Big Brother

I was watched.

Not in the creepy way that that sentence implies though. I had my first ever official observation of a lesson. The two days previous were a bit of a mess of setting up the equipment and hoping that everything will work. I had to change how I wrote my lesson because I had to stay within the camera view (thus only using the white board). There were a few things I would change about the experience, but most of it was okay. Let's dive in, shall we?

First, we only had about 10 minutes to sign in, test sound, and generally set up beforehand. Luckily, my coworker is brilliant at computers so it wasn't a huge problem. Unfortunately, that is usually my time to set up the classroom and not a webcam. This came into play later when I had to skip through 56 tracks on the CD in the middle of the lesson.

Second, I didn't really get the chance to meet the guy watching. I mean we had talked on the phone once before, but it was a pretty awkward back-and-forth "Can you hear me?" "Yes" "Okay... uh well I guess I'll start now if that's okay?" No biggie though. Awkward is something that you have to get used to when it is a part of your personality.

I was able to minimize the screen that would show the livestream of me and of the other office, but unfortunately could not stop the sound from the other side as his microphone was still on. Most of the time it wasn't so bad. I would just find myself pausing in between my sentences to hear the echo of my voice stop talking before I continued to my next sentence. There was also quite a bit of background noise at one point which was frustrating.

I also had to look as professional as possible which meant full jacket, pants, long-sleeved shirt. The office may be air conditioned, but that isn't a comfortable outfit unless it's actually cold out. The message I'm trying to get across is that I got nice and sweaty in a room that was approximately 26 degrees Celsius.

All that aside, it was good to hear feedback on my teaching methods. It really wasn't as bad as I make it out to be, it is just mostly unfortunate that it had to be conducted from webcam instead of someone actually sitting in on the lesson. I guess that's what you get for living in the middle of nowhere.