“Can you teach an in-person studio class, First Nations Art and Technology for us this semester?” When the Associate Dean asked me, she had been looking for someone local for months with no luck…but I had moved over 600 kms away from this school where I’d been teaching art for over 15 years! I said, “Yes, I can if I have a Lab Tech in the classroom to be my hands and eyes.” So, I became the big talking head on the screen at the front of the class each week. It’s interesting meeting with students as they come up to the screen and look at my larger-than-life face rather than into the camera. I see them on my video feed, talking off to the left rather than at me. They email me photos of what they are working on using their phone camera and I can view it almost instantly. We discuss the work and they carry on. There is a virtual classroom space as well where they can see lecture slides and hand in their work digitally. In spite of my confidence that I could do this, I was pretty nervous about all the logistics, the stability of the internet service (I have Skynet), the ability to keep student’s attention and whether or not they would be able to clearly see the demonstrations I was doing in my own studio here. It seems that I need not have worried as I have a proficient Lab Tech and great students and that’s what makes this work!
