In Extremis: There’s (probably) an App for That

New, often extreme, behaviors are appearing among students and colleagues during COVID-19. Usually technology-enhanced, the activities demonstrate at once a rage for novel escape from restraints imposed by the pandemic and twenty-first-century citizens’ ability to find technologies that can and will satisfy a need to act and interact. Cellphone self-evaluations, language apps such as Duolingo, YouTube how-to videos, Garmin and Fitbit tools, and Peloton interactive devices constitute some now-common gear used at home and outdoors, often to the extreme.

Research proves that more people are exercising during the pandemic, but they are doing so in personal, technology-enhanced ways, compensating for Coronavirus quashing of normal pursuits. Illness or injury, the overtraining syndrome, are risks. Running several marathons in a pandemic year, playing tennis 4 hours daily, swimming miles in cold pools or the ocean, building new houses or making drones—remote learners do it all.

This presentation comprises an invitation to discuss participants' own experiences with pandemic-provoked practices among colleagues and students enveloped by technology.

Katherine Watson
Santiago Canyon College
Orange, California, USA

This is in fact an autobio! I am the child of radio actors who became educators. Learning as much about as much as there is, is my deep desire. I have been teaching for more than half a century, at first in vegetable-picking fields and rude classrooms, then in brick-and-mortar, and finally online. My doctorates are in theoretical and applied linguistics; my subject matters range from anthropology and zoology through English, humanities, journalism, ESL, and French. My publications include literary and scientific translations French-English and English-French, as well as research in language learning and acquisition. I enjoy swimming in the open sea and sailing atop it; I love to write and to read, to dream and to imagine. I have participated in every single TCC!

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