Monthly Archives: September 2020

Teaching in the Pandemic- Part 1

Yesterday was fun. I brought a nice lunch from home but because it takes me 15-20 minutes to set up for my “hybrid” class in which people can come face to face or attend by Zoom videochat, I didn’t have a lot of time to eat.

Then, I hurried off to my classroom and was nearly there when I realized my mask was still on my desk in my office next to my half eaten cup of soup. There went my planned head start I needed to get my tech set up! When I finally made it to the classroom with appropriate PPE in place, I was winded, a little dizzy, and couldn’t see anything because my glasses had fogged over.

I have ten minutes to scarf down this soup before class begins” width= Running late! Shortcut time!” width= Oh shit! I forgot my freakin’ mask!” width= Pant! Pant! Hey gang, give me a sec’ while I catch my breath and clear these foggy glasses.” width=

Google Doodle Rabbit Hole

You never know where you will end up in your explorations of the World Wide Web.  This morning I happened upon this Google Doodle about Jackie Ormes.

I don’t usually see the Google Doodles since the Chrome browser itself acts as an interface to Google, but this morning I happened to catch a glimpse of this doodle and it caught my attention because of its comics theme. After scrolling through the illustrations, I clicked through to read more since I didn’t recognize the artist who was featured, Jackie Ormes.

After reading Google’s write-up, I decided to do some quick exploration on the web to see some more of Ormes’ work. It wasn’t long before I found The Ohio State University’s blog about cartooning. This Jackie Ormes was truly a groundbreaker.

But as it turns out, so is Liz Montague who drew the Google Doodle that captured my interest. She’s a young cartoonist from Philly who also happens to be the first African-American woman to have a cartoon published in The New Yorker. That’s really cool!

What I enjoyed most about watching Ms. Montague’s bio video above is how she uses various forms of digital media to do her creative work and how she was able to become a groundbreaker herself through persistence and practice.