How to teach online [Top tips for new online teachers]

 How to teach online 

[Top tips for new online teachers]

Does the idea of online teaching stress you out? or maybe make you a little nervous. Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to my blog truehealthytipz. I thought to write a blog to help teachers to online if you are new to online teaching I think this article will be very helpful to you at least that's my goal and here's how we're going to do it.

I have six different points that we're going to talk about these are the most commonly asked questions I get from people who are new to online teaching we'll talk first about background meaning your setup for your online classes lighting because that's very important your appearance how you will present yourself to the online class space and how to use it effectively focus basically how you can make sure that you are focused in your classroom and then sustainability I don't know how long you'll be teaching online for but I want to be sure that it's as pleasant of an experience as possible for you and be sure to stick around until the end because I have a helpful tip for you that I don't want you to miss.

Okay first things first your background the main thing I want you to think about when it comes to your classroom back classroom background is that it should not look like you are in your home even though you probably are in your home think about your most unruly or your most challenging student and imagine that student feels like he or she is just chilling with you in your house or in your apartment or wherever you live uh yeah let's not go there. Let's make sure that your classroom looks like a classroom it doesn't need to be anything extravagant

I recommend you know you don't have to have a whole room dedicated to teaching you can just find a simple space to set up the main thing is you don't want it to look like your home like I said you should not have your nightstand in the background you should not have your refrigerator door there you want to emulate the classroom the traditional classroom as much as possible.

Just keep in mind doesn't have to be a huge space maybe like four or six I don't know square feet you just need a little space for online teaching which is pretty awesome. It doesn't matter how great your background is if they can't see your background if your students can't see you.

let's talk about lighting the best lighting you can ever have is natural light if you are fortunate enough to be near a window and there's a lot of sunshine where you live you are in luck that's not always the case for everybody most of us will need to supplement the lighting in some way even if you have a nice window you probably will need to supplement your lighting.

I first recommend that you use whatever lighting you know lamps and little lights that you already have in your home before you go and buy anything  the best way that you can test out your lighting is to pull up on your webcam on your computer whatever you're using pull up some kind of camera app or zoom there's a free version of zoom right you can pull that up to see about how it would look and then recruit some help if there's somebody who can help you one of you stays in front of the camera the other is moving around lights and lamps and trying to figure out what works.

Some top tips for getting those lamps to work for you want to think about bouncing the light. If you only have a light that's kind of down here looking up you look like you're telling a ghost story if it's just straight at your face you might look like a deer in the headlights you really want to be sure that you are bouncing lights from different directions and testing it out until you figure out what.

If you do find that you just don't have enough lights or they're just not working for you. You can definitely check that out on the online shopping like amazon.

How to avoid glare the most simple explanation I can give to you all right lighting is important because it highlights you as the teacher let's talk about you as the teacher let's talk about your appearance now it may feel vain to be putting on makeup and trying to look good on camera but really it helps to engage your student more if you are more if you're going to catch their attention  let's talk about it first of all your headset is awesome because it masks bad hair days very nicely I typically don't worry too much about my hair when I’m teaching as long as it doesn't look really crazy you might be  getting away with maybe not doing quite as much with your hair as maybe you like to do traditionally but besides your hair another thing that the students will see a lot of is your shirt the best tips I can give you for your shirt is of course you want them to be modest right because even more than usual there's going to be a lot of focus on right here because there's not a whole lot more else to look at  you want to be sure it's modest and ala solid color now why do we care about having a solid color because not only is it less distracting for your student but it's less distracting for your webcam too sometimes if you have polka dots or floral or stripes or something your webcam has a hard time focusing and it will kind of go in and out of focus on you wear a solid color speaking of color lipstick if you are inclined and you feel up to it I encourage you to consider wearing lipstick in your classes this is especially helpful because for your students who read lips your lips are going to be much smaller on the screen right and some of them some of your students will rely on reading your lips and it really helps them out if you can highlight with just a little bit of color there the other makeup that I would recommend if you want to wear makeup is some eyeliner to kind of draw attention to your eyes let's talk about eye contact I know I’m going really fast here but let's talk about eye contact because it is even more important in the online classroom than you would ever imagine the top concern I hear about eye contact from new teachers is I have no clue where to look and I understand that because when you're face to face with a student in person you look at your students eyes right it's simple but with a webcam there's the middleman the webcam is your middleman I encourage you 99 of the time you want to be looking in one of these two places either your webcam or you know scanning the virtual room for your students  you're probably wondering what that one percent is where else you might be looking occasionally you will need to look at your own video just to make sure that you are still within the screen that your students can still see you your video is working but most of the time you want to be looking at your webcam or your students. How do I remember to look at my webcam when it's just like the littlest dot on my laptop actually put a little sticky note behind webcam. If you have a hard time remembering to look at your webcam or finding it definitely consider just a quick tip like that that you can quickly see where is my webcam that's where I need to remember to look eye contact and if you're not looking at your students directly if you're not looking at the webcam then you might need to be checking to make sure that you are within your space.

 

Let's talk about space if you stay perfectly still throughout the whole day throughout the whole class how boring is that you look like a little postage stamp and hey you may even feel like you are in a postage stamp because maybe you feel a little stifled by the lack of space but I’m here to encourage you that you have a lot more space to work with than you think you do. The worst thing that you can do with your space is put everything on top of each other. All the time people will cover their faces while they're trying to teach  not only does that make the students disengage because they can't see you anymore but you can't see your students either it's completely pointless I have another quick fix to that problem it's another four letter word it is lean you just want to lean I know that seems super simple but you want to lean you want to share the space left to right  and then I don't want you just to think about your space left to right I want you to think about your space close and far from the webcam for example a time when you might want to get up close to your webcam is if you're pronouncing something for your student or maybe you are singing or you I don't know maybe they've just been not really paying attention and you just want to get their attention real quick you go in right and then when would you go far maybe if you have something big you want to show right maybe you want to do a gesture maybe you have a big prop you're trying to use using that space moving front to back and side to side keeps your students engaged  and it helps them to focus a lot more moving right on to focus.

Focus not only is it helpful to think about how your students can focus better how you can help them focus better but we need to think about how we can help you focus better as the teacher one of the most distracting things for online teachers at least from what I've experienced and heard from other teachers is noises

You want to minimize noises in your classroom and in your home in general of course you wouldn't want to throw a load of laundry in if you're near the laundry machine the washing machine anything like that you want to minimize any kind of mechanical noises if you have an overhead fan that's kind of noisy just I'm sorry you may be a little toasty but you probably don't want to do that and then you really want to avoid anything like doorbells I've had that happen before and now I put a sign on my doorbell whoever cannot even use the doorbell because it's covering it you want to put a sign just to let people know not to make noise at your door your outside door and the door to your classroom right if you live with any other people you want to be sure that they know the expectation that when you are teaching they do not come in and ask you for juice or they don't barge in you know and just ask what you're doing I don't know you know the people you live with better than I do but I know a lot of teachers who will put a sign on their door like a stop sign one of the teachers who I know and love actually puts a picture of grumpy cat on his door to let his parents know not to go in whatever works right but there are some people who will not respond even if you put up a sign maybe they can't read it maybe they just ignore it for them you just need to get into some kind of routine maybe somebody needs to help you with that just making sure that that person is not coming in during your classes.

You just want to be really careful about any kind of distractions that could distract you and then ultimately distract your students as well and we don't know how long you'll be doing this for we want to focus all on sustainability what do I mean by that I mean that you need to be sure you're taking care of yourself you don't burn out just like how teachers can burn out in the traditional classroom I have seen good teachers burn out in the online classroom too what can we do about that as much as you possibly can. I encourage you to plan out when you are going to eat when you are going to go to the restroom when you are going to stretch out because yes you need to stretch out if you're in the same place for a long time hopefully you're moving around enough that it doesn't make a huge difference but anyway you want to plan in brakes as much as you can. I know everyone's schedule and the expectations placed on them are different but definitely try to plan those things in all you want to hydrate.

Hydration is important because if you are not hydrating then it is going to affect your voice. Focus on your vocal health there are lots of great products out there that can help you know that have different natural products.

 I encourage you take good care of yourself or you will burn out you will I don't want that for you. If you remember in the beginning of this article I said to be sure that you stick around until the end for a very valuable tip that tip is give yourself grace especially if you've never taught in the online classroom before this is overwhelming it is and you are a champ and you're going to do fine but you need to show yourself grace you will drop things you may spill things you may accidentally turn off your webcam for a while you may have no clue how to manage your classroom you know, there are many things that could come up but ultimately I encourage you to remind yourself what got you into teaching in the first place I doubt that you got into teaching because you liked walking across the front of a traditional classroom I bet it's the passion that brought you there and that passion doesn't just extinguish because now you're online I encourage you keep doing what you do and passionately teaching these students if you enjoy this article please share it among your fellow teachers. Don’t forget to share your thoughts by comment below.

Thanks for reading.