The Underworld of our Virtual Work Life

The clock reads

                                                  17 minutes to scheduled zoom session

My heart reads

                                                  Oh dear !!

My mind reads

                                                  Will the power hold on ? Will the internet speed

                                                  enable me to see 35+ windows

                                                  and hear multiple voices ?

My hands read

                                                  Head phones !!!!

My stomach reads

                                                 Coffee now ? We are going to be sick !

My legs read

                                                 Sit still for 2 hours behind a desk !!!

My eyes read

                                                 2 minutes to scheduled zoom session

LEC 2020 the absolute highlight of our Professional Development program was finalised, set up and ready to begin at the end of April. The beginning meant 30 diverse and wonderfully committed, carefully selected, participants would arrive in Goa in the summer sun and walk into Bookworm to transform our lives and enhance their own.

August 1st, is when LEC 2020 did begin. We are beneath varying degrees of the sun from Nepal, Assam, West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and we meet in a Zoom room. We are already beginning to feel the early tremors of blessings and privilege to interact with this range and diversity of educators but the stress of making it happen may kill some of us in our time.

At Bookworm, we have always had the scaffold of a technology system because of the early entry of a technologist Niju Mohan into our team. He has wired up the library with an in-house cataloguing system that although sluggish is warm and comfortable and waits for our minds to boot while it loads and unloads. We have been on social media for a while now, have a rather active website thanks to a blogging and updating calendar and regimen that we follow and a communication system using Google Suite features for many years now. We have had a youtube channel from long past. Slack was attempted and dropped, other offices and management tools have been used as go-to sites and we were paddling along. We really were those beautiful ducks in the pond real and graceful on the outside where we kept all our senses alive in interacting with children, families and community and furiously paddling in the virtual world underneath.

That is now completely reversed. We really are upside-down ducks, ridiculously imbalanced in how we are struggling to come to the surface and breathe and then dive in and try to make it work. It is not easy. The earliest realisation was the unstable internet network in Goa.

We are yet to find an internet provider who can ensure a stable network. We know, we now have connections with at least four of the big players in the city of Panjim. Having devices was not enough, we had to get headphones with mikes and cut out the ambient sound in the room. Having a quiet room was not enough, we had to find corners and spaces that did not cause the viewer undue eye strain or a feeling of being trapped in a closed space with us. Finding spaces was not enough, we had to be apart so that each system does not produce an echo with the other. Being apart was hardly enough because we had to be present to the viewer but also have all our material and matter at hand so that we do not jerk around the room while sessions are on-going. Scheduling sessions was hardly the least of the problems because we have multiple programs and multiple community needs and timings and they all had to be balanced. Balancing all this was still not nearly enough because we had to find ways to do what we do in a manner that we are proud of and not just as a delivery service.

The method and mode are challenging because we have always been a group that put the human interaction, the relationship with the learner at the heart of learning and suddenly we have to rely on the zoom screen to read all the signs and the symptoms. We have to rely on virtual whiteboards that are too small for our big ideas. We have to rely on and hope that everyone on the other side has a stable connection and can keep pace with what is happening here and we have to hope that despite all this, we are beginning to move forward together. Add the glorious monsoon in Goa that produces showers that knock out our ability to hear on the tiled roof of the Bookworm house, whilst also destabilising power lines and the internet and we are breathless. Some times I am worried I will forget what we have to do!

It has only begun but we are trying even harder and we are hopeful we will get there in the end. It is the hope that we will have physical contact in 2021 that is keeping us excited and energised. At least some of the team who are young, proficient with multiple media, knowledgeable about balancing work and non-work life and committed to seeing this through – will get there. Me? I am still upside down and as I now swim up for air, I am reading the clock that says

                                                 23 minutes to scheduled zoom session

 

Art from The River by David Bellamy, illustrated by Jill Dow