse and I are both incredibly lucky to have jobs that can be done… Get that bread I want to tell you about my take on the New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipe. The things I have to add to the discussion: 1) a couple of hacks for people who, like me, do not have a kitchen fan that vents outdoors (I promise I'll explain why this matters) and who like at least a little bit of whole grain in their bread, plus 2) photos of some of the steps they don't show as clearly in the book. I'm still experimenting (always!), but I have a base recipe/approach that I like and that I think is good enough to share. 2019 year-end post We’re rapidly approaching the time for the traditional year-end post, which I’ve been known to skip in recent years—I had a run of several really rough years, there. While 2019 wasn’t without personal challenges and setbacks (and a whole lot of frightening developments in the US and abroad), it brought… Belated update Right now I should be grading or preparing for classes, but honestly I’m three blog posts behind where I wanted to be by now (I haven’t forgotten my WisCon promise to make a post about tabletop roleplaying games) and fighting a pretty nasty headache. So what if I take a… Doing Data Things TLDR: I took two classes this semester, and I'm going to teach at least one, probably 1.5, classes next semester. I'm super psyched about it. I'll still work for the library where I'm an adjunct, too, but fewer hours per week. I'm still available for full-time hire, if you have data for me to work with. 2018 I usually do a year-end post. That’s not happening in 2017. This year took so much from me, and from people I care about, that I refuse to write about it. But I’d like to write about 2018. Not “resolutions” so much as “plans and goals”—and maybe not even those… A librarian again Over the past few years, I’ve come to dread the “what do you do?” question, because what people generally mean is “where do you work?” And it’s awkward when you can’t have that conversation the way they expect.