CHD Grab Bag
of Fall CALL y’All!
November 2022 … ALREADY???

November …  already? WOW …. and deserving of … ALL CAPS! NOVEMBER … ALREADY? This semester has gone both fast and slow … at the same time! And that sums up the entire year too! 

This post will mostly be a summary with a few teasers about what might be coming up soon in CALL and elsewhere. It has been a very busy semester and quite the varied usage in CALL too! CALL has been around since September of 1989.  That is NOT a typo – since 1989! And so many new and different uses just in this semester alone! And a bit of a list below in very rough chronological order! And the photos will be in a gallery at the end of this post.

• American Sign Language (ASL) Orientation to start the year!  Very successful on many accounts – they meet their Instructors (Nigel & Tim!), they find CALL so that they know WHERE their quizzes, midterms and Final exams will be and discover it is a drop-in location for them too! Thanks Sandra! Good luck to all the students with their studies! ASL is so much fun and is THE hardest class to get into at UVic with huge waiting lists!
• Computer Help Desk Staff Training! Only the 2nd IN PERSON training since returning to UVic! And of course, a new version of CHD Jeopardy: Greg’s Playlist II! And lots of prizes were won – see my last post here.
• PAAS Korean Chat Cafe is back in full force too! What a perfect blend of location, technology and amazing Instructors! Students get to chat with real live Koreans during their scheduled class time! Thanks Jaerang!
• All kinds of Linguistics quizzes and mid-terms and later on this semester, ANOTHER Linguistics Poster Session as well! Last year, that event was the genesis of the idea to have dual monitors in CALL! Thanks for the idea, Sandra! Fortunately, I was able to reuse some older tech destined for recycling – dongles, monitors and cables from Heather at HSD and with Tomoyo’s help, setup ALL the computers in CALL with DUAL MONITORS for literally ZERO COST (just my ‘CALL Time’) and avoid shredding this older tech! Check out my PAGE about UVic recycling HERE! And for any students returning to CALL in September, the ‘new’ dual monitors were a huge new and WELCOME update! YAY!  ALL my Bog Blog pages are always to the side of each and every post! YAY PAGES!
• A Global Community Workshop, 2 sessions over 2 weeks helped international Business students navigate hiring and improving their resumes.
• Italian quizzes and exams! YAY ESTELLE!
• Hispanic & Italian Studies Annual Colloquium including a Spanish Lansdowne Lecture – a FIRST for The CALL Facility! And a Spanish Writing Workshop too! Quite the combination of new events hosted in CALL! You can find ALL UVic Public Lectures here.
• Hosted a group of international students from Pearson College of the Pacific at the end of their weeklong ‘shadowing’ of Spanish courses at UVic! They met in CALL to watch a Spanish YouTube video and workshop the week that was! Thanks Silvia and Adriana!
• I continued to participate in the Annual Great BC Shakeout! I take cover under my desk and …. I am usually the only one who DOES participate! UVic has a great Emergency Planning site too! And the Earthquake & Tsunami site is here! Check it out!
• All sorts of Computer Help Desk Pop-Up Tents for Orientation and most recently, Phishing Awareness. AND in the very near future, this November, CALL will be used for Phishing Awareness Training! The OAC Phish Bowl is here! Thanks Kelly!
• Spanish SIELE exam is scheduled in CALL later in November! It has been about 3 years (pre-Covid) since CALL hosted this prestigious exam! Looking forward to it! Thanks Silvia and Pablo!
• A very special Spanish class with Gabriela will feature a Peruvian Rapper via a Zoom call for her students later in November! This is ANOTHER new and exciting event in CALL for her Spanish students! Thanks Gabriela and Chrissie!
• Spanish Oral exams will be conducted in CALL as well, another first! Thanks Pablo!

• 

  Halloween Decorations in CALL! Yeah, yet another chalk outline using old Mac Mini cables. Where is Sherlock Holmes when you need him! And amazingly it was gone the next day … without even needing a FAMIS request! They are SO GOOD!

• And, of course, I am working on the NEXT CHD Jeopardy: A Mixed Bag! Tentatively sometime in January 2023, I want to add more prizes, INSTANT prizes using the new CHD Wheel of Prizes and have all new jokes, puns and puzzles to this next edition! Thanks to everyone at CHD for … putting up with me and my crazy imagination!

I am fairly certain I have forgotten a few events, so I reserve the right to … add them later on! In CALL, every day is different, every student is different and every joke and pun I think of … might not be different so I reserve the right to use them over and over and over again! And now, for some photos of the events above!

Thanks to EVERYONE at CHD for participating and your support too! I can’t make The CALL Facility or Jeopardy ‘CAN’T MISS EVENTS‘ without all of you! Thank you!

TTFN!