For those of you who are teaching art online, I have learned a LOT since I started researching/teaching art online 6 years ago. Let me help spare you the months of grief with some best practices that will work at all levels, on any platform...

You will never achieve a perfect translation from IRL to remote teaching. That's basically saying you want to translate a Pablo Neruda poem (written in Spanish) into Japanese, and get precisely the same results and nuances. Instead of mourning what is lost in translation....

...shift your mindset and take what you can get. This might sound depressing at first, and like we are giving up. Of course we want our students to succeed & absorb 100%. But with remote teaching, the potential to lose students ENTIRELY is very high, in a way it is not IRL...

...would you rather your students learn 50% or 0%? I'll take the 50% if that's all I can get. Remote learning CAN work, but it's a completely different beast than a brick & mortar classroom. Many teachers are being guilted into reinventing the wheel here, but you don't have to!

There is NO shame in using someone else's video. When I see teachers trying to shoot, edit, and upload online art demos, on their own, for every lesson they teach, (with little or no equipment) not only is this unsustainable, but it's not necessary.

I understand the impulse: you want your class to be your voice, your ideas, your demos. That's the way it would be IRL. Perhaps if you had 6 years to troubleshoot this, and a big budget for equipment you could pull it off. But you don't, so here's what I recommend:

CONSOLIDATE & use as few platforms as possible. Eliminating even 1 platform is a big difference. If you use Discord, there's no reason to use Zoom also. Discord has voice channels that are basically Zoom, but inside Discord.

Use platforms for what they designed to do. If you want to put a nail into a piece of wood, you can hit that nail with a rock and eventually, that would work. OR, you could pick up the free hammer next to you and do it in 2 seconds. Zoom is not the answer to everything!

There are major generational gaps with how students and faculty use the internet. I understand if you are used to FB, your first thought is to make a private FB group for your class because it's what you know.

Ask yourself, which is easier: 1) for one person (you) to learn a new platform or 2) to ask a class of 25 students to learn a new platform? Yes, it seems like more work for you, but honestly it's less work than a whole semester of nagging the students to learn a new platform.

Meet the students where they hang out. They know the platforms better than you, and they want to help you! Most students are afraid to correct their teachers with tech, they don't want it to affect their grade. Give them a space online that is made just for tech suggestions.

Video is not always better. People think it is because there are visuals + audio. But, it's surprisingly hard to shoot a video that's not terrible. My daughter showed me a demo from her teacher where 75% of the video was the top of her head. My daughter gave up and turned it off.

Audio matters more than video. People will tolerate with a video that has poor visuals if the audio is good. If the visuals are amazing, but the audio is bad, people will turn it off. If visuals are not necessary, make an audio. (why do you think podcasts are so popular?)

Avoid video editing at all costs. Even the most simple editing with the easiest software is time consuming and not necessary. Many people are shooting video, recording a voice over, and editing it together because they're worried about mistakes. But if you think about it...

...videos like this are nothing like IRL teaching. Live video is the closest you will ever get to IRL and has the highest potential for strong student engagement. Don't stop there though, if you decide to do live video, WATCH another person's live stream. I made the mistake of...

...never watching a live stream as a viewer when I started live demos. I started watching live streams and wow I learned so much about how to make a live stream effective. I observed my own behaviors as a viewer and it totally changed my approach for the better.

Lastly, we HAVE to find the silver linings. Unfortunately this pandemic isn't going to disappear next week and we have to come up with long term solutions. To me the biggest silver lining is we aren't learning things to tie ourselves over until the pandemic is over, instead...

...we are adding powerful tools that will enhance our teaching in the future. I would be surprised if nobody retained any online tools after the pandemic. Despite the stress in the moment, ultimately, we are enriching our capacity as teachers with these tools.