A
consulting firm approached me recently for developing video lectures for a
reputed university. The course for which
the lectures were to be developed was one of my favourites. Having adopted to the online teaching
post-pandemic, I told the consulting firm ‘you have come to the right
person!’. The course contents and other
specifications were sent to me. They
wanted me to send a sample video before the project was formally assigned. I started the work with much enthusiasm.
Within
no time, challenges started popping up one after the other. The first challenge was that I did not have
the required software. But, thanks to
the benign software developer, who was providing free updates to teachers, I downloaded
the latest version. The second
challenge was talking to my laptop.
Online or offline, I always enjoyed interacting with my audience, posing
questions, relating their answers to the concepts, and teaching through
discussions. Here, I was talking
continuously to my laptop! I got over
this challenge by simultaneously playing the double role of asking the
questions and answering them myself.
Finally, my sample video was sent for feedback to the university. They suggested two things – to increase
brightness in the room and to avoid noise disturbance in the background, mainly
from the traffic on the road adjacent to my place.
I
could enhance the brightness in my room by fixing a bright light above my
table, but the noise disturbance was a real issue. My house is just about 100 meters from the
busiest road in the city. All my
windows, except in kitchen, open to the road.
I tightly closed all the doors and windows, still the noise of traffic
and honking of vehicles got into the video.
By now, I had lost most of my excitement. Having committed, I had to find a way out. Finally, I decided to stay late in the night
and do the recording after midnight when the traffic becomes very thin. So, the first day of recording, I settled
down in front of my laptop at midnight.
With the new light, there was brightness all around, except on my face,
because I was sleepy. The traffic on the
road had almost stopped. Fifteen minutes
into the recording, suddenly there was darkness all around. The power supply went off and the screen of
my laptop became the brightest thing in the room. After waiting in darkness for a while, I
retired to bed. The optimist in me was
heard shouting, ‘power supply doesn’t fail every day’!
The
next day, I was back in front of my laptop.
The power supply had more voltage on that day, as if it were making up
with me for the previous night’s erratic behaviour. I started the recording. Suddenly, I saw a spark of dazzling
brightness through my window followed by a loud noise. It did not take long for a heavy downpour
with lightning and thunder. Now, the
noise of traffic was replaced by thunder.
Despondent, with no signs of the rain stopping, I closed my laptop and
went to bed. The optimist in me was
saying, though in a much lighter voice, ‘it doesn’t rain every day’!
