also figured that they should change the release date either earlier or later for business purposes and profit. According to Toni Ruberto of the Buffalo News, many theatre owners are furious about their theatres remaining closed so long, and one owner mentioned that other businesses weren’t closed, such as bowling alleys, bars, and casinos. Ray Barker, who owns the North Park Theatre, said that there was no point in closing cinemas if the other businesses were open. Theatres were still closed three months after the initial reopening of everything else. Michael Clement, president and owner of Dipson Theatres, agreed with Barker. Governor Cuomo stated that having theatres open is an extremely high health risk. Barker said, “In a theatre, no one does anything but sit, eat, and watch the movies, while in a gym, people are huffing, puffing, sweating and doing physical activities in the gym.” Ruberto reported that many theatre owners thought it was unfair that theatres were closed and other places for entertainment weren’t. Continued from Virtual Learning faculty and provided a good experience for the virtual student. We think we achieved that. Rafael: What are the challenges that the Instructional Technology office experienced with virtual learning? Mr. Poblocki: There are lots of IT challenges with the virtual learning program. One of the biggest challenges was coming up with a plan that would be the best for students (both in the classroom and online) and work well for faculty. Another challenge was trying to acquire equipment as every school at business was trying to acquire the same equipment to use for virtual conference calls. The final big challenge was training teachers how to use the equipment. We had a very short turnaround time from when the equipment arrived to when classes started. The faculty have done an outstanding job coping with 13
S p o r ts Changing the Game Plan By: Daric F.
Like everything else, 2020 has been an interesting year for sports. We started with a bang when the National Basketball Association (NBA) was postponed to every single sports league getting shut down. However, in order to stay afloat, professional sports organizations seem to have developed two strategies: gamble or bubble. The most recent league to gamble was the National Football League (NFL). This means teams are traveling the country to play their respective games. Week four saw the first game postponed due to COVID-19. The Tennessee Titans and the Pittsburgh Steelers, originally a week 4 match-up, are now scheduled to play week 7. According to Nick Shook of National Football league Players Association (NFLPA) published on July 24 2020. Most of all the NFL teams have had plans for fans to attend the 2020-2021 season these fast and constant changes. In my opinion, there are not many advantages to virtual learning. I feel students learn best in the classroom where multisensory instruction can be delivered. It is very difficult to do that virtually, but our faculty are doing an excellent job. If I had to pick one advantage of virtual learning, it's that we can still help students that are unable to make it to campus due to the pandemic. Rafael: What can the Instructional Technology department do to improve the virtual learning system for both teachers and students? Mr. Poblocki: At this point in the virtual program, the biggest thing IT can do to improve the program is to support the faculty the best we can. In IT, we only deliver the hardware and software to connect the faculty and the virtual student. That technology would be useless without great faculty behind it. It's our job to make sure the technology is working so the faculty can do their job teaching students.
