Week 2, Tuesday: Feb. 16

Important: delayed opening of campus
In person classes start at 10 AM, if you have earlier classes check if they are canceled, rescheduled, or changed to a remote delivery.

Stay safe, and be very careful out there. The forecast is for slippery sidewalks and roads!

You can check hourly forecasts for the Allentown area here, or get detailed info straight from the National Weather Service. I use these to plan my runs (when I am mobile). Speaking of runs, when the weather gets nasty, I have found Yak Trax to be essential to keep me on the road. (Disclaimer: just a happy customer, not being paid to advertise!). I use the "Walk" , but it turns out you can run in them as well for a few winters before they wear out. Be safe!

HST271	Get used to Tuesdays being the due day for providing feedback on each other's blog posts. If you want to get a taste for that, you can go to the course blog stream, and looks through the posts with the cats. (Scroll down, some students have already been posting for week two!) Comment using hypothesis, group HST271 - and try out different tags and formatting options.
HST471	Individual feedback on your 5 – 15 report coming today! I really look forward to working with each of you individually on a smashing research project!

Early blog posts HST271!

With the format of this course, it's possible to work a little bit ahead. Some of you already doing this. Check out Ben's post for week 2, and Jenessa's post on her new WordPress theme, for this week's extra credit exercise.

Tech tip Tuesday

Struggling with focus while you're reading? That's normal! You need to build up stamina to maintain focus, if you're not used to working with longer and more complicated texts. It's a bit like long-distance running. If you're not used to it, you won't immediately start running a 5k, you build up gradually.

I have found the pomodoro technique very helpful. You alternate set periods of focused time with specified periods of rest. You can adjust it to whatever you find comfortable, and you can gradually build up your "focused" stretches. For me the recommended rhythm of 25 mins of focused time, alternated with a 5 min break works well most days, but I adjust based on my energy levels, or the need to firefight crises when Things Go Wrong.

I have found the Marinara extension for the Chrome browser to be very useful to keep me focused. It's easy to adjust the times, very easy to use, visible but not obtrusive in the menu bar. Give it a whirl!

Above all: putting your devices notifications on "Do not disturb" will help a lot! You can quickly check during the short breaks, but ideally keep the chat and social media interactions for the longer breaks. (I have to admit I am the worst at following this recommendation! I now use Freedom to block me from my main distractions during working hours)

Twitter treasure

An oldie but goodie from twitter, from last fall. Many countries in Europe advise to keep 1.5m distance, about 5 feet. You may have to re-engage your math brain cells to get why the original caption was "One minute silence for Pythagoras, please." (If you need a hint, look here on reddit)