I just reflected on one thing: when we teach on campus we use our university’s own infrastructure. Working remotely forces us to pay for and maintain our own digital infrastructure. Students have to do this too.

Universities (and other learning organizations) thus have a democratizing and equalizing function: they provide infrastructure (computers, internet, library books/space) for EVERYONE. Being forced to go remote, we also forget structural inequalities across the student body and...

... faculty. I remember one time, when a project officer for the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung told me "please have everyone participating in your workshop scan their IDs and send them to me". What makes you think EVERYONE has a scanner/printer/robust wifi to scan-to-PDF and send?

I just remembered... when my Mom was doing her PhD in Madrid, Spain, she often times had to go work late at their local "locutorio" (a computer lab where computers and internet were available to rent). Simply because she didn't have wifi at home to send her homework. Terrible.

I have another anecdote from my Mom’s PhD days. Mom did her PhD in Spain (Madrid, Complutense) while I was doing mine in Canada (Vancouver, UBC), and my Olaf brother was doing his in the US (South Bend, Notre Dame). She had a laptop, and worked from her “piso” (apartment).

My OLDEST brother. I hate iPhone auto correct. Anyways, one time, she was finishing a paper for a class late at night, and before she could save it to a USB her laptop died.

At 1 am.

She had to leave her house and go to a “locutorio” and rewrite her f****ng paper FROM SCRATCH

She had to walk alone through the streets of Madrid at 1 am so she could find a locutorio that would be open so she could rewrite her paper.

She found one and rewrote the damn paper from scratch. She finished at 8 am, having had zero sleep, sent it out, printed it and ...

She had to walk home, shower and get ready and go to class on zero hours of sleep.

So yeah, am I very sensitive to students and staff and faculty’s disparities in technology and infrastructure? Absolutely.

My Mom’s experiences really reminded me of these inequities.

Also, and entirely unrelated to this thread, my Mom is a freaking superstar and I worship the ground she walks on. Her doing a PhD late in life, in a foreign country, and starting over all on her own always inspires me.

Since my tweet got a bit viral, and since we're under siege from a coronavirus:

STAY HOME.

WASH YOUR HANDS WITH SOAP AND WATER.

COVER YOUR MOUTH AND NOSE WHEN SNEEZING.

DISINFECT SURFACES WITH ALCOHOL-BASED GEL.

NEW BLOG POST: On the importance of individual infrastructure in remote learning and teaching - what role for the university? http://www.raulpacheco.org/2020/04/on-the-importance-of-individual-infrastructure-in-remote-learning-and-teaching-what-role-for-the-university/

Thoughts I expressed on this thread, but with a little bit more coherence and in handy blog post form.