Lockdown day 81

Back blipping

Thanks for the words of encouragement yesterday!   There was no walk this morning and I was up early and ready to go at the dining table at 7.20am for an 8.00am start.  

This is Day 1 on my first online CELTA course and has to be the strangest day 1 ever - sitting at home, dressed respectably up top, but wearing flip flops and with a coffee beside me and needing a hair cut!   I didn't actually have to do anything today, apart from 'be there' online as I was just sitting in on my co-trainer's (coming in from Switzerland) two input sessions.

Things to remember, note, and for my record: 

My co-trainer didn't do anything tooooo fancy that I couldn't have a go at;  the technology tripped her up a few times but we somehow managed;  if you give hosting rights to someone else, remember to take/ask for them back otherwise you can't manage breakout rooms;  breaks are important - I needed the loo towards the end of her 2nd session and it's then difficult to concentrate;  It's nice to be able to drink coffee during a session :-) ;  remember that anything that's in the chat box can't be accessed when in breakout rooms, so get somebody to take a screen grab/copy and then paste while inside the rooms;  the chat box (1-1 and to everyone) is a very quick and easy way of pair work/participation and less clunky/time consuming than b/o rooms - keep the b/o rooms for the chunkier communicative tasks;  make sure your settings allow people (especially adults) to be able to return to the main room when a task is finished, rather than having to wait till the time set is finished;  even in the main room it's a good idea for the 'host'/trainer/teacher to turn off their camera to encourage participants to work together;  remember to use gestures (this is for me as a trainer/teacher, as I've only used Zoom socially so far and so they haven't been needed);  try to include something physical in a session, e.g. stand up/sit down as a response etc;  exploit people working in different places, e.g. what can you see out of your window, take a photo and share etc;  timing is really really important and everything seemed to take a bit longer online so you need to stay on track;  nominating individuals to say something is important as open questions don't work so well as in a f2f environment;  experiment with getting everyone to turn off their cameras just for a change and a bit of relief and change of pace.   

Everything is now crossed for Thursday morning when it's my turn to give double input sessions! 

The rest of the day I tried to settle down and finish my prep for my two input sessions on Thursday, but my heart just wasn't in it and my mind was still racing from the morning sessions, so eventually I gave up and Bb and I went out for a walk with the 'excuse' of changing my Fitbit (queue still far too long!).    I made dinner and it was a kind of vegetable curry with the roast veggies left over from Monday and the leftover cold chicken.  Delicious and that's two curry-ish dishes we've had in a week and curry is one of the dishes we've been missing during the lockdown.  Neither was quite Kandahar in Cairo or Rasoi here in Barcelona, but time will tell!   It's nice to sit out on the patio for dinner now with the sunshade out.