2019, A Year of Technology Overload?

2019, A Year of Technology Overload?

During this past Spring, I was introduced to a friend of a friend and the conversation went something like this:

“So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a college instructor.”

“So, what do you teach?”

“Anatomy and Physiology.”

“That must be easy, since the human body doesn’t change!”

My face erupted in an awkward smile and a forced but stilted laugh exited my lips. Alas, it may seem that once you learn all of the parts of the body and how they work, simply teaching it would be easy. Perhaps in an earlier time of glossy overheads, preserved cats and pigs, and blackboards with real chalk, it was easier. I remember my professors standing in front of the class and lecturing for hours while we scrambled to write down every word. There were no online resources like videos, learning management systems or virtual labs. What flowed out of the professor’s mouth was like a golden river of knowledge while we knelt raising cupped hands to capture just a few small drops.

Fast forward to 2019. During this past year I nearly reached a state of what I will call technology overload. The year began with admin training for our college’s LMS (Learning Management System), which is in addition to admin training I had with other LMS’. My project was to re-design online Anatomy and Physiology courses and I wanted to learn more about the LMS and its hundreds of settings for each course. The project encompassed learning and developing online interactive labs using a 3D anatomy platform-Biodigital Human (BDH), along with developing animated videos (using an online animation video platform-Vyond), and some interactive learning activities using a course authoring tool (Adobe Captivate).

From a tech standpoint, this meant learning how to produce interactive “widgets” in BDH, recording and processing voice-over for the videos, taking photos of anatomical structures like bones, dissections, etc, and producing animations for each video. The photos were taken with my DSLR camera and required the proper settings (aperture, ISO, shutter-speed, lighting, etc.) and had to be optimized for online viewing as well as black and white for printing when used for handouts (Adobe Photoshop). The voice-over (I’ve actually done a lot of this) was recorded using my large-diaphragm condenser microphone in a sound-controlled environment (my basement) and processed using Adobe Audition using the proper levels, equalization, and compressor settings.

As we rolled into Fall 2019, I began learning about Adobe Captivate so that I could learn about producing interactive activities. This included watching many hours of instructional videos while slowly cobbling together simple learning activities and figuring out how they would actually run on an LMS. I opted to begin with non-responsive activities (which don’t change size) and gradually learn about responsive projects which seem to be much more labor-intensive.

Don’t get me started on the new Anatomage virtual dissection table at our college and how I’m working on in-class virtual dissection activities using some of the hundreds of cases or the college team I sat on that reviewed best practices in online course design.

During 2019, my wife noticed how many hours I was spending in front of my computer and suggested I do something to relax. Let’s see, I could play my guitar. That would be relaxing, wouldn’t it?

I dusted off the effects pedal for my electric guitar and noticed the settings were jumbled. Hmmm, this means I would probably need to connect the pedal to my computer, download and update the driver and sift though thousands of possible settings to recreate what I originally had. More tech!!

Well, maybe I’ll just go and see a movie to relax. The new Star Wars movie is out. Hmmm, that means I should review the story (which is 40 years in the making over many movies). I could do this either on my new phone (I just watched an hour-long video going over all of the new features) or my computer.

Interesting that most of my work-related time in 2019 was spent with technology. The friend of a friend was correct in that the human body does not change. However, in our rapidly evolving tech universe, many of us are in or close to a state of technology overload.

So, take a deep breath, go for a walk, or just turn off your phone.

Here’s to 2020!