Working from home, sort of, in the time of coronavirus.

March 14, 2020 7:05 PM

Stay Home And Avoid The Coronavirus With These 25 Fun And Useful Websites (SLPleatedJeans)

Among the useful:

How much coffee will kill you?
How old are you, really?
What should you read next?
What's a good movie or show to watch?

posted by Johnny Wallflower (16 comments total)

I'll return in a couple of hours to comment.
posted by bendy at 7:10 PM on March 14, 2020

Author Pernille Ripp:

I am at our public library right now and it is deserted. Wisconsin was ordered to close their schools this coming week as more and more cases of Covid-19 pile up. The world is upside down.

As we prepare to switch to online learning, I have been thinking of the power of the read aloud. How having the social connection through shared books can bring us together. How doing a read aloud in this stressful time can calm us. And so as we plan for what we will do, I immediately thought of reading picture books aloud to my students and having them respond to them in a short paragraph through Google Classroom. However, there is one glaring problem; copyright violations, I don’t want to break copyright by reading aloud a book and then sharing it with students. So instead, I compiled as many lists as I could find here featuring the creators reading aloud. Perhaps the list will be helpful to you?

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:23 PM on March 14, 2020 [12 favorites]

You're Getting Old is great - reading through the events that have happened over my life-time brings up a lot of memories.
posted by bendy at 7:29 PM on March 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Guerrilla leader Che Guevara executed in Bolivia (you were 7 months old)

Also, I was on the other side of the planet, so you can't pin that on me.
posted by Gorgik at 8:10 PM on March 14, 2020 [16 favorites]

I'm getting a lot of great recommendations from Gnoosic already!
posted by Shepherd at 8:16 PM on March 14, 2020

Very nice. Bookmarked three sites (music, books, movies). I'm always a bit surprised that so frequently choose someone else's tastes over my own.
posted by cooper green at 8:51 PM on March 14, 2020 [2 favorites]

Now that I've gotten the hang of it, Drench is really fun.
posted by vverse23 at 9:12 PM on March 14, 2020 [7 favorites]

What should you read next? has some pretty good suggestions. I'm currently reading The Rooster Bar by John Grisham, and I've gotten some great ideas for books in the same vein.
posted by Roger Pittman at 3:48 AM on March 15, 2020

Almost this whole list feels like a shorter version of zefrank. Still, yay to good time-wasters!
posted by Mchelly at 5:09 AM on March 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

Drench is exactly the sort of game I need when I want to listen to podcasts. I love it.
posted by meese at 8:36 AM on March 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

I love The True Size -- especially to convey an idea of how very big Africa really is. E.g.:

Nigeria alone is as large as Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and half of Montana combined;

Algeria alone is as large as Calif., NM, Ariz., Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho combined;

fudging edges a bit, you can fit all of India + China + Canada + the US (lower 48) into the African continent.

posted by Kat Allison at 10:45 AM on March 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

Thorzdad is exactly the same age today as @KellyOsbourne + @ArianaGrande

I'm...actually kinda ok with this.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:42 AM on March 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Please add "coronavirus" to the tags of this post so I can block it. Thanks.
posted by glonous keming at 1:24 PM on March 15, 2020

Done.
posted by jessamyn at 2:17 PM on March 15, 2020

there is one glaring problem; copyright violations, I don’t want to break copyright by reading aloud a book and then sharing it with students

AAARGH. Educational purposes are fair use!

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

Another approach is to look for public domain works and creative commons releases, and potentially, writing to authors asking for permission to use their books for read-aloud presentations. Any author who says "no" or "I can't; my publisher controls those rights" gets bumped to the "we don't teach that author" pile.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:21 PM on March 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks. Some really great things here! Totally addicted to Silk. And that 60 second meditation is also wonderful.
posted by Plafield at 12:29 PM on March 16, 2020