The Lite lead-in video, a short news item (Video Calls Making you Feel Exhausted? It Could be “Zoom Fatigue”) introduces the work of Julia Sklar, who writes for National Geographic. Many of the contributors to this magazine, and no doubt many of our readers, are talking about how tiring it is to work and teach online. In her article, Sklar tells us why, regardless of what platform we use, virtual interactions can be very tough on the brain. One explanation is that we have to sit at attention with our eyes trained on the camera, trying not to let our eyes wander to look at all the other faces staring out at us from the screen gallery.
Author: Brain Admin
Changing Behaviors
My Facebook feed is full of stories from teachers who are experiencing fatigue they attribute to long sessions in front of the computer. Covid-19 has upended many people’s way of living and daily routines, including my own. So, what is so tiring about this new way of living for teachers and the students we teach?
Online Teaching Tips (Collected from Think Tank Readers, May 2020)
Editors: We asked our readers to give us some online teaching tips and, in a couple days, we were deluged. We’ll show you a few staff picks, some favorites excluded, but you can see the full, X-rated version here.
Emergency Remote Teaching: An Educational and Emotional Shift
If you are reading this article, chances are you are one among many who are teaching or learning online this year. For some of you, embarking on a journey into online education will be a new experience; for all of you, it will be the first time to do so under the extraordinary conditions that arise when the education system is upended by a global pandemic. Teachers and students have been thrown into a period of disruption. Courses designed for classrooms have hurriedly been adapted for online delivery in an attempt to keep education accessible in a time when we need to enforce strict physical distancing measures. Therefore, what we are dealing with now is not “online education” in the traditional sense, but “emergency remote teaching.”
The Need to Socialize while Social Isolating: Group Surfing on Virtual Waves
(Ed. note: This starts as a discussion about online teaching between Curtis and Tim, but ends up like a Zoom meeting on paper…well, virtual paper. Jon Kabat-Zinn was right: “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”)
How to Get the Most out of Zoom Classroom Sessions
We have a lot to be thankful for regarding the technology that allows us to meet online, especially during a pandemic such as the one we are currently experiencing. Even before the current crisis, online meetings had brought people from all fields and continents together, enabling human connections to flourish by linking workrooms, meeting rooms, classrooms, and living rooms. These days, chatting, singing, and sharing in other ways by using a video platform can alleviate the sense of isolation that lockdown has brought to so many.
Call for Contributions: Ideas & Articles
Call for Contributions: Ideas & Articles By: Think Tank Staff Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on linkedin Become a Think Tank star! Here are some of the future
Overnight Improvement in Conversational Rhythm: Taking the Gloves off!
(An earlier version of this story appeared on the HICPR blog.)
The great Arthur Lessac, in what became known as the “Lessac method,” captured what I think is the quintessential notion in truly embodied language teaching: Train the body first! Haptic Pronunciation Teaching is based on that idea: First teach learners a gesture or set of gestures that in some “visceral” or metaphorical way mimic a set of sounds—THEN attach the sounds to the gestures.
Forest Bathing – Shinrin-Yoku: Teaching about Stress Resilience & Immunity during COVID-19
I first learnt about Forest Bathing a year ago, just before visiting Japan as a faculty exchange for Capilano University in North Vancouver, Canada. I was surprised to learn that Shinrin-Yoku originated from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture in the 1980s (Longhurst & Takemasa, 2018), not from a country like Canada known for its lush forests, vast oceans, and majestic mountains. But after I learnt more about their hectic lifestyle, it made perfect sense that the Japanese people needed to learn the art of relaxation through visiting forests far away from the stresses of a typical urban life.
Sleep, Exercise, and Peak Performance in the University
Air, food, water, and sleep. These are the four basic needs of the human body. University students—and their teachers—usually do fine on the first three, but the last tends to be a problem. We know the physiological importance of sleep from a rich diversity of research studies. In biology, for instance, a team led by University of Chicago scientist Allan Rechtschaffen found that “all rats subjected to unrelenting total sleep deprivation died, usually after 2–3 weeks” (as cited in Gonzales and Gadye, 2015).