Most of us can agree that it has been a unique experience to live, teach, and to learn during a pandemic. As a full-time Instructional Designer/Learning Technologist and part-time Instructor at Algonquin College. On Friday, March 13, 2020 we packed up our belongings to go work from work and “teach online”. We were given seven days to put our courses online. It was a daunting task.

I can proudly say that my colleagues and I have successfully pivoted our courses online, at lightning speed to enable our students to complete the semester. We did it! Though, I find myself not being able to celebrate our successes as we simply uploaded our content, activities, and assessments to our Learning Management System D2L Brightspace and hosted a Zoom classroom session. It was the best that we could do with the time that we had. However, this was not teaching online.

Dr. Randy LaBonte used the term “emergency remote teaching” and that deeply resonates with me. He stated that “we are defending online learning as being something much more carefully involved in the preparation, planning, choreography, structure and support for student” (). As we plan for another round of emergency remote teaching for the summer semester, I am hopeful to create more interactive online lectures, interactive online activities, and more authentic assessments.

Melanie Meyers defines Learning Technologies as “people who are actively involving in understanding, managing, researching, supporting, or enabling learning with the use of technology.” (). In the last month and a half, I have learned so much more than I could imagine. Ie. learning how to use Zoom on Sunday evening and taught Zoom to 60 faculty on Monday morning. I believe it is through being stretched beyond our capacity that we discover our inner genius or superpowers. 

I was inspired by Melanie Meyer’s Super-human Abilities and created this doodle.

_References

_{LaBonte, R. (2020, April 14). Remote Teaching or Online Learning? K-12 Schooling in a Pandemic World [Webinar]. Royal Roads University. https://ca.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/playback/load/98624adab9d24b31a60d3e61eac69cc5}

_{Meyer, M. (2020, April 17). Many Hats: Why Flexibility and an Open Mind Matter [Webinar]. Royal Roads University. https://ca.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/playback/load/6af83d63a8a24cde84708be6f03b5079}