I was tutoring when things first "went down" with Covid-19 and schools closed, but I am teaching an ESL level one writing course this fall, which begins in three weeks! When I was offered the teaching gig, I wasn't sure if I wanted it. It's a pretty stressful time (for everyone, I know!), and I wasn't sure if I wanted to add to the stress I already have. After some debate, though, I decided to take it on. After all, I'm an extrovert and I could use all the social interaction I can get! Teaching Live-Online As you may remember from an earlier post, the class I'm teaching this fall has a Live-Online format. That means I will meet with my students in real-time twice a week. Naturally, then, the first question I asked my teaching supervisor was which online platform should I use for my Live-Online course? I knew I'd be posting homework on Canvas, but what about those live-online meetings? Should I be using Zoom, Webex, CraniumCafe, or something else? "Level one, right?" he asked me. "Yep!" "Go with Google Meet." This answer surprised me because my college has been offering tons of training for Webex, and our in-person-tutoring-center-moved-online uses CraniumCafe. For church and such, I usually use Zoom, so I asked my supervisor why Google Meet? Why Google Meet? "I had to move my in-person classes to online last semester," he told me. "And I tried them all! Google Meet was the simplest because students didn't need to make an account or download any software. You just give them a link, and they click and enter!" That made sense to me! ESL, especially level one, tend to overcomplicate things. I suppose that's true for any college student, but I often imagine myself doing the tasks I give my students as if I were doing them in a second language. I don't speak any Arabic, for example. Would I be able to create an account or even know what to download if it was told to me in Arabic? Probably not! I was also happy to hear about this recommendation because that's what the English department used when we all went online. They had several optional hangouts every week, and instructors (full time or part time!) could talk and ask questions. I went to those not only because I was the tutoring coordinator at the time and wanted instructors to know that tutors were available online to help their students, but as an extrovert, I needed that social interaction! Anyway, what I remember most about using Google Meet was how there weren't any unnecessary bells and whistles. It took a minute to figure out where to access stuff, like the mic and video (etc) because the options hide when you're not hovering over them (I will need to explain this to students!), but otherwise, the chat is clean and for an ESL class, the most important thing is being able to access video and audio.
I asked the Internet, and it turns out that you shouldn't have that problem if you slide your presentation to an extra monitor, but I just have my good-old trusty MacBook and no extra monitor, so that wasn't helpful to me.
Someone else suggested opening Google Meet on two devices. The one on your computer, for example, could control the presentation while your phone would allow you to see the other participants. But don't do that! I got a crazy screeching sound, so I turned off the volume on my phone, but there was a funky echo because the computer and phone were both still picking up my voice. I was discouraged that I couldn't figure out something so simple (yet important!) and was just getting over it (maybe I wouldn't present any power points!) when I found the awesome video I'm sharing with you in this blog. It made me super happy because I love using google slides. Now I know I can present power points with lots of pictures (which is key to teaching level one ESL) and be able to see if someone is confused or if they left the meeting for whatever reason, and they will be able to see me while I'm presenting. Yay! I'm sure there will be other challenges and bugs to work out while I'm teaching, but I thought I'd share out this helpful tip, especially to those of you wanting to teach online with Google Meet. Happy teaching!
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