“Miss, we can’t hear you!” a loud voice from one of my online students boomed out, startling my face-to-face class. They roared as though it was the funniest thing on earth.
On the contrary, it was the most tragic thing I ever heard. A hybrid class is worse than an online one.
I declared, “Aside from being terrified of technology, what I hate most about it is dead air.”
“Dead air?!” they chorused.
“Yes, dead air,” I stressed. “In my time, dead air was a heinous crime.”
The pandemic brought in the spectre of technology for which I would never be ready. An online class needs human acuity; a hybrid class requires superpowers to engage both face-to-face and online students, anticipate glitches such as the screen going blank, my headphone going mute, or my clicker going pfft, plus a million other things.
“Miss, what is dead air?” they pressed.
“It is a period of silence in radio broadcast. When I was your age, I had stints in radio and when on air, I had to keep talking, because if I paused even just for two seconds, the listeners would hear only dead air. As the radio host, I could be fired. Having that mindset, I see dead air as anything that interrupts any presentation.”
“Ohhh.”
“In the middle of a spirited lecture, a ‘Miss, we can’t hear you!’ is dead air.”
“Ohhh?” Their faces mirrored an unspoken, So what's the big deal?
I forget that students today have embraced dead air. They are the “undo” generation. With a button, they can delete anything and start over. If one site does not interest them, they go to the next one. Being unable to connect immediately or being cut off in an online class is trivial.
Seamless, flawless presentations are a thing of the past. This I need to accept or have a nervous breakdown. I exaggerate.
But really, my generation and my students’ are polar opposites. I need the grace of understanding (tolerance?) to take theirs on as a fact of life.
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