Come On In and Look Around

Before I went to bed on Thursday, I dutifully set up my new lap top and the monitor I purchase in the summer of 2020 on the dining room table, so that I would be at least technically prepared for the 11 student-led conferences I had scheduled for the next day. Our district had sensibly made the decision to do the conferences virtually, and as I sound- and camera-checked the MS Teams feed, I was faced with that familiar decision-- to blur or not to blur the background. 

Last year, I kept the default setting the whole time that we were teaching remotely from home, and as such I got compliments on my lamp and the painting on the wall, as well as suggestions for organizing the desk behind me. Plus? My cats could join the call whenever they were so moved. To be honest, the main decider then was that weird pixilated halo around my head with the alternate backgrounds; it was always too distracting to keep.

This time, as I scrutinized the backdrop I experimented with blurring and other artificial images before just getting out of my chair and tidying up so that I could keep it on default. I also packed up all the winter and Valentines Day gnomes my wife has collected that were in full view on top of our book shelf. 

And as silly as I may have felt then, I knew there had been significant shift away from the days when everything was online, because as I conducted the virtual conferences? I was kind of distracted by looking around at what I could see in the background of every call. Thank goodness I put those gnomes away!