Fun New Opportunities Thanks to Online Learning?

FUN NEW OPPORTUNITIES THANKS TO ONLINE LEARNING?

This online medium has introduced many, MANY challenges to those of us coming to it fresh; but it has also given us some fun new opportunities, and I thought it would be fun to share some of them.

At my studio some of them have been:

The third week of our beginner course we introduce finger cymbals. We have a two camera set up, where one is a full body camera from across the room, and the other is close up and more conversational. We mainly use the close up camera to chat at the beginning and end of class. Finger cymbal night I was able to use this close-in camera to show my entire class of students up close and personal how my finger cymbals look, fit on my hands, and play for them up close. It was a unique view of playing that we couldn't really get in an in-person experience. Not only that, but because they aren't in a room full of other students playing all at once, they are only hearing me and themselves playing at home. So their finger cymbal practice with me is going to be more effective during quarantine because it won't be hidden or drowned out by others.

Another cool thing: our full body camera was just changed from a dual-log-in on a phone to a web camera last week. Now it is possible to easily walk up and tilt it up and down if you want to to focus on different parts of the body. So when we had a particularly complex foot pattern, our instructor that night walked up and just tilted the camera down to point at her feet while she broke the move down in more detail, and then just tilted it back up when she was done. Again, this was a more detailed view than a room of students might have been able to see in person.

But my favorite opportunity was my guest TA. One of my former students and troupe-members moved across country about a year ago. We have missed her terribly, and though she has been trying to get a dance group going in her area, it has been very slow going. Then this all hit and it has thrown a wrench in the works. Now she has not only been able to come back to classes with us online, she has been joining troupe meetings, and this week she TA'd part of our beginner class from her living room. We just spotlighted her in Zoom for her part of the lesson, and it went great!

What unique and unexpected perks have you discovered since putting classes online? Even if you've been doing this a while, I'd love to hear some of the positives you've been experiencing!