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Teachers, students, parents, basically everyone is tired of live online teaching. There is a need for hard school desks, physically throwing wads at the teacher and sticky buns in the school cafeteria. And even a squeaky chalk on a blackboard is now music to the ears of some. Hester Hooijen - who has been preaching the benefits of live online contact and training in the world of education for 15 years - is even slowly starting to feel like being allowed to visit schools and organizations again and physically shake hands with teachers. But do we put live online teaching on hold as soon as we can go back to school? Or is live online teaching here to stay?
"Absolutely!" says Hester Hooijen, LOL consultant at Learning Connected. In this blog, she explains why and how you can permanently reap the benefits of live online teaching, even after corona!
The nasty aftertaste of online teaching
We can't wait to get back to normal school life. This is not surprising, as the first steps into live online teaching have been tough for many teachers. Children "kicking" the teacher out of the classroom, teachers talking for an hour before a student reports that the mute button has been on the whole time or students taking screenshots of the teacher and sending funny gifs of this around. Many teachers have had to find their own way in live online teaching through damage and loss. It resulted in countless funny youtube videos, but also often helpless and sad teachers. It's only logical that they would rather throw the laptop and the virtual classroom out the window. Live online teaching has received a boost - but also a nasty aftertaste - from corona.
Deployment of live online education after corona
And that is such a shame, because the added value of online contact teaching deserves a place within the school even after corona. The added value of live online sessions goes beyond distance contact between teacher and tutor. Therefore, here are five positive contributions of live online contact teaching that every school should benefit from permanently (!).
- Live online the possibility arises to visit places or witness live events that are not normally, or barely, attended live. You could take students from hotel school on a live tour of a prestigious hotel in Abu Dhabi. Or take students from a social care program behind the doors of an addiction clinic or prison via an image link. An on-site supervisor takes them into the ward live online and, after the tour, answers questions from the students or allows a resident to speak.
- Similarly, through a live online image connection, you can better prepare students for their future internship. They can take a look at their future workplace via a live online tour and get to know their internship supervisor and future colleagues. Or they can ask questions to interns who are already working for the organization. In this way, students get a better idea of the practice and what is expected of them.
- Internship and study support. Once students are doing an internship or combining their school with work? Then of course it is easier to make contact live online. Supervisors at school can more easily schedule meetings with the student - or with the internship supervisor in attendance - or be available during online consultation hours for the students who need them. Conversely, students doing internships can literally show what they are doing through live online visual communication.
- Bringing experts into the classroom. Experts don't always have the time or opportunity to come to school. But online, they often do. And it is often even more fun if the expert is actually at a work-related location; think of a reporter giving a presentation on the American elections from America. Or an animal care worker who answers questions about penguin mating behavior for half an hour between feeding the animals. Another example is an addiction expert who is present online as a judge to assess the performance of drug intervention methods of healthcare students.
- Offer cross-location courses or tutoring. Sometimes courses - or even entire programs - do not take place, simply because there are not enough registrations. By offering courses and programmes online, students can participate from different locations. This often results in sufficient enrollment and students can still follow the chosen course or training. In this way, you can also offer tutoring more efficiently by having students from different locations or courses with the same learning requirement tutor together online.
In short: sufficient reason not to wash the live online child away with the corona bath water... As a school, use the advantages and added value of live online education to continue to enrich and improve education in the future!
Want to know more about effective live online teaching? Check out our training. Or contact us and together we will discuss the possibilities.
