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This news article focuses on the 140 "foreign schools" that the German state runs in different countries. However, only 30% of the schools' funding comes from the German government, while the rest is raised through fees paid by parents. The article reports that due to school closures, funding has dwindled rapidly and according to self-evaluations, 64% of schools face bankruptcy unless the German state offers emergency support. The article reports that back in November, the German government decided to foster the schools as a means of cultural and educational foreign politics.  A web conference to discuss the issue is planned for next week.

Our project could keep tabs on how foreign schools as spaces of transnationalism become reshaped during COVID-19.

I filled out a TA multiple choice questionaire recently about teaching during pandemic. Did I feel supported in access to remote teaching tools? Did I need workshops on how to run an online discussion, test prep,? etc.

What was unasked and therefore unstated is the trauma students are facing amid an administrative effort to carry on, do our best, and talks about our "Fill-in-the-Mascot" Family. In my class we hear stories of students forced to leave campus and return to unsafe family home environments. Many students lost their on-campus jobs, yet are still stuck in rental contracts, with full tuition fees, and reduced campus services. Many students discovered they were on-call "essential" workers which has played havoc with their health concerns and class engagement. We also have students with COVID19 trying to stay on top of their course workload because they are supposed to graduate this Spring. 

Meanwhile as I talk to students I hear that most of their classes are recorded lectures taught asynchronously. They tell us that they often binge listen to these at 1.5x speed just to get through them. --This is the mode of online learning that Robert Post in his NCA post describes as "effective and efficient" for the "tramission of information." I wonder who isn't he talking about.

In trying to teaching using zoom during the pandemic, Sharon Traweek and I have held synchronous online class discussions. Many students have told us this is their only synchronous class this quarter. We have tried to teach students to think critically in/of zoom as a built environment. To ask what  assumptions, hierarchies, epistemologies are built into our online classrooms. We have struggled to find ways to disrupt those pathways with alternative strategies.

In answer to the question what is being foregrounded and obscured? I think in all the reflection about the future of residential and online learning and about the multiple crisis Universities, as well as the rest of us, are facing; what gets obscured is how important and how difficult it is to teach to students that they must think critically with and about the tools they are given and expected to learn.

Backchannels Addition to this question:

A SLOW CONVERSATION ON COVID-19 BY MASCHA GUGGANIG AND NINA KLIMBURG-WITJES. 

04 May, 2020

See:  https://www.4sonline.org/blog/post/a_slow_conversation_on_covid_

After reading the essays attached to this question, I was left overwhelmed. I had to walk away before finishing them as it was just way too much...  Returning to any sense of a  “normal” state of affairs is undesirable. And, to remain in the present, I would convey that there is a greater need for mentorship and encouragement of independent thinking/doing.

There are further challenges more specifically related to appropriate ways of guiding and enabling kinaesthetic learning. Those teaching practical subjects usually taught out of a studio will face tactile challenges and many more.

In relation to the online educational spaces, it's really hard to read the micro-expressions of either solidarity or dissent in online interactions. It’s more than just exploring the literacy of online asynchronous online pedagogy, it’s about understanding the limitations of the tools, be that Zoom or Skype or another tool like Slack, Micro, Trello, etc. 

Teach 3.11 was developed to serve students and general public. It allows the public to have more access to different books, teaching material, and research regarding disasters. The website was built in response to the Fukushima disaster of 2011, in order to provide "an educational space for understanding the history, memory, and context of social disasters" (Teach 3.11). The editorial team has members from different countries, reflecting the international collaboration that natural and nuclear disasters require. With it's availability in six different languages, public contribution and comments enabled on articles gives a global platform for discussion and sharing. They are currently accepting papers for their "Terms of Disaster" collection.

This system was built for academia worldwide to study the historical context behind technical and scientific issues related to large-scale disasters. They enhance the knowledge of scholars of where science and technology, history, and Asia meet. The site uses volunteers to translate various resources into English, Japanese, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, and Chinese so many people can share in the knowledge that others have.

Students, professors, and others in academia appear to use the the site to blog about their experiences in Japan as it relates to diasters.

It appears that the funding for the development came from Nanyang Techonological University in Singapore. The system is maintained and kept current by numerous international volunteers who contribute content.

The data is presented much like on Twitter or Facebook with a timeline showing the most recent information first with a small exerpt of the article and the ability to click on a "read more" button to view the article in full.