I often wonder will my son and daughter ask me in years to come: “Daddy where were you when the COVID-19 lockdowns started?”
It was Thursday, March 12th and I had just finished taking my son to a local playground when my wife called me. “Are you near the car? When your back at the car, turn on the radio! Leo’s speaking, we’re going into lockdown!”
I arrived home, dropped off the kids, and immediately joined the panic buying at our local supermarket which was half-cleared out when I arrived. The evening news confirmed that all Schools, Universities, and childcare would close instantly and to stay at home to save lives. Saint Patrick’s day festivities were all canceled for the coming week, something that I would have never heard in all my life and we were to work from home.
I think all of Ireland sat by their TVs and Radio that evening as Leo Varadkar, our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) stood at the podium:
We have not witnessed a pandemic of this nature in living memory. This is unchartered territory. We said we would take the right actions at the right time. We have to move now to have the greatest impact. So, from 6 pm today, the following measures are being put in place. They will stay in place until March 29th.
As I listened to the broadcast I asked myself, do I dare look at my work emails knowing that I will be flooded with requests from faculty asking for loaner laptops, headsets, and webcams? I knew I had a fun Friday ahead of me! It’s only for a few weeks, Leo said it’s only for a few weeks. We’ll be back on campus in April, won’t we?
Our campus became a Zoom campus within the space of a weekend. The first few zoom meetings were entertaining. What’s now considered as Zoom Bingo to AV Technicians.
- Yes, this is weird!
- Yes we can see you
- No, we can only see your forehead
- No sharing to screen does not mean holding up a piece of paper in front of the webcam
- Yes, this is like the Brady bunch as more and more joined the already busy meeting to ask the same questions of what the future holds for teaching on campus.
Luckily, toddlers sleep for lengthy periods during the day but while doing my AV work my sisters were franticly calling me for brotherly tech support on how to use Zoom for the first time. I need to get a t-shirt with the words “I was using Zoom before it became cool!” I took pity on them as they weren’t just working from home they were running home school while working.
Cue the chaos in nearly every Irish family juggling their child’s education while doing work. That is providing you had enough devices in the home to keep your son and daughter busy with their virtual home school while you jumped on a virtual call with your colleagues.
As the March 29th deadline passed in Ireland, I think a lot of parents took a mini-break from homeschooling and worked on “The new norm” or whatever worked in their family surroundings. We’re not teachers, we’re parents.
In May, just months before the scheduled time, the Leaving Certificate State Examinations for 17/18-year-olds was canceled and redesigned to calculated grades. Wow, this is a weird year and how much will this have a knock-on effect for Universities across Ireland taking in new students in September? What a weird year for these teenagers, who did not see out the final months of their secondary school education. Never properly graduate, never to partake in their main State examination that in previous years would determine their University placement. They will begin University but not in normal surroundings.
As the weeks rolled into months and the summer holidays began, more and more Children in my housing estate started playing together. At first, you would see the social distancing, then it became less and less among the younger kids. I kept thinking this could become problematic and daily would question whether schools would reopen in September. Or for my own work environment would the campus reopen?
The words “zoom fatigue” became a new English term and it wasn’t until I did a few back to back hour-long meetings that I understood what people meant, especially with meetings to plan webinars, virtual orientations, virtual graduations, and decisions of could any classes be taught on-site and then the waiting planning, change of plans, replanning all brought on as case numbers dropped and rose and Government officials changed, a new Taoiseach, new leaders and the approach to getting Ireland working again through COVID-19.
September did see the re-opening of preschools, schools, and secondary schools though Universities across Ireland were struggling with the size of rooms and lecture theatres versus the 2 metre social distancing to the extent that it was safer and easier to push to a virtual, socially distant campus. Our Government still wants us to work from home where possible and for Term 1 decisions had been made for online teaching as much as possible with the small exception for Nursing simulations or physical scientific labs. In pods and maintaining social distance.
As an AV Tech, I have lost count of how many times I’ve been asked to support a virtual meeting since COVID-19. I still get asked about headsets and webcams as faculty continue to teach from home. I just wished I bought shares in Zoom before the pandemic and bought a container load of webcams!
It’s now October and as I write this article the whole of Ireland is in stage 3 lockdown as our COVID-19 case numbers continue to rise on a daily basis. NPHET or National Public Health Emergency Team recommended a full-scale stage 5 lockdown last week however this was voted against by Government officials. The definition of stage 3 of 5 in Ireland means that it is recommended we don’t leave our own county except for work, education, and essential travel. This has added the justification of 3rd level education to be taught online as much as possible as we stare down the barrel of stage 4 if not stage 5 lockdown across the isle.
The physical meetups are limited both for staff and students. I personally have been on campus 3 times since March. Like all, I do miss physical interactions with colleagues and students. What the future holds is more uncertainty but one thing we all can work on is the ongoing support to each other during the times of unpredictability. As Leo, our Taoiseach said in March and still holds relevant
“Ireland is a great nation. And we are great people. We have experienced hardship and struggle before. We have overcome many trials in the past with our determination and our spirit. We will prevail.”
Meet the Author
Justin Dawson CTS® is an Award Winning AV Professional employed in Higher Education in Ireland. He produces the All Things TechIE podcast available at www.AllThingsTech.IE . You can contact Justin on LinkedIn, Twitter and his official website.