Transcript
If you're doing an online CELTA course, and you want some great ideas to make your online teaching practice go with bang, then this video is for you.
I asked a bunch of highly experienced CELTA tutors for their best ideas, and I distilled them all down into this series of 10 videos. This one is number one, and it's tips about your physical environment. So listen up, take some notes, and take note. I'm Jo Gakonga, from ELT training.com. And if this was useful, then please give it a like and check out my site for lots and lots of other free resources.
The first thing to think about when you're teaching online is your physical environment. If you're in a classroom, then it's provided for you. But if you're teaching online, then what's behind you is what they see. So try and make it at least a bit professional, no drying underwear in the background. If you haven't got anything else, just a blank wall is good. Try to find a way of moving your laptop around or moving things around so that it looks reasonable behind you.
You also want to make sure that there's no noise in the background, babies crying dogs barking, things going off bells, you don't want this. So try and find a quiet place to be.
Another tip is to make sure that you're lit from the front, it will make a big difference. If you've got a big light behind you or a window behind you, your face is going to be very dark, and they need to be able to see you. So try and put yourself in a place where you've got some lighting from the front. Another top tip and it seems really easy, but I've seen this happen so many times is that you need to be in the middle of your screen. So you want to be looking straight at the lens. You don't they don't want to be looking up your nose. And they don't want to be looking down on you either. And also, you don't want to be down on the bottom of the screen or the have half your forehead cut off. So make sure you're lined up.
My final top tip for this physical environment is make sure that you're looking into the camera into the lens, not at yourself on the screen. If you look at yourself on the screen, - and your eyes will be drawn there - then what you're going to see they're going to see you looking slightly down and not at them. And you want to be looking at them making eye contact as if you would if you were in a physical classroom.
I hope these tips were a bit helpful. Look out for the next videos in this series. I'll see you then.
