Opinion on Fractions
Turns out we recorded over some spotty internet. Never-less, we persisted. This week, Aaron goes on a needed vacation, Brandon said yes to teaching summer school, and Collin is thinking about online learning.
We know things are crappy
Not really schedully
Aaron changes offices and works from home
Aaron’s needed vacay
Food trucks in town
Brandon’t playing Bio Shock
and developing curriculum
Surprise, he’s teaching summer school
and he said yes
Problems with summer school
What are the hallways like?
Math stuff is a mystery
Collin’s thinking about online learning
and walked in the woods
Bizzar job security
IT Department rant
muddy go-pro
Check out our other episodes: ohbrotherpodcast.com
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, department, problem, phone, teaching, school, nice, question, online, week, years, fine, home, hear, fifth grade, kids, walked, big, work, canoe
SPEAKERS
Aaron, Brandon
00:05
Welcome to Oh, brother, a podcast of three brothers trying to figure it all out with your hosts, Brandon, Colin and Aaron. On this week's show, opinions on fractions
00:32
hello
00:35
hello. Hello Lu.
Brandon 00:44
What happened? 845 it's close enough. Don't ask me bro. Only 49 fine.
00:53
rounding error,
00:54
not on, not on
Brandon 00:57
it's fine not really scheduled Oh,
01:08
how's it going? What a week? Oh,
Brandon 01:16
oh, well, I mean, go on
01:21
a whole lot of new stuff, I guess just been nationally and internationally the news has been a bit exhausting.
01:31
Okay, yeah. So we'll just skip over that.
Brandon 01:35
Yeah. So we want to make people happy, some escapism here. So we won't bring up too much of that. No. Just to know that we are incredibly distressed.
01:50
Yeah. And well aware of what's going on.
01:54
Oh my gosh, yes.
01:56
So I
02:01
No.
02:04
is shocked to nobody within the department. There'll be no pay for performance increases this year.
02:11
No,
Aaron 02:12
you don't say like, I don't even know why they had to send out an email about that. I was just like, Really? Really? You wasted the time send this email.
Brandon 02:22
We all saw the governor's news months ago that budgets for the state were going in the toilet, basically. So yeah, I think yeah, we all saw that coming. Yeah. There's no reason Oh, someone in our, in our administrative decided was a good idea to close the Husker office for the next three to six months. So I don't have a Yeah, so they're doing random closings of DHS offices around the state. But they're keeping a few open so I will actually be technically how's that The Washington County
03:05
Oh, which is
03:06
a little bit nicer. It's literally like a few blocks away from where I live. Was it
03:09
really like? What's the
03:13
word? I'm still, you know, directed to work from home as much as possible but only go there, like once or twice a week, but it's still a little bit tedious since all you know, the other places I have to go to her like an hour away.
Brandon 03:27
Yes, but offices within walking distance. That's helpful.
03:32
Yeah, but it just makes it a little nice. But yeah, I got a little phone call from my my supervisor.
03:40
Hey, I don't know. They literally just texted me. The closing are our office and a few other offices to quote unquote, save stuff.
Brandon 03:48
From the office on Monday, I was like, oh, okay, so I'll go to the office Monday and get my data. stuff I guess. And then there was a few follow up emails that are Like if you want to take your your desk chair you can but no trading
04:05
take your desk
04:07
or email it's like you can take you can take the monitors home with you because we have
04:14
our desk
04:14
but it's up but the district supervisor was like no you can only take one one monitor only one
04:22
of course districts but
Brandon 04:25
like how that's it well Now I'm not even gonna bother
04:29
but yeah so I apparently everyone will be getting state
Brandon 04:36
laptops which I don't know how that's going to work because every other laptop I've seen are from like 2010 well it's gonna be a secondhand IBM from some company and it's gonna have some doing and anytime you try to go to like a random websites can be like no, no, not allowed. Sorry.
04:59
Yeah, They also instructed that you cannot take notes at home. You can only take notes like via electronically. And you mean like, Well, you can't you can't do it on paper, you cannot do it on paper. You cannot. You cannot have any excess documentation,
Brandon 05:19
which about 80% of my job pretty much revolves around paperwork. And sounds like you want us to go like, all digital, like, I'm barely having trouble sending emails to different counties like how am I supposed to, like, what do you already do? So they sent a list as a whole, you
05:45
can download, you can use voice to tech, and I will see how that works. So
Brandon 05:51
I think we're gonna be trying to do field work, or get back on Google. Google Docs has a pretty robust text
06:02
or speech to texting weird,
06:04
but that's true. But is it a prevention, I realize you'll have no idea. But then I'm going to go out in
06:14
the field
Brandon 06:16
and then take my notes and then go back to the office, drop my notes off and then come home and not have any notes to work on any things like that. does make typing notes. Oh, yeah, you have to drop them off before you come. Oh, yeah, I know. Apparently, I think I've been and they said they will give us quote unquote desks at the other office, which I think by desks they need like a table and a chair. It's gonna be table and so they will have space provided for all an out of county workers to be facilitate it. There are buildings. Oh, wow. It's gonna be a table. Yes. Can be one of those small really rinky dink tables from someone's Bar Mitzvah or weddings gonna be whatever table is like people have in their garages. Yeah, so
07:17
that'll be that'll be mine. But I'm instructed to work from home as much as possible, which I've
Brandon 07:24
already been doing.
07:26
Because they're like, Oh, well, you need to get your stuff and do this. Like I haven't seen my desk in two months. So I kind of forgot where it is already. But night,
Brandon 07:35
it's fine. Yeah,
07:38
so that's, that was my I got hammered last week, taste wise. And I've been playing catch up all this week. And then my supervisor called me He's like, I wouldn't know. just got a text said this. I don't know any more information. Bye.
Brandon 07:55
Cool. Okay. It's not helpful. You'll have it'll have a physical place of work now that's awesome to call my own but what else? But you get to spend more time on your beloved couch. I've been doing that for two weeks dang say, but there is a positive. So there's a couch. Been in watching a lot of Disney plus videos thanks to our beloved brother Collin.
08:34
no, oh
08:36
no, it was mostly like the Star Wars though. Watching a lot of a lot of that and typing and calling people and just dealing with utter chaos and so Shelby myself are down in Oklahoma City this weekend, too. I work today at at her place she had to clean out her classroom. And so we are going to do some much needed vacationing from bartlesville Oklahoma City definitely do some shopping. I'm in the market of a new laptop. I'll be I'll be doing some laptop searching and then I spend spend some time with friends. And we we just got back from the question quote unquote boogy part of Oklahoma City
Brandon 09:23
we ended the places at the city with the river
09:27
now No, this is the close kind of close by bout downtown ish.
09:35
A lot of you know the like there's one place with like an open pavilion area and area and people in the catering trucks come by. And then there was like another place where we just had a moment to check sorry, the guests.
09:47
Yeah,
09:48
so we have this place called the gathering or no, the collective sorry. And it's like an open it's an it's an area that has all these different restaurants in their in their doing that actually kind of a really cool way. Like
10:01
You
10:03
go to them, they seat you. And then they give you a menu with a little and it you have it on your phone and you pull up which restaurant and the menu from that restaurant and you order it from your phone and then the waiters from that restaurant come to you and they bring you bring you they bring you your food drinks were little my one sweet tea I had the about two hours that we were there was awesome. But they bring you like this really cool like glass water pitcher and have like cups and you like to fill yourself and it's like oh man, it's really nice to have sweet tea because it's it's outside and it's
Brandon 10:42
hot. True. It was
10:44
new. We walked around that area at some ice cream and then we walked back and it was hot and ice cream wasn't the best but and then we just got back and I got Collins texts. I was like
11:00
Good
11:01
a 45 because I just walked in the door and it was 820
Brandon 11:06
You're fine fine yeah so that's that's what I've been it is a much needed mini vacation for us anyway is down here that's what my week entailed of work finding out that I still working but not really having a place to work. And then mini vacation. In Latham nice. That's important. Good stuff right there.
11:35
Yeah, for work purposes, obviously.
Brandon 11:38
I mean, pay and nod Steam games related. I mean, you know, if it just happens to have extra space, it's okay.
11:49
All the all the times I googled gaming laptops popped up
11:54
here. If you're looking for gaming laptops, try
11:56
this. Like, Hey,
11:58
I know I'm looking at it. You He's
12:01
a guru that one time stop it
12:03
one time. That's that's what Aaron has been doing this week.
Brandon 12:07
Nice. He's been playing Bioshock about oh my god. I've been doing that. Pretty good. Actually. trucking one of the critically lauded games in the last 20 years is a good man. saw that coming right?
12:29
heartache, heartache from Brandon here
Brandon 12:31
put on the 10 hot Take. Take that one. Everyone was amazing. He's amazing is is you go some reason he's never played it. It's one of those ones where you're like, Oh, yeah, I'll play that sometime.
12:45
That's, that's, that's currently me with a breath of the wild like so we got a switch. And also like, it's like a breath of the wild in Lego. I guess it's okay. And then like I'm playing and I'm like, oh,
Brandon 12:57
okay, I see what everyone's talking about. Now. Yours. Wow. You know, it's fine. I'm really cool. Yeah, this one's really awesome atmosphere is really great. I love it. It's very like it does a very good job making you feel like utterly terrified at all times. Like, I have no ammo. I don't know where any health is. It's dark. There's weird noises happening.
13:17
Why is that person wearing a bunny mask?
Brandon 13:19
Yeah, that's a good question. Why is that person wearing a bunny mask? Gay semi yet? Oh, yes, they do.
13:25
Why is that? shooting me? Oh, yeah. All the good questions. Yeah, where the heck
13:28
is that turret coming from and don't
Brandon 13:33
be doing that. I had a meeting today with the seventh grade science teacher on the phone. He's talking about like curriculum things. Because this is like this last year was the first year in a couple years that there had actually been like a sixth grade science class. Like a dedicated security beta. Just being like Doing it filling in randomly. So they, they moved it up. That's why I'm in sixth grade. They're like you go, Okay, I'm teaching dedicated sixth grade science. So we had this to talk about, like, what did I do? What because she was basically trying to cover everything in the middle school standards in seventh and eighth grade. Right? Which is kind of which is very, which leads to some extremely abridged things like trying to cram stuff in there, you know? Yeah. So, we just talked today about what I did. And like this, this big chunk here is kind of where I focus on issues like, ah, excellent. I don't have to do that. So we kind of divided some stuff up and kind of made it make a little more sense. And since my year was truncated, and I was like, Well, I was also planning on doing some of this and she was like, Okay, that's good, because that's good. Where we do some of that and then move into this as Okay, that's good. We just sort of figured out and see where everything was happening. So we can both have a better idea of going forward of what, like I can know better, like what they what I need to do to prepare for her classes. Like when the kids go to her, like, what kind of stuff do they need to know? Am I covering everything? I'm doing all that stuff. And then, at noon, I got a phone call. It was like, Hey, you wanna teach summer school on Monday? It's like, Oh, yes. Except, excuse you. were kidding
15:43
me right now.
Brandon 15:44
What on earth? what I'm teaching. I'm teaching summer school on Monday. What? Okay? What are you teaching what I'm teaching on Monday? Oh, no. I have no idea. Oh, I know that. I know that. Basically, I'm teaching kids that were in fifth grade last year going into sixth grade. So I have to try to teach them things that they're supposed to learn in the fourth quarter of fifth grade. This is all know there's just like, since we didn't have a fourth quarter. It's just some of them. It's whoever shows up. question marks, how many? Right?
16:34
Yeah.
Brandon 16:36
Question mark number of students. Okay. Yeah, I guess I have many thoughts on this. I don't think I will air them here publicly. But, you know, I was a little distressed by a lot of how this was handled. rightfully so. So I know a number. I mean, I could have said no to I guess full disclosure. I actually said yes. So it wasn't like I was told I was given the option. Kind of just like well, just sitting at home.
17:08
So would it would it do he in person? Or would it be like over like, like online,
Brandon 17:12
so it's gonna be in person. But like, I don't know. They they're telling us they're giving us lots of like outside spaces to utilize. Yeah. Oh, luckily it never rains in June in Missouri Oh, wait barn so but I don't really know things like how much technology access I have because we're a one to one school and not to like be all complainy but like normally during my normal day during the normal like regular school year, like we use those devices constantly for classwork right And now, they're like, I was like, Can we like have some and I got? I don't know, maybe? Is my answer?
18:11
No. I'm also like a.
Brandon 18:14
I mean, I took it as a no. Right? Yeah, I didn't put that in the email. I didn't put that email. I'll take this and no, then I probably should have, I would have been good. But I don't know. Like that because like, I have time constraints. That would be just nice, right? Like, oh, hey, bam, we'll do these. Wow. Like, so I don't really know. Especially because there's not a big focus on like reading and writing. And like, a lot of the writing. The, the stuff that they were going to do was because I talked to my friend, it's a fifth grade teacher. And she was like, well, we didn't do opinion. And I was like, okay, cool, but Like, the last time I taught opinion writing, we found a topic and we came up with like lots of research about how to backup our opinion, right and stuff. And I don't really want to just do an opinion on like, why hamburgers are the best. I mean, that's not really very helpful to the writing process. Shadow. I don't know. So I try to figure out something with opinion writing. fractions are big in fifth grade. I know that. Yeah, but I got so far. fractions and opinions.
19:38
And their new fractions go
Brandon 19:40
Yeah, he's gonna say, number one,
19:42
before we even get started opinion on practice.
Brandon 19:48
Practice Why are they better than decimals? Because they are. Let's just be real. Let's round everything up the whole numbers.
19:57
All you need
Brandon 20:00
Do you want a big giant long, ugly decimal or do you want seven eight? Be real.
20:22
Can you guys hear this? Oh?
20:26
Yes. Are you that? is yes.
20:29
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I'm
20:32
playing with my volume and like, what happens if I turn my volume up? Can you hear that?
Brandon 20:37
Yes. Turns out the answer's yes. Okay. microphones, microphones make you hear things crazy. In no way. Yeah. So that was my day. Having a mild panic attack about why did I say yes to this? That was stupid. Ah is that Mystery summer school coming in three days so
21:04
I can't wait to hear how mystery summer school goes
Brandon 21:09
for sure probably not well give you a little spoiler free it's probably gonna go down but we'll see. My friend was like yeah you can be outside for a lot of time and I was like, you know if I go outside for a long time I will just like roast and become dead like dizzy I will just die if I bedside like this is not a bonus This is not a bus. I don't
21:43
sounds nice to some people. However Ah
21:49
yeah.
Brandon 21:53
Let me know when you have like the palest skin ever. He just like no, not the sun again. I'm so bad. The sun can come out tomorrow. Yeah, I know. When you don't want to become fried, like we'll see how this goes. But I'm probably gonna cheat and do lots of science things because
22:24
So anyway,
Brandon 22:26
good sides about Yo, let's go.
22:30
Like legitimate field science things that you didn't get a chance to.
Brandon 22:33
Well, I don't teach. So it's not like yeah, just what I didn't get a chance to do because they'd be like, what are you talking right now? This is the end of sixth grade. Hey guys. Like what? What are you talking about? Yeah, what is me fine. Learn by fire. Everything will be fine yeah There we go. So yeah, that's the I stupidly agreed to teach Syrah school. This pretty much all listeners, it's Friday recording this just by the way, so
23:20
give you like a round an estimated number of kids
23:25
that they give any form of warning to students or parents at all
Brandon 23:32
for other ones Yeah, so like part of the problem was they were gonna have a combined fourth and fifth grade class. Oh, they got too many people and they needed a place to put there's gonna be too many kids in there. Right they just get the enrollment went way up the last two days. And so on about way up. I don't know what the numbers are total app right now, but The numbers go up in the last two days. So basically they're like, Oh, that's too many kids for this one classroom. Hey, how about you like a watch? No. So we'll see about that. Yeah. We'll see how this goes. I'm guessing poorly. But only one way to find out.
24:38
dive right in.
Brandon 24:41
Yeah, that right and go for it. I also don't know if I can physically get into my classroom where all of my stuff is because I don't know the state of the floor waxing situation. I don't know if they're done. I don't know if it's still like my windows on the second my windows on the second floor. So I'd have to do a bit of like, mission impossible thing up there.
Aaron 25:14
But actually good Tom Cruise This is let's do this, I suppose but
Brandon 25:17
I don't know. I don't know if I can. Yeah, I don't know if I can get into my room. So like I have stuff but it's in there. And I don't know if I can get to it because they do that. The way they do is they do the rooms and then they do the hallway because they're going to pull all this stuff out of the room put it in the hallway, but they read the strip and redo the resale of floors. Right. And then once they put everything back in the room then they strip and reseal hallway.
25:50
And I don't know
Brandon 25:55
if they've done that, I don't know if they've I'm pretty sure they've done the room.
26:01
But I don't know about a whole lot I can get tomorrow.
Brandon 26:07
So that's interesting problem. Can I do have some things that we could conceivably do? Like in my file cabinet, right. I taught fifth grade A couple years ago. So I have some stuff somewhere. Question mark as to where it could be.
26:27
I'm sure you have it in a perfectly labeled and
Brandon 26:34
absolutely not.
26:37
Colored color coded. It shoved
26:39
in a cabinet somewhere.
Brandon 26:42
They got shoved in a
26:46
wire.
Brandon 26:50
And so I know where my language arts binders are. Those are all hole punched in binders on the shelf. Boom. Look at that. Do think see as far as the math stuff
27:05
I don't know where the math stuff is.
Brandon 27:09
Cuz we Yeah, the math stuff is a mystery. Right gave a lot of it back to my friend who still teaches fifth grade. I don't know where it would be located. So I have language arts things someplace and I have math stuff. I definitely have like what's the word like that? The practice stuff like you do after you learn it and you like the the skills, practice things and stuff like that. I have that in a big thing, somewhere. Like a bunch of extra practice material, like activities and stuff.
28:01
But I don't know where it could be
28:05
I am I
Brandon 28:07
am I know where it is again I don't know if I can get to it as a problem are you gonna try and go in so I definitely can't get to it before Monday I'm going on Sunday and be like sneaking around aka possible to go upstairs
28:27
so we'll see
28:30
I don't know right on janitors
Brandon 28:32
to get as good
28:36
yeah
Brandon 28:39
ask him Hey Is it done Can I get you know just take my shoes off Can you
28:49
do so yeah
Brandon 28:53
yes I'm a moron actually agreed to this. So
28:58
partly my balls
28:59
but they say How long have you though?
Brandon 29:02
I mean, summer school lasts till June 26. Oh, so it's like four weeks. Good. That's a good date for it to end on the solid date. I think that's everyone's favorite. I mean, some might say something. I don't think it's
29:19
really well, I mean, wrong. Most people,
Brandon 29:23
you're saying only. That's what you're saying. That is a mistake. The jury's still out on that. But people worse though, one of one of my friends who's one of my other friends. It's working summer school. I found out she normally teaches high school history. And I asked her third grade.
29:51
Yeah, I was like, What are you good at? Do I
29:55
know
Brandon 30:00
Like they probably don't want to know about like, World War Two, like Americanism. She just like the American history class and like the college, she teaches AP American history.
30:13
Oh, no. Like, I have a paragraph
30:17
like, Whoa, what are you doing?
Brandon 30:20
That'd be a hard shift to make. Oh, my goodness. That's a big shift. Did she?
30:31
Did she have at least a little bit more heads up than you
Brandon 30:34
think a little bit but I don't think I think maybe yesterday and asked her I'm not sure. I don't know. Well, she'll be fine. She's very good. messaging her. Yes. She's better than me. Anyway, that's fine. But the other The biggest problem that I'm going to face is like my like, mental area right now is like very far moved away from school. Right? Like mentally. Yeah, I've been done. Right. Or the last couple weeks like school ended a couple weeks ago, officially stop, boom, shut it down. My brain has like, migrated out of school mode. And I'm like, hey, jump back in. So it's really hard for me to shift that gear like that quickly. Right? Just like my mental processes be like, school, right? Need school words, like, yeah, go g periculum. Well, I can't, like shift that mental gear quite that quickly. So that's the biggest stress like I'm not like mentally prepared to be in a school environment in two days, just because I've kind of shut my brain down. Just kind of been sitting at home, blah, blah, everything school is officially over and I quit emailing people and saying stuff like law dumped it out. And now it's like, oh, no. Yeah. Normally at the beginning of school, you get like a couple weeks to rev up and then there's those meetings get sit through, they're terrible. And like, get ready. You look over all your stuff and ready You know, you're in the curriculum, you're looking at it. You're like mentally ready to go. You're like on the ball, you know me. And now it's like, oh, I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I don't have anything that the figures do. It's dumped out of there like just purged it.
32:53
Yeah, I mean, you were thrown off of your normal schedule mental normal, normal rhythm.
Brandon 33:01
Yeah no more than waking up drinking all the coffee in the world playing video games is gonna be at least one
33:10
of those can still hold true I mean two of those all the coffee
Brandon 33:16
yes that's true sure the crock pot at the school is working like no, you understand I need more it's not gonna get weird looks great my thermos into summer is cool. Nice works our school. Like are you drink coffee today? It's hot. Yes. Like what do you want? I don't know.
33:44
I can't. It's not hot in here. So.
Brandon 33:49
Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. But like drinking it outside.
33:59
Oh man, this car Though Oh, that'd be funny.
Brandon 34:04
Watching recess, Stanley thermos? Pour your little cup there on the playground in the beating son. That'd be quite the pig. Yeah. I have one of those metal like, cups with the lid. Right? One of my kids got it for me a couple years ago. I think it's the best literally the best thing ever is great. So I use that all the time. I had the thermos one and it like all the paint came off of it and I think they were like, yo, that's messed up so they got me this sweet one handle thing. But yeah, drop it all the food place. My old one I literally fell off the roof of the car and like didn't do anything and just like bass on the road. It's like oh, but then barely even spilled. Anything is fine. Nice. is great. So yeah, even that's put away under the sink right now Washington put it up. So I gotta get down to the whole thing. The whole process. mentally preparing for these things are hard.
35:14
is
35:21
like what you're hearing go to Oh, brother podcast.com to look at all of our old episodes, and make sure that you're subscribed in whatever app you're listening in right now. So you never miss a new one.
35:40
There was actually a webinar for the depressing
35:45
call. There's Yeah.
35:49
There was actually a webinar for the department recently. Yeah. Hello.
35:59
Yes. Got it? Nope. Sorry.
36:02
webinar department recently following us. I got
36:08
I have the hiccups. There's a department webinar. Let me start this stupid story for the 15th time. There is a webinar for the department.
36:19
Oh my gosh.
36:24
About apartment webinar. Yeah. So there's this DEP webinar. I don't know if you heard about it,
36:29
about going, getting ready to go back to work
36:33
and transitioning so they had one transitioning to working from home and they released this one about transitioning back to work.
36:42
Even though that's not on the cards for us for a while now.
36:47
And they
36:51
were covering things like what it's like to what's going to be like seeing your coworkers a lot again, and cooler. You know why? Water Cooler talk and all this kind of stuff. And I just thought it was a little It was really weird about needing a transition video back to the office but
Brandon 37:10
maybe that's just me. My is gonna be what it's gonna be like getting up at six o'clock in the morning again. What
37:19
was a struggle
Brandon 37:20
like even normally, like even normally, like, when I go back to school, it's really hard for me because my sleep patterns get destroyed really fast. So I don't sleep particularly well. Like in general. So those first couple days back of normal school on the meetings I walked in, I was like, let me just dead because I have stabbed like two o'clock in the morning. Just gonna can't sleep. We have to get up at six to show up to work. Oh my gosh, how fun. My body's not function. improperly right now. Yeah, no? Well, that's another problem that I have. That's, that's one of the hardest problems for me even though like, I technically technically have to start work at eight, usually about like, nine 930 until it actually coherent they'll actually start working because even though like I walk five feet into my living rooms like I'm ready to work, like I turn everything on and just like and
38:31
and play my phone, and I'm still loading and well I can't really call people because people are
Brandon 38:41
asleep or they're at work so I can just wait till like nine or yo 10 to actually like work or but at least get typing done in the morning but it's like type type type.
38:52
And I'm tired.
38:56
Wake up like super late like what like what is this night type type type. It's like Wow, I'm really tired and it's about like 10 o'clock I'm like all right now I'm awake. Let's go
Brandon 39:07
that's a problem that I have often so
39:12
I will put the
39:15
I will send my alarm clocks over to your houses to get you up and going. You don't have to worry that you won't have that problem. I'm good.
39:23
Lily when was cooking my arm? Morning
Brandon 39:30
got the dog alarm rockin she gets up in the morning like no, it's time to go the bathroom. turn now. Five o'clock. Chuck. Yeah, come on man. attacked a bit longer.
39:46
Yeah.
39:48
You know, I think I think the last time since we've talked last
Brandon 39:54
alarm has been full strength.
39:57
Look at that. He's still going keeping it keeping Spry young
40:19
but since last we talked, I went on that. I think I told you I was gonna go on that visit with the monkeys to walk that property.
Brandon 40:29
Yes. hiking in the woods.
40:32
Yes, we did. We did hike. It was really cool. A town of hartsville Hart Ville not a lot going on. Not a lot going on. No, no. Population 709709 Wow. Wow. But the property itself was really pretty. The house was built back in the 80s In it's an earth contact home. And it's really, really well maintained.
41:06
And I don't
41:09
know if I talked about last time, but when I had done some aerial surveys and stuff, I had found that at some point in the 40s, they had channelized and just made a new channel for a portion of the river on the property. You did. Yeah, so that part of the property is super awesome, because when they built the levee to make the channel, it basically keeps the water up against the hillside and keeps it wet year round. And so it's this for the past was 70 years. It's been a bottomland wetland Marsh place for that's just really awesome.
41:57
And oh,
41:59
yeah, it's really good. And they have a couple, like seasonal springs there that only really flow whenever there's lots of rainfall, but that means that they're seeping out of the ground there. It's got a close connection to groundwater and just stays wet year round with like, inches, you know, inches up to a foot of water. That's really really cool.
Brandon 42:22
That's nuts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So rice farmers. That's why
42:31
they're trying to they don't want to do currently the land uses not surprisingly cattle, and they don't want to be in cattle.
Brandon 42:38
Not surprisingly. No, I know. Right. I was like, good because cattle are terrible for the land spot in southwest Missouri. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, I did tell him I said, Have you considered rice farming
42:59
and they They weren't too keen on that actually is
Brandon 43:03
not not mine. It's perfect. They can they can just hang out with the hogs and the rice.
43:13
Right see they can couldn't get hog waller's down there and get bacon and right yes
Brandon 43:24
everyone's favorite combo, right? No problem. I've also been attending several
43:38
online discussions or courses for teaching for digital pedagogy, pedagogy
Brandon 43:49
because pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy,
43:58
it's all the same Anyway, I because I got put on a
Brandon 44:04
committee for digital learning for the department. Because so yay, yay, which is fine. So we have our first meeting next week, I think, I don't know really what to expect. But we'll see. What happens
44:28
is the department is canceling on mass. Basically all of their events because up until now, all of their events were big and in person, you want to take an education course on tree identification, or obviously things like firearms doesn't have to still be in person but trying to see how to move a lot of these functions online or at least create
Brandon 44:57
online versions of them. So that'll be that's something that I'm, I'm interested in.
45:06
And it'll be interesting to see what other people think those courses should look like.
45:16
Yeah, I don't know. Like
Brandon 45:21
there is a model for a lot of this, right? Because University this for years, right? You can take online classes forever. I took a bunch. It's not it's not impossible, right? Yeah. Is this sort of shifting the focus on how you present the information? Again, make it hard, right, because you you can't there are certain things that you can't do. Right. But I suppose if you because you can do a lot more stuff live now and have actual question answer interaction. That way, yeah, through like video streaming things or a discussion board thing. So it's possible. But if you also have to end up having a lot of other material to go with it, because you need, like, stuff to read and like, respond to because you're not there listening and doing all that stuff. So, right. Well, and that also means that a lot of other like supplements.
46:30
Right? And part of that, too is, you know, as you mentioned, like the style, of course, so are you going to have it be asynchronous or synchronous interactions or transfer of information from people? And then how do you collect that? How do you call it that, and especially since a lot of the courses that they're looking at, are technically more lab based. And so the question there is, how do you translate that? Well,
46:55
problem something?
46:57
Yeah, that's the problem. That's the problem.
47:02
And, oh, I just lost my thought, Oh, and I know for me, when I think online classes, I tend to think they're pretty instructor centric. Students show up to be right to me to the instructor to get information and then regurgitate it back. And it's really hard. I think it's really hard to make a good student focused or students centric, online class. And so I know that that's, that's something that I'm very I've been digging into. A lot of doing a lot of reading and a lot of watching.
Brandon 47:46
discussions and things like that. Like I just watched one today actually, about
47:53
it was an interview
47:55
panel from a couple professors across the country, about What their transition online looked like, and what they're going to be how they're preparing for the fall. And that was really eye opening. Mostly because just the vast differences in resources in support, not surprisingly, that some universities have versus you know, others not. People would say, oh, man, it was
48:22
Oh, yeah. Even things like oh, it's really tough working with our IT department because they were so busy and someone would be like, I'm glad you have an IT department.
Brandon 48:32
Yeah, cuz some universities IT department is like, a bunch of kids, right? It's like, Oh, uh huh. This is problem, right? Like why it's not always good, because it's like student thing. I thought was a Crowder It was a bunch of kids. Right. The IT department was like a dude. And then the rest of the staff was students that were in the computer courses. Yeah, we're helping with it. stuff.
49:00
That's kind of how it was that at any Oh, and then at Oklahoma State, you know, you think it'd be a lot more but no, they were literally like, a bunch of college students and one really old guy that I couldn't leave because I didn't have the quote unquote, appropriate password change. Like no man that someone could someone could identify that really easily. You gotta you got to use one of these ones that has like the random letters, you can't make your own. It's like, Man, I've been going here for four years. Like let me let me do my thing. I don't mean
49:32
these ones that I've written down. Wow, okay, keep on my person.
Brandon 49:37
Yeah, like wow, passwords have a whole IT department. You know, it's like this list you guys and college professor. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, one of those things, but I think the thing that you got to that side note, like the other thing about the IT departments like our school doesn't really have one at the moment. Right? We have the business teachers Kind of the handle of the hardware. Right? Like they distinct give out the devices. And if the devices do something weird, they help you. Sure. That's it. That's it for me. We, we had it was the main IT guy was our superintendent. And he left. So that was cool. But our system is it's very like, cobbled together with like strings, and tape and wire. And it's all just yeah, so weird. That guy that put it in a long time ago, was one of those guys who was like, Well, I'm the only one that knows how to do this. So they have to keep me around. Right now. He's the one that put it all in there. And he put it all in there. All wonky kind Live on purpose as some sort of like bizarre job security thing? Sure. And then he got fired.
51:06
Dun
Brandon 51:07
dun. So like, this was years ago, by the way, so it's taken years. It's still like sometimes that maintenance guy will because he helps with it because he knows where the wires are and he runs a lot of stuff through the ceiling and all that stuff. Sometimes he'll still come in and be like, didn't ever guess what I found today. Like what
51:27
know
Brandon 51:30
what the world? Yeah. Yeah, and I mad. Like he was one of those dudes. He was like, we I'll fix it. But he mostly spent time like buying weird games on the computer. It was, you know, it wasn't actually doing anything.
51:47
Well, no, why would
Brandon 51:49
any printer on the network and then like, never heard again? Yeah.
51:57
My setup, I mean, walk away. And so I think Think about that, that's, like approaching this from a, from a different perspective of Okay, like what tools does the department have is at its disposal to make this kind of thing work. And, you know, like we're we have our IT department is is vast and, and really varied in their expertise but we've got a lot of things at our disposal like they're constantly they run the department itself runs a lot of their own servers and does a lot of customized in how stuff just to make the department work. And so trying to leverage that instead of just going okay, what what are some, what's the basics, what are the minimums and do we have to use those and to get to get a good experience? And so I know I'm gonna be learning a lot about the ins and outs of That stuff coming up, and I'm pretty excited. I'm excited about that.
Brandon 53:06
Carl's gonna be coding the whole system before you know it.
Aaron 53:10
Because again,
53:11
there there are people with with I mean, the department has people on hand who have master's degrees and PhDs in in this kind of stuff in their IT department
53:23
to run everything. So, um,
53:26
if, if I am doing back into stuff, you know, things have gone
53:31
wrong very quickly if I'm coding back for the server, you know, just just someone file all of the complaints.
53:46
So, yeah, that's really interesting.
Brandon 53:56
It won't be anything that I hope I know the biggest problem that we have ran into, which is a school district is just internet access is just not their distance learning in our industry, right, well accessible to an extremely large number of people. I think a lot of people just take it for granted like we go to internet, let people get on their phone. But like, it doesn't. That's not good enough for lighting stuff, right? It either doesn't work, right? Because the bandwidth is too crammed up, like the phone companies that compress everything.
54:34
Or it's a mobile browser with its own that doesn't like, yeah,
Brandon 54:38
yeah. And it doesn't support. you design it on the desktop, you know, whatever. And it doesn't support mobile mobile browsing, so you can't use it. Right. That's another problem. The integration of the devices and not there. So just the big problem that we ran into is, well Can Can you get Do you have internet access anywhere? But no worries. Don't have lots of kids just don't have it.
55:02
Yeah. And I know the Nevada Department as a whole, like, we were just being honest, their clientele, their customer is predominantly people who don't have internet access. You know, like, that's gonna be a lot of he don't have either. Yeah, that's gonna be a big thing that we're gonna struggle with is how do you create one Academy? Right? Yeah, I don't have internet. No. Yeah. Do you try and create just one experience in hartsville?
Brandon 55:33
No one's got internet out there.
55:34
No, nobody has that there. So it's, uh, yeah, that'll be again, I'm excited to see what we can come up with but not not hopeful. pessimistic about that. I mean, that's kind of that's kind of the same thing from from our State Department's like, well, if you can set up zoom conferences with some of your clients, I was like, You been out to some of these people's home like when you ask them like about utilities like no we get water from a well and you know, we have electric that we bought off the neighbor like did you guys have internet like nope, I had it for 20 years
Brandon 56:17
no phone service out. Yeah.
56:19
So yeah, the whole state department was like Oklahoma's like, oh, if you can do teleworking with your with your clients by giving them them zoom access to for your meetings, like that's not No, because I asked the customer about FaceTime and they're like, what's that? I was like, yeah, the
Brandon 56:36
way to stay disconnected state. Appreciate you. Even here in this part of the right there's Erie is in Barre county where your phone will not work. Just Nope, sorry. Right. You get up back down south here in those mountains. Right where it starts being It was like man, he didn't Yeah, phone signal out there you crazy? Like, that's where some of our kids live. Right? I've been to some of they're out there it No, no, no, no phone, nothing. So just to access a lot of stuff, I think a lot, a lot of people take that for granted. And that it's just everywhere. It's very widespread and it's always growing. It's becoming more widespread all the time, but in a lot of cases is just not there. It's just not doesn't exist. And, you know, that's the other thing you can think about is, well, you know, can people access information if we move it to only this online space?
57:38
And then, like, we discussed Even then, once they're online, is everybody having the same experience online of how does internet speeds impact this? How does mobile browsing impact this how to whatever impact Oh, yeah, how they're receiving this information.
58:05
So yeah, I don't know
Brandon 58:11
well that just sounds exciting
58:16
just kidding I'm
58:19
not bad really bird
Brandon 58:28
that's just me though that that kind of logistical thinking is like okay I'm out. I'm good. I don't stop my gamma rays
58:38
well and you know I'm approaching it from the like
Brandon 58:43
maximizing the impact that whatever we have is delivered in the best way to get the most out of it and
58:58
in honestly like Most of the stuff that I'm looking at as far as list goes, it's like this. This should not be online. This really should. And, and so how do you take that kind of content that really should not be online and make it suit like your canoe trips? right? Exactly. Right. Right. Yeah. You
59:21
create example, how do you take a canoe trip? I really do diagnostic crew, you know, studies and and do that online. It's like, well, I guess you could, like, strap a GoPro 360 on a canoe and go rafting, and play it back slowly. And it's like, no, like, no, that's not
59:43
I'm not trying to show you a river. I'm trying to have you tell me what you do on a river, right? Like it's just
59:50
so ugly.
Brandon 59:53
And you lose a lot of the depth of field details in the camera shots, you know, so makes it hard. Right yeah, so that's the kind of stuff although I do like the image of you, I like the image of you canoeing down with like seven GoPros mounted all over the place just like shouting randomly. Yeah.
60:17
Apparently like
60:18
I like that image
60:21
which would be kind of funny. Apparently at one point in time. They did try and do that. They did try and raft in in canoe the river with a camera on it but this was 20 years ago. They had the idea to try and do this.
60:40
Because they were that
Brandon 60:41
camera looks a lot different.
Aaron 60:43
Yes, which is what problem they ran into because they were like, Oh, the battery doesn't last very long. And we have to keep changing the failed out and we ended heavy as all get out
Brandon 60:58
but they they Wow I get those little shock mounts you can put like six GoPros what's the helmet one? Right?
61:08
Which you know it's again like if we've got to do it okay like that's just what we'll do but we'll try and make the best of it.
Brandon 61:16
So editing all this together would be a nightmare.
61:19
Not my job.
Aaron 61:20
We have media professionals
61:25
show up to them soaking wet and muddy and smelly and be like put these together make this go here it go.
Brandon 61:33
A bag of camera. guys go buy like what the heck is bag? wet GoPros
61:44
a runaway?
61:46
No, no.
Brandon 61:57
He's a great visual
62:04
Yes, it's a wonderful it's something that you're
62:15
probably gonna need to
Brandon 62:17
but it sounds like no one has anything else so
Aaron 62:20
yeah I'm just gonna say probably gonna turn in for the night cuz it unless you
62:28
have a gateway yes ladies
62:33
as I say my questions for next time.
62:35
Oh no. Yeah, I think
Aaron 62:39
move us to the top of the list those will answer those first things we won't even ask how each other's weeks have gone
62:43
he's gone on Part Two this time but without him okay. Questions for Nick
Brandon 62:51
got him waiting, ready to
62:53
challenge accepted. Wait that's not a challenge Not really
62:59
I was just working
Brandon 63:02
goofing. Well,
63:09
guys have a good night. Well,
63:10
let you go. It's getting late. Yeah, yeah. See?
63:17
Not looking forward to.
63:20
Yeah, I am very excited to hear
63:24
for you. Yeah. Yeah.
63:34
Love you guys.
63:38
Love you too.
63:39
Bye