Teaching from home and Internet points

After months of lockdown due to COVID-19, I’m back to teaching on campus this week. I really enjoyed teaching from home and having more time with family.

It was a funny experience being a video on my students’ screens and vice versa: visits from siblings and pets, kitchen science pracs and conversations with parents that ranged from heart-warming to, “What are you watching?” “It’s my maths class!”

However, it’s clear a lot of students have struggled with remote learning. I think it worked well for students with initiative but for those who didn’t turn up to video chats or email with questions, it would be pretty hard to learn on your own.

Like many others, I found the constraints inspired a lot of creativity. I started using iPad and Apple Pencil a lot for teaching this year and making more videos for students too. I hope to keep that going back in the classroom.

For fun, I’ve been teaching myself how to play the drums.

Also, just making stuff for the lols:

(and maybe an intro to circle geometry)
The title letters (Pewdieπ) are cut from one round slice of melon but don’t quite match the length of the four melon diameters. That’s right, the circumference is pi (~3.14) diameters! BIGBRAIN! I made this for my maths students who convinced me to sub a few years ago (how do you do fellow 19 year olds?).

I’m not aiming to be an Internet sensation à la Wootube or Pewdiepie but it was kinda cool when something I made went big:

As seen by millions of people. Enjoy your Internet points and 10 seconds of fame, Mr Kerr.