New era looking good

July 7, 2020

Well I survived, and the so did the students. I think everyone learned something, if only thati have finally found a way to sit all my students on my cutting table. It was a very information dense class but most of the students were about to see well what I was showing them. We did discover two connections that were not performing as they should. I predict a couple of unhappy ISPs. Something I hadn’t thought about was background noise. I have taught in some pretty noisy environments but that is one set of background noise for everyone, with everyone at home we get a set of background noise from each house. It was quite distracting, so in future we will get students to mute when they are not actively speaking for technique classes. For the more general weekly classes I think it will just be a matter of learning mike discipline. If you know you are doing something noisy muting. I guess this is something people who do group video calls have already explored but I have always worked text only.

I do like that the feel of my classes was coming through. I was worried we might lose that, people don’t always behave the same with cameras, but I think people are getting more comfortable with them now. I really think this will work, for teaching and for the social aspects. It was clear that just being able to see other quilters did help, as does bouncing ideas of others. My sewing space isn’t perfectly set for doing video classes. I need to find a way to set my foot controler set up. Trying to use the hand start stop drove me crazy and I really don’t have full control. The camera shuffling worked fairly well. I would love to find a way to see what the camera sees in my thumbnail not the mirror image. I find it very hard to navigate as is, but still we managed.

My provisional plan is to try and set up some sessions for my regular students over the summer. I will also be looking to put on more technique and day classes online. I am thinking of ways to help those with poor connections and those where their sewing machine is not near their computer. I am really pleased with our first steps and I will be looking at ways to make this bigger better easier and more fun. Bear with me, this is all new and will take a little while to really get right.