Share an Extraordinary Story of an Educator Response to COVID-19

Hi, I’m Alan Levine, from OE Global, your host for this current OE in Action topic.

We’ve all been busy adjusting to changes brought by the COVID-19 crisis, altering course delivery, adjusting schedules, adapting to working and learning away from our usual locales, and most importantly addressing student needs.

It’s been as often said, an unprecedented time. And in the rush of all that is done, leaving a wake of remote meeting fatigue, there are extraordinary efforts worth openly sharing widely as both a source of inspiration and also for ideas worth exploring.

No story of this time period is too small to be worth sharing.

We opened a site at https://splot.ca/extraordinary/ that allows these to be easily posted

Just complete the share a story form. Or just post your story here as a reply; we will be glad to add new ones to this site.

This is also a great way to introduce yourself and connect to others here at OEG Connect.

For some examples of stories that are already in the collection:

While we call these stories “extraordinary” that really means just outside of range of what is “ordinary.” Do any of these stories give you ideas? Do you know of similar efforts from your own work? Please share on the Extraordinary stories site or just as a reply here.

Just posted one from the Virginia Community College System. https://splot.ca/extraordinary/type/cccoer/

How do I embed the collectible story? Probably something I need to grab in the splot dashboard?

Thanks!

No special embed codes are needed, Una. The discourse site makes use of the underlying code the SPLOT (and many other sites) provides for sharing in social media (Open Graph) to embed a “card like” entry. Just inserting a URL for a single story on a blank line in the editor here

https://splot.ca/extraordinary/story/73/

will automatically create a “card” like preview

Below is a sampling in variety of new stories recently added to the collection. Maybe people think “Extraordinary” needs to be big? I’ve re-wrote the welcome to suggest that with no regular sense of ordinary, everything is just beyond it.

I am curious to know what kinds of stories give this sense of a humane, generous, thoughtful, and even low tech means of helping now.

Does these give you any ideas or remind you of responses you know of at your institution?

Do you know of other efforts like this? Share a story directly on the site or just reply here.

We’ve collected a few more stories, there’s room for a lot more. We are poised to see a flow soon of ones written in Spanish (more on that later). The site is open to anyone who has taken on the challenge of changing up their teaching in any way as a response to the effects of covid-19 on learning.

Need examples? Look for the newest ones at https://splot.ca/extraordinary/ and if/when you are ready, share yours via the form at https://splot.ca/extraordinary/collect/

Here are a few new ones: