It seems like everyone knows of someone who has lost their job, faced the doubts of possibly being seropositive, been infected, or died during the recent Covid-19 pandemic crisis. I know I do. There are and will be many stories to tell when this is all over. Sometimes the smallest of instances can help fill in the larger story, in ways that we can easily miss, especially in the rush of news blasts and sentinel health findings.
Here are some of the little stories, quiet vignettes that dramatize or add illustrative detail to one of the most unsettling times in recent history. These episodes are both positive and negative, yet instructive about the U.S. Covid-19 experience.
Tales from the Medical Sector
- In one hospital in, away from the typical emergency room, many Covid-positive patients are expecting babies and staff members have already been home-quarantined with the virus.
- The ER director in a regional hospital reports that the swell of cases has never reached capacity in the ER, although their facility was well prepared for a rush. Nevertheless, the preparation has been stressful.
Tales from the Educational Sector
- Some undergrad students have experienced loss of life in their own families. I’ve observed that, in general, students are withdrawing or collapsing academically, at an increasing rate.
- Parents, frustrated with having to work at home while also tending to their children’s remote learning, are beyond unhinged. Poor remote learning implementation and design has left a bad taste in the palate of many parents and children.
- Chatter on social media evidences the souring of many ed-tech leaders across the country, tiring of incessant phone calls from vendors while these leaders are attempting to deal with the crisis. Their main message to vendors: “don’t call us, we’ll call you…”
- Communications from college and universities (including my own) are preparing the soil for what’s coming next—they anticipate reduced enrollment for the summer and fall semesters and expect steep budget cuts across all programs.
- A flurry of commercial technology resources (websites, software, cloud offerings) are being made available free of charge to educators for the duration of the pandemic. But if the offerings have too many hoops to jump through in order to use them, they are left untouched.
- A small throng of well-prepared teachers are “leaning in” to the challenges of teaching without walls: I have been contacted by many current and past grad students who relate that their Master’s degrees in digital instructional design and learning have well prepared them for the chaos now enveloping education and frustrating their less-technology-capable peers. All have reported taking leadership roles to help their schools move up and away from the collapse of four-wall learning.
Tales from the Technology Sector
- While quarantining in Texas, I had the opportunity to hear the young manager of a large-company sales team attempt to wrestle with the ultimate pandemic conundrum: an account rep who refused to come into the office to work and at the same time was not able to work at home. “Too stressful”, she claimed, although she still wanted her paycheck. (Referred to HR.)
- Many educational technology integrators and manufacturers (software-side) I know are simply paralyzed due to lack of demand. One international startup in the ed-tech space has had to come to a full stop in terms of plans for penetrating the U.S. market for B2B opportunities.
- Some vendors are angry that educational customers won’t return their phone calls or take them up on free or reduced-price offers. “why don’t these schools contact us?” they chide. Repeated sales calls and emails to educational customers ring on deaf ears, and we all know why.
- Demonstrating the fight-or-flight response in action, I know one tech startup CEO, another large software company sales manager, and a Russian gamer, all of whom furtively fled their raging ‘hotspot’ cities to set up shop elsewhere (relocating from New York City to Washington, D.C., from Seattle to rural Texas, and from Moscow to a town in the more depopulated north, respectively). Of course, most people cannot leave.
- Many folks are frustrated by the fact that the delivery of needed technology items are severely delayed due to the routing/scheduling of shipping as PPE and ‘essential’ products are moved to the head of the line for delivery while ordinary goods are held back.
- Due to increased volume and the bottlenecking associated with converting support to home-based support delivery, tech-support and sales lines are ‘hanging up’ on calls midstream or offering painfully long queues. I know that this has caused me and others to delay some technology purchases until things actually get better.
- I suppose I’ll be investing in the stocks of Chromebook manufacturers, since their usage in schools was already been exploding, but will likely now reach dizzying new heights, at least in the school and home education market. –Len Scrogan
