Whether it is Zoom or Google Meets I don't seem to have a long attention span in any of these meetings. I make art out of the circumstances. This time it is Google Meets with 14 faces and I'm in the top left corner of the picture. I guess you can call it a self portrait.
Not it is time to apply the edits. These meetings provide the basic colors and shapes for all kinds of beautiful edits. In the first edit I warp all the faces to the center of the picture and apply a graffiti edit to the whole picture creating a surreal blue and orange-like fire.
In this first edit the edges remain relatively pure so my picture in the top right hand corner can still be seen while the others are even more obscure.
It's time to turn this meeting upside down and spin it a few times in a kaleidoscope. Now I can see other's point of view clearly in the meeting. I wonder how we can spice things up more.
Let's take a step on the wild side. What if we add a little snow to this kaleidoscope? This will become a group snow globe. We don't even have to shake it. Instead the snow comes right from the picture. This meeting was getting too heated up and now I feel the refreshment of a cool winter snow.
Today much of the world has had enough heat and rain but not enough snow. I think we can handle a little more snow. Watch as the snow contrasts the bright colors of the graffiti and the kaleidoscope bringing a refreshing feeling.
There is just one more edit before I make this complete. If we are going to Groovy school we are going to need some groovy colors. These groovy colors give the group meeting just the flavor it needs to take me out of this meeting and into a new world of art created.
Finally I am free from the meeting and in a world of my own. I see purple and green, blue, yellow and red breathing through my screen. Whatever I created it is now alive with every voice of the screen comes a new color and a sparkle of winter's dreams.
This is what happens if fourteen guys get together on Google Meets. One of them ends up flipped out on trippy edits of a group photo. Well that's how the cookie crumbles.
I'll leave today with a blur of my original photo. You can see the group today. I know it is not easy to lead these groups online and social distance rules still make it difficult for us to meet face to face.
What will happen when these social distance rules are put away? I will have to make the edits in my head. I will still have my pen with me and will bring a notebook to keep "notes" of the meeting.
Tomorrow is my turn to bite the bullet. I'm leading a Zoom meeting with 200 teachers as a lecturer for professional training. Somehow word got out that I know how to make meetings less boring so I'm invited as the guest speaker to a large government office. Oh well, as long as I'm having fun and getting paid for it, I'm happy.
My dad told me, "Kid, Find out what you like to do and then find out how to get paid to do it." I really think I got it now. It took more than 40 years and thousands of dollars in school loans and years of changing jobs but I got it. I am a professional ball of yarn for kids to play with. I have one game after another, one joke after another and a big smile to go with it. Now I'm getting paid to share my teaching secrets with others. Not bad and it looks like it is going to be a long term gig.
More than 200 "professionals" will be looking up to me for new ideas for creativity in the classroom engage students in 2021.
How many of those "professionals" will actually be engaged in my Zoom lecture? Maybe there will be one in space making kaleidoscope edits and winter scenes. But even more will be Player Unknown.
So here's the punchline.
Are you a student?
What do you do in a boring meeting or class on Zoom?
