Monday: remote learning

Yesterday the governor announced that all high schools and colleges would transition to remote learning as of this coming Wednesday.

Bother.  We were so close.  We got through everything except final exams.

Now, if this were just an excel class I wouldn't mind.  I've been giving remote exams all semester; I've got it down pat.  The problem is that we also spend a few weeks at the end using Microsoft Access.  1) Access doesn't work on Macs.  2) The remote desktops aren't working from off-campus for Macs.  (Why?  They used to work. I gave up for the semester.)  3) Most students have Macs.

If we could have transitioned oh, two weeks earlier that would have been great and I would have just pivoted the learning plan.  So now the students are getting fill-in-the-blank/short answer/multiple choice questions for the Access part.  It seems a bit dumb, because I feel as though even if they've never seen Access before they'd still be able to pull at least 90% on this part.  I suppose we'll find out; maybe I'm overestimating.  

A few things that I need to keep in mind...the final exam affects their grade but not by a ton and it will be significantly easier to grade.  And sometimes it's nice to give the students something easy.  It's been a hard semester.

Ah, the adventures of living through a pandemic.

(In other news, the boys' school is all going to be learning virtually for the week after Thanksgiving, which I think is a great idea.  However, for any students that are transitioning back to in-person school, they'll be at school for all of 2.5 days and then have Thanksgiving and then have a week back in virtual.  It seems awkward.)