Online Teaching

Online learning has been a way of life for me for quite sometime now. My library is the cyberspace. Much of the new things and information I know today came from the Net.

But online teaching?

This is something new that came with the Covid-19 pandemic. Classes cannot be stopped. But despite training from techie son #1 and IT in the university where I teach, I remain technologically challenged. For how long? Oh, maybe another 20 years. And that’s an educated guess.

There are just too many dizzying apps with too many varied icons to click—not necessarily in succession. You just need to continually risk making mistakes. And then there’s the intermittent power or Internet connection. Suddenly, your screen goes black. Suddenly, you don’t hear your audience’s voices anymore. Suddenly, your slides grow big and small like a yoyo. Suddenly, you need to go to another app. Suddenly, oh, gazillions of surprises! 

 Now, if this is where teaching is going, I think I need to consider a four-letter word—quit.

Yet, that’s a dilemma. I remember distinctly what Douglas MacArthur once wrote or said somewhere, “Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

Body wrinkles I already have. But wrinkles of the soul?!

Please excuse me while I sing an old hymn:

Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin!