As I was blogging for class there was so much more to say than was appropriate for the official school communication. Here is part of what I wrote:
Working together on campus was challenging because when photographers are together- the impetus is to share what you are working on or what you’ve just captured by sharing the LCD screen on your camera, which requires close proximity.
This is especially true when we are learning. Each question or statement- ‘look at what happened-?’ or ‘wow, this is so cool!’ is the beginning of a natural social interaction which is part of the joy of photography- creative collaboration. During this hybrid learning time we must work hard to refocus (🤔😂🤔) our sharing and connections into our digital interactions. As we learn to use Adobe Lightroom this week this will hopefully become much easier.
There are a small number of students who all have the same camera models- either a Canon T2i, SL-1, T5i, T5, or T6i. We have over five different camera models in class and each student needs to become familiar with the function of the menu and physical features of their specific camera model. Direct instruction on your specific camera model requires proximity which we cannot achieve with healthy social distancing at this time.
That is the official communication. The personal reflection is that this is not sustainable, at all. In order to get ‘ready’ for work, I am already wearing my hearing aids, a mask, and a face shield. I’m hard of hearing and cannot hear people well who are 6 feet away even with my hearing aids. Now they are 6 feet away, muffled by their mask and my face shield. Yes, I use my eyes to hear, so do you although you may be as aware of it. We, humans of all cultures watch body language, facial expressions, and micro-expressions to catch the nuances of communication. I work in an international school with a variety of cultural norms at play at any one time so I need all the communications clues I can get for accurate understanding. Not possible with the masks on.
So today I tried to teach by bringing the best ‘in-person’ experience of the Photography, Film, and Design class to our time together today. That means putting on our equipment and heading out to go capture some images. This is an inherently social activity that we now must do 6 feet away from each other muffled by masks. So the students inside headed outside with me, I logged into Zoom with my cell so I could bring the students logged in via zoom with me when we went outside. I spent so much time on logistics I barely was able to explain the different types of light or help any student with reasonable competency. I couldn’t get close enough to hear them accurately. I couldn’t hear them and therefore couldn’t help them. I’m trying to share a passion I love- photography- and I feel I was much more successful when we had the level interaction arena of mediated communication provided by video conferencing. Safe, yet with more freedom to move and explore than we had at school together in person.