By Katie Budinger

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Whether you are fully virtual or hybrid, we have all done battle with various virtual meeting platforms. Some students triumph and pass the period attentive, with crystal-clear sound and consistent video. However, the rest of us mortals are not nearly so lucky and find ourselves fighting both the technology and the curriculum; others decide to engage with neither. This form of ‘modern learning’ is far from perfect, but there are certain types of people that we have all encountered during one class or another…

The Alien Communicator

Whenever this person is called upon, either by the teacher or through their own will to speak their mind, their microphone forbids such action. We pity them greatly, and yet our ears cannot be spared the accidental torture as their words are overshadowed by static and inhumane screeches. If they took initiative and broadcasted that static into outer space, they would probably get a very intelligent and just as undecipherable reply from some aliens who are very curious to know why you “had a question about number seven on the test.”

Dark Shadows

This person gets bonus points for having their camera on 95% of the time, but their willingness to appear on screen reveals a deeper mystery: what is behind them. Whether it is phantom motion or strange objects, the room they are in has unknown properties just offscreen, hidden in the shadows. You have been in class with them for months, and yet you still cannot figure out what is hanging on their wall or who is moving around behind them. Are they aware of this motion? It’s impossible to say, but they have yet to answer for what lurks in the background of their little virtual square of existence. In fact, you are not even certain from where they are calling. 

A Little Too Comfortable…

The rest of us hauled ourselves out of our warm beds and faced the cold, cold morning, but this person grabbed their phone off their nightstand and rolled back over. Their hoodie usually disguises the fact that their hair is a mess, and their attendance responses are grumbled and barely coherent. The whole class now might as well have slept over, since everyone knows the color of this person’s sheets and exactly how many pillows they have on their bed. In some cases, you want to reach through the computer and pull them out into the frigid morning by their sweatshirt, because the rest of us have to suffer and there should be no exceptions. Napoleon’s soldiers didn’t get nice warm comforters, so neither should we.

“I thought I was muted”

They have ignored the strange looks from their teacher (they were distracted, anyway). They did not check their phone to see the awkward texts from their classmates. They did not know they were unmuted. Listening to this happen is like watching someone walk away from the bathroom with toilet paper on their shoe. You would never want it to be you, and yet you are powerless to stop it. This person unmuted themselves, probably for attendance, then didn’t quite hit that mute button; now the whole class knows that their cat threw up on the carpet and they plan to spend the rest of class playing video games.

The Ghost

This person logs into class on time, chipperly responds to attendance and maybe even chats with the teacher. However, this ploy of presence is short-lived; once the class really begins, they float away, their on-screen icon the only indication that they ever truly appeared in the first place. The teacher calls on them, and it becomes clear that they have vanished like a specter at the top of a haunted staircase in a horror film. The class tries to investigate what is on the other side of the screen, but there is nothing there. It makes you wonder if they were ever really there in the first place or did you imagine the whole thing? Are you living out your own paranormal story online? We may never know (but if anyone asks, the Zoom call is coming from inside the house).

The Watcher

Did you see them laughing during the class discussion of Oedipus? Did they suddenly gasp when the teacher introduced the function of mitochondria? Either way, the powerhouse of this person’s cell is clearly whatever they are watching just above their computer screen. Perhaps you can see the ghostly flashes in their glasses or on the wall behind them, but whatever is on the TV is clearly much more engaging compared to whatever is happening in class. However, the real question, which truly engages your critical thinking skills, is whether or not you can figure out what they are watching solely based on their reactions. 

Echo Test

The seemingly sudden switch to Schoology has presented a whole new array of problems in Remoteland, but it has also come with some additional features, one being the ‘echo test.’ No one is quite sure why this extra step of logging on exists, but nevertheless we find ourselves faced with clicking through yet another screen before we can hear what our teacher has to say. There are certainly some people out there who just click right on through, but others sit and contemplate what exactly to say in order to test for that echo. You start to speak, you hear your words thrown back at you through the speakers, and you click that thumbs up and get thrown into class… unmuted. What the rest of the class hears is anything from garbled sentences to shuffling to the end of your Shakespeare recitation. Either way, it captures everyone’s attention as your little icon lights up and alrearts the entire conference as to who had to read for Romeo during English 9.