Zoom, Zoom Everywhere!

 

    Back to School! Labor Day! It was a unique weekend marking the end of summer in our new world. The three day weekend went by in a blur of facemasks, hand gel, corn on the cob, and hamburgers in the backyard. In the news, crowds of people showed up in public places around the country and got into trouble. Too many people went out in boats and got into accidents. Too many people drank and drove too fast. Some chose to sit in traffic and watch the motorcycles whiz by. Most people stayed home and watched the world go by on TV. Wherever you were, this holiday marked the end of summer on our yearly calendar. During the pandemic, it marked the beginning of school for students in a variety of new ways.

Online learning continues in many school districts. Some students attend classes ‘old school’ style, and some have a hybrid. Schools have also chosen a mixture of ways to monitor students and staff for COVID 19. Some schools take student temperatures as they enter school, some send students to the nurse, and others do in-school testing of every teacher and student regularly. How can we monitor everyone? In the U.S. six teachers have recently passed away from COVID 19 and one was only 28 years old. Teachers are scared and writing Living Wills. 

Online meeting rooms for schools and businesses are thriving. The popular online software 'Zoom' has quadrupled its revenue as of Sept. 1, 2020. Zoom earned $186 million during the last quarter with a rising number of users converting from the free to the paid version of Zoom's services. Zoom is competing with many other online services jumping on the bandwagon. It is a profitable market now offering online platforms for live classrooms, meetings, cooking classes, music lessons, exercises, and more. There are many daily opportunities to learn new skills and expand our horizons for free online. 

My favorite Zoom calls have been with my family around the world. We have ‘zoomed’ for birthdays and holidays all the way from China to Germany to Thailand. It is fun to choose the backgrounds for the calls and wear birthday hats and matching colors. Some people have wine and cheese book discussions or virtual happy hours on Zoom. We even watched an old movie on Zoom Friday night sharing live comments in the discussion area. 

There are many highlights in this unique time in history. We are striving to connect and communicate with each other in whatever ways we can. There are many cases of depression and a feeling of isolation worldwide. Try to make an extra effort to reach out to family and friends and make new connections online. We are all in this together. Zoom hugs to you wherever you are in this wide world today.