 Hello, welcome Linda here from ITTT back this week with another live session. This time, we're going to talk about five tips and tricks for online English lessons. You can also use these tips for other kinds of lessons. It doesn't only have to be English, this applies to other languages or anything else that you teach online as well. Online teaching has become super popular in recent months, years especially due to the pandemic but also before online teaching was already a thing but definitely the pandemic has kind of catapulted it to another level for sure. I also started teaching online because of the pandemic because I had the kind of in-person classes students that I had stopped due to the pandemic and then I was like you know what let me just try out online teaching I had never really been into it before the pandemic actually but then because of this boom so to speak and because everybody was doing it and because it's kind of easy to get into I also started teaching English online. I still do to this day and it's been really fun and exciting and today I'm just going to share five tips and tricks with you that I have kind of learned and used during this time that I have been teaching online and I also want to point out that I know many of you are teaching English online as well or also in the classroom so feel free to kind of add your own experience to today's live session as well in the comments. We already have somebody here watching, Brahim, hey how are you doing? Thanks for being here today and yeah everybody else who's watching where are you watching from today? Where are you watching from? What time is it there? How are you doing? Let me know guys. I am still in South Korea this week as well. It is 10.30 in the morning on Friday, yay I'm super excited it's Friday. One of my friends is going to come over this weekend and we're going to have hopefully a fun weekend. I'm super excited about that but first we got to get down to business right. We got to do the live and talk about these things today. Hello Faheem how are you doing? Good to see you, hi, Neji in Houston, hi how are you doing? 8.30 p.m. in Houston, Texas, awesome, Talia 9.34 p.m. over here, oh watching from Trinidad and Tobago, awesome, very cool. Faheem is watching from Pakistan and the time is 6.34 a.m., wow, very early where you are, awesome. Then we have Umair Azad, I am from Azad Kashmir Pakistan, 6.34 a.m. as well, wow, nice. And Taiwan 9.35, cool, alright, how are you doing? I'm doing great, how are you doing? So we have a pretty good mixed group here, we have Trinidad and Tobago, we have Texas with Pakistan, we have Taiwan, we have South Korea here, very, very mixed and all over the world, very international, awesome, I love it. Juliana with Illinois here, the weather is like summer, oh my gosh and last week it was like a winter storm where you were, that's crazy. Okay, we have LaTurk here, watching from the Philippines, 9.35 a.m., nice topic for today, it's nice to see you again, it's nice to see you again as well, thank you so much for joining and yeah, I hope today's topic will be interesting and we all learn a thing or two, I'm also hoping to learn a thing or two from you guys, because like I said, I know that many of you are teaching online and I'm sure that you know most of these tips and tricks, probably some of you who are teaching already, maybe you know one or two and you can also add some other tips and tricks that you like to use in your online digital classroom, that'd be really, really great as well. Yeah, alright, before we jump in as always I want to point out that we do have a 30% off opportunity, right? We have 30% off, so let me show you that link real quick, 30% off any Teflor TESOL course from ITTT today, what you can do is scan this QR code with your phone, then you fill out the application that you see and you'll get 30% off, if that doesn't work for you, no problem, you can use the discount link that I'm going to share right now in the comment box. It should appear now, it looks like this, it ends with Facebook Live minus Linda, if you're listening to this as a podcast, the link will be in the description, you also get 30% off that way and yeah, you just click on this link, copy paste the link, fill out the application and you'll see 30% off your Teflor course, if you're not yet certified or if you want to take the next step, get sort of next level certification or an additional specialized Teflor TESOL course, go right ahead, this will be a great incentive, 30% off it's a lot, we only share these during our live sessions, then we have up Delilah from Morocco, I hope I didn't butcher your name, I'm very sorry, up Delilah, very nice name, I like that sounds very pretty, from Morocco, how are you doing, how are you doing Morocco, what time is it in Morocco right now, awesome, also please don't forget to like and subscribe, you're already here whether you're watching on YouTube or you're watching on Facebook, if you haven't liked the Facebook page yet, you haven't subscribed to Instagram, no Instagram as well, but YouTube yet, please do so, we always share a lot of exciting content, useful content especially on our Facebook page, teaching tips, also job offers or anything, anything under the sun related to teaching Teflor TESOL, you'll find it there, so it'll save you time when you plan your classes, etc. So yeah, good, first what I have for you, the first kind of question, and let me just introduce myself because I think we have a couple of new people watching today, so let's do this first, my name, my name is Linda, I am a travel writer and content creator under the name Linda goes East, East because I've always really been interested in Asia, and I've lived in China and South Korea and I've traveled all around Asia, as well, super interested in that, so if you're interested in learning more about Asia, travel, living in Asia, those kinds of things, head to lindegoseast.com or also on Instagram, I'm very active over there, I know some of you have already added me there and sent me messages over there, really appreciate that, go ahead and check that out as well, at Linda goes East, originally, I'm from Germany and the US, I have a German mother and an American father, and yeah, I'm based in South Korea, I've been here for almost seven years, and I'm also, this is sort of the other side of what I do, a Teflon TESOL marketing professional for ITTT, so I started out as a teacher myself, I'm still teaching now, but I also do Teflon TESOL marketing for ITTT, which stands for International Teflon and TESOL Training, and you can find ITTT on the web at TeflonCourse.net, and yeah, what is ITTT? ITTT is a leading Teflon and TESOL course provider, we have a wide variety of different courses, and we operate worldwide, so we have online courses, in-class courses, combined courses, you can take them all over the world, and you can get certified to teach English professionally around the world, or also online, and that's kind of what we're going to talk about today, the online side of things, right? Okay, first what I wanted to know from you guys, we're going to do this first, so I want to know, and that's kind of this one, what platform have you used for online lessons? So this could be like you teaching, or also you as a student, so what platform have you used for online lessons? And this is a poll, I'm going to ask everybody to vote, so you can either go to menti.com and then use the code up here, or I'm also going to share the link with you, so you can easily access that and vote, and you can vote for multiple ones, the ones that you have used. So let's have a look, so, all right, so head here, menti.com, I want everybody to participate, click on this link, and then vote for the platform that you have used for online lessons. So this could be you as a teacher, or it could be you as a student, which ones have you used? So a couple of different options here, a couple of different options, we have Zoom, Skype, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, or other, so if you have used a different one other than that. All right, we have votes coming in, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Zoom to people, great, okay. Please vote, I'm going to vote too, which ones can I vote too? I'm not sure actually, I think I need to use the other link, hold on, I'm going to vote too, if I can, all right, okay, here we go, I'm voting, okay, awesome, lots of votes coming in, none for Google Classroom so far, okay, that's interesting, Zoom, three people, Skype, two people, Microsoft Teams, one and one other, and you can actually vote for different ones, and other, please let me know in the comments, which other platform did you use? The other, which one did you use? We have five people who voted already, so it's weighed a little bit longer so that everybody can get a vote in, but if you picked other, please in the comment, let me know which platform that was, which other platform, or platforms, going to give you a couple more seconds. So if you picked other in the comment section, please let me know which other platform you used if you want to, that'd be awesome, but yeah, it looks like most people have used Zoom or Skype, so those are definitely like the big ones, and then other could be that some teaching platforms or learning platforms, they have their internal teaching platform, right? I know that's the case with Preply, and I think Italki as well, you actually don't have to go through a third-party platform like Zoom or Skype, they have it integrated in their platform, so that's also possible. All right, very good, we might, if some people are joining later, we can pull this up again and ask them to vote as well, but for now, Zoom, definitely the winner, not surprised. Are you surprised? I'm not surprised, because Zoom really, I actually found some statistics about Zoom, I mean, really since the pandemic, Zoom, their usage has, I think, I'm not sure, but like five is five times more, at least I believe, so they were doing really, really well, and they're really the winners out of this whole thing, I think, so for sure. All right. Good. Yeah, there are actually a lot of different platforms out there, right? Many different platforms we can use for teaching English online, and like we already voted, Zoom, Skype, all of these, Messenger, Snapchat, as you can see here in the picture, many different options, and if you're curious about the different digital platforms for remote teaching and learning, you can actually read this article here by Dr. Sidir Gavane, it's a good article mentioning all the pros and cons of all the different platforms, but today what we want to look at more in depth is definitely Zoom, because it is the top one, but you can apply most of these tips and tricks to other teaching platforms as well. Some are more Zoom-specific, but you can apply these to pretty much all the other ones. Okay, Juliana also used varsity tutors, super prof, and take lessons, so I believe that those have integrated online classrooms, so they don't use third party options like Skype or Zoom, so you would actually teach directly on the platform, is that correct? Probably. Awesome. Okay, good. So yeah, if you're interested in this article, you can read it from eduvoice.in, you can Google that, top digital platforms of remote teaching and learning, and you can have a look at this post, but I just really like the image and the different platforms that are popular for e-learning and teaching. So let's have a look at Zoom, because we're going to focus on Zoom, so why is Zoom so good and so popular? I'm sure most of you guys know this, but just a couple of the five best benefits for Zoom or what Zoom is. So Zoom, if you didn't know, is a third party software for teaching, right? Not only teaching, actually, but also online conferencing, online meetings, right? A lot of companies use it, so not only teachers, but it's just a really, really great way for online teaching as well. It is very user, it has a very user-friendly interface, very easy to use. That's why it's super popular. There are also hundreds of amazing features for teachers that we can use to make our classroom, our online classroom, super interactive and fun, which is actually something that is probably easier to do, doing easier to be done on Zoom versus in the real world. You can play exciting games, you can do polls, you can show videos, all of these things, all in one thing to all of your students. So that's pretty cool. With Zoom, there are free and paid subscription plans. So depending on how many students you're teaching, I only use the free version, actually, because I only have one-on-one students. But if you're teaching a bigger group, I think it's more than one hour, then you need to actually have a paid subscription plan. But what's also really, really great, and I think a lot of people don't know this, they actually have free Zoom support courses where you can learn to use the platform. And I'm going to show you more about this later in later slides, but it's very interesting. Because even though the interface is user-friendly, they have so many features and options and add-ons and apps and stuff. It can be a little bit confusing. So I'm going to show you that in a minute. I see that a couple of people have joined now more. So maybe let's have another look at our mentee. So if you guys could go to this link and then leave a vote, that'd be great. Which platform you have used for online lessons. Anybody that just joined now, we can do another round and give it a couple of seconds to collect more votes. That'd be really interesting. But I think really Zoom is the clear winner among all of these platforms. But if you could just take a moment and maybe leave another vote, that'd be great. For those of you who haven't voted yet. And then we'll move on to the next part of the presentation or the live. So take your time. You can go over there. Meanwhile, I'll explain a little bit for people who don't know how to set up a virtual classroom with Zoom, right? Maybe this is your first time actually working with Zoom. And you haven't actually used that that much. So you don't really know what you're doing. So with Zoom, very easy. You can kind of teach in just six easy steps, right? First step would be to use sign up. You need to actually make an account. And it's very recommended that you use a professional email because your students will actually see that email address. So you want to avoid any weird email address names. Keep it professional. That's just a recommendation because students will see that email address. So you want to use a professional one. Then once you have signed up, you have also downloaded it. You can move on to scheduling. So you can click on the Schedule a Meeting button. And you can actually schedule regular meetings or just one-time events as well. So this would be the point number three where you need to pick a topic. So it's recommended to use generic topics for your regular recurring lessons. So it'd be like Miss Linda's English class, for example. Very generic. You can use this for regular classes if you have your student the same time, every week, same day. This would be a good topic title. And you want to go for a more specific topic title for one-time events, right? If it's just a one-time thing, then it could be like present, simple versus present continuous, right? And you only talk about this one topic on this day and then that's it. So it's just a little recommendation about the topic. Then you'd also fill out your details. So you'd fill out the date, the time, the duration as well, how long will the session be, the time zone that you're in. And you can pick a passcode and you can also choose the waiting room option. So waiting room is actually a great thing for Zoom or on Zoom. When you set up your virtual classroom, you can add the waiting room option, which means that you have to let your student then in. So it means only you can choose who enters the classroom and no other people can actually enter with this waiting room feature. Also, if you're not quite ready yet, you can make sure you're all set up and ready, and then you can let your students in, just like in the real world. Sort of, you have power of when they enter the classroom, right? The fifth point would be to invite. So once you fill out all the details, when the class is and the topic, etc., then you need to invite your students so that they know how they can join. So you would just share the Zoom invitation link with your students, super easy with their email address, or you can just share it via a link. And then number six, on the day of your class, you just log in to Zoom, you start the meeting, and then you keep an eye on the waiting room whenever your people are joining and you admit them to your online classroom and then you start teaching. So I think this is pretty straightforward. I'm sure most of you have used this before, just wanted to give it a quick walkthrough for people who are not so familiar with Zoom. I also haven't been familiar with Zoom for that long. Actually, I was kind of late to the party when it comes to Zoom. So, yeah, so I would have appreciated someone actually explaining this to me when I had no clue about Zoom. So anyway, let's see if anybody voted. Any more votes here looks the same. All right, cool. So yeah, still Zoom is the most popular. Then we are moving on with Zoom and the tips here. So this was just the intro, how it all works, and why Zoom is a good option. Obviously, again, these five tips and tricks you can also use for other platforms, but some of the tips are specifically just for Zoom, some features, but most of these you can really use for all the other teaching platforms and online teaching in general as well. All right, and please feel free. I know that some of you have experience with online teaching, feel free to add your comments in the comments section, make any additions to what I'm saying that'd be really great. Hi, Philip from the UK. Hi, everyone. And Linda goes east. Hi, Philip. How are you doing? All right, so let's get into it. First tip and trick that I have for you. It's really important. And I've actually learned that the hard way, you need to set up properly and prepare for the worst, OK? So what do I mean by that? Setting up properly and preparing for the worst. I hope this is not too small and everybody can see this, but I'm also going to say it so anyway. Especially when it's your first time teaching, you're new to online teaching, be early in general. Be at your desk maybe 15 minutes beforehand, and then once you have a routine, you can shorten it maybe down to 10 minutes. But you should always prepare also for the worst. But that's the next section. Anyway, make sure once you're at your desk to close all the tabs and apps on your computer that you won't be using, won't be needing, because those actually might slow down the device. And I know on my computer actually not only does it slow down, but it also, the more tabs I have open, the louder my computer or laptop noise actually gets, because it's working harder. And sometimes that can be distracting and my students can actually hear this computer noise. So you want to avoid that. Close all the tabs and you don't need. I also always close my email, because when I get an email, it makes a sound. So you want to avoid that, any distractions. I turn off also my like phase time and anything that I don't use, just turn it off. And then also at the same time have any tabs or documents open and ready for the lesson that you will need, right? So if you use slides, PowerPoint, YouTube videos, your virtual classroom, all of those things, have them ready and open before the lesson, right? I think that makes sense. Then prepare for the worst. So what do I mean by that? It happened to me before, actually also before, alive like this, the setup for a live session, like this is very similar to those points as well. Actually, and sometimes it happened, I turned on my computer and it's doing updates, right? And if you show up late, you might not make it on time because your computer is doing updates. So make sure there are no pending updates. Make sure that your webcam works and your microphone works. So actually right before this live session because I don't know, I was doing an update or I was restarting my computer or something, I actually had to give permission again for screen sharing and then I had to close all of my Google Chrome. I already had it all set up but because the screen sharing didn't work, I had to give permission again and I had to close everything on my Google Chrome, on my browser, so that was annoying. But you know, sometimes these things you just can't really control obviously but that's why you need to show up earlier as well. So you have enough time to fix these things. So yeah, back to webcam and microphone, make sure that they work and also make sure if you're, I normally actually teach without a headphone, without headphones or a headset because the quality is good but I had this case before where there was background noise and then like in the middle of the class and I actually had to then use headphones so be sure that you have the nearby to use that would be useful. And then if for example, your computer suddenly something's going wrong, do you have an alternative device that you can use? So I have two computers but you could also have a tablet, anything else that you could use should something happen to your computer, that would be great. And then also make sure that you know how you can get in touch with your student in case of a no show or in case something happens, right? How can you get in touch with your student? So you should maybe if it's not through a platform, if through a teaching platform where you can contact them through the platform, if it's not like that, make sure you know their phone number or like you know their like instant messaging number, you can contact them if something happens. You know, sometimes it's unpredictable, there's power outage or God knows what and you can't make the lesson, just make sure you can get in touch with your student and vice versa as well. Good, so those are the most important things for tip number one. So set up properly and prepare for the worst. And I think I actually have this, yeah, I created like sort of a desk, the ideal desk. And this could look differently on your end, but it kind of looks like this on my end. So, oh, I didn't actually talk about the light. So this thing here on the right, if you're wondering what that is, that is a ring light. Actually, and I am using a ring light here as well. Yeah, like this. Just for good lighting, you never know, you know how the light might be. And you just wanna make sure that the light is as good as it gets when it comes to online teaching so that the students can see you properly. That's one thing. Then here we have the headset ready. You have your webcam that is turned on and working. You also want to be early, which is here the clock. Laptop all turned on, your phone on mute. That's what I always look for as well, the worst thing that could happen is you get a call or I don't know, something and it's distracting. Also have like a pen and paper nearby. Sometimes you just have to take notes, so that's useful. And just know also your plan, your lesson plan. You have a structure. I usually have my lesson plan in my notes on the phone and then I can check them, but you can also write this on a piece of paper. I mean, whatever works for you, that's just me personally. And also very important, what I always like to have nearby is a glass of water or some other drink. Now it's coffee, but because when we're teaching, we talk a lot and also during this live session, for example, it's very similar actually, we talk a lot and there's nothing worse than if you have suddenly like a coughing situation and you're in the middle of class and you don't wanna leave, you don't wanna just abandon your student, you can just take a sip of water. So always have something to drink nearby, it's my personal tip. There's nothing worse than just suddenly have to cough like crazy. So yeah, this is just a setup that I usually use. This could look differently on your end. So I'm curious actually for everyone who is already teaching, does your setup look similar to this or totally different? I'm curious. Juliana says, I only opened the teaching platform before my lesson. Sometimes I will turn on my laptop 30 minutes beforehand, I usually put every note on my tablet. Yeah, so that works as well, right? Some people like to write something down on paper, like me, I am kind of old school, I like writing down stuff, so I like to have a piece of paper nearby. But on your tablet works as well, sure. Or also on a Google Doc or whatever you're using. All right, Neji says minus the lights. Yeah, I mean, the lights are just an extra thing. It's not necessary, but especially like when I teach at night, when it's already dark, then it's kind of annoying and it's just good to have the lights. But you don't necessarily need to have the lights. That's just like a bonus, bonus points for lights. Yeah, okay, so it looks similar, minus the lights. Okay, I'm glad, good. All right, anything else that you think we should add to this setup? I wonder, is there anything that you're like, yeah, I always have this, I need this, but it's missing here on my setup? Let me know, maybe. Maybe there's something I'm forgetting, I feel like. Yeah, I think I'm good. It's like all you need. I mean, you also wanna keep your space kind of clean. You don't wanna have too many unnecessary things either. So yeah, I think that's pretty much it. If there's anything I forget that you think is absolutely necessary to happen in your setup, let me know. If not, we are moving on, we can always come back to it. All right, so this was tip number one. Tip number two, lesson planning and extra step. So with lesson planning for regular in-class lessons, so what this means is you basically need to think about your teaching aids, right? When you're teaching in-person in a classroom, you will likely have a blackboard, a whiteboard or a projector, you have all your tools, right? You can just come in, have your pens and you can start teaching. But these are all things that you don't have when you're teaching online because you're working remotely. So you need to use, you need to be sure to have what you're using for whiteboard, for example. You can't just turn on your Skype and teach like this, right, usually that's not enough. You need to have some kind of virtual board or something where you can show images and text and stuff like that. So you need to know what you wanna use for that. Also, not only that, but your room in general, your teaching environments, kind of this, what we were just talking about, this situation, your setup, your room, what your students can see behind you, just be sure that it looks professional, it looks clean and you can always also use a virtual background, especially like using virtual backgrounds for younger students that I teach, I always kind of change, you know, it could be like in a fairy forest or like in a, you know, it looks like in a fairy tale. Every time I can change the virtual background and they love it, you know, it looks like we're like in this magical world together. So they really like that. And again, this is about the light, make sure the lighting in your room is good or you get an additional light source, like for example, this ring light here, it doesn't even have to be a professional ring light. It can be just a lamp that you put in front of you, right? Or you position your desk right in front of the window. That's what I have. So my window is right here. So I'm getting this natural light on me. Of course, this doesn't work for everybody, but you can try. Or if all else fails, you just get this ring light. Those are very cheap or you just set up any other lamp that works as well. Good. So those are my tips for the extra step lesson planning. Oh yeah, here. And this is like for your virtual teaching aids, what you can use. So we already spoke a little bit about Zoom. Zoom just recently introduced a whole plethora of different apps that you can actually add to your classroom. So you can use those. I also really like using Google Docs, especially for student homework. And we can correct and look at the homework together. And I obviously share my screen then via Zoom. You can share your screen so you can both look at the same thing. Alejandro, hi from Central America. How are you doing? Yeah, you can also use Skype, screen sharing. I really like Myro. This is what I use and I'm gonna show you in a little bit how that works. But my colleague Lisa, she already did a live session about all about Myro actually in showing you how Myro works. And that's actually how I learned about it. And I thought, wow, this is so great. There's so many possibilities for creating an online classroom with Myro. And so I've been using that ever since. You could also use something like Google Slides for presentations or Ellie or Eli or I'm not sure how to say that, but formerly it was called ESL Library. I just recently stumbled upon this one, which I also think is really great. It is not free however, but it is basically a all-in-one ESL teaching library with different courses that you can do with your students. So you don't have to worry about any lesson planning. All the lessons are already there that you can use for many different topics, continuously updated as well. And even you can send homework through that. So really cool platform. I also wanna look more into that, which looks really, really cool for ESL specifically. And then we also have Kahoot, which is a fun game that a lot of teachers use. Many of you might be familiar. If you don't know what Kahoot is, you can just Google it real quick. It's a really fun game. It only makes kind of sense when you have a lot of students, so not so much for one-on-one. But yeah, those are some really great virtual teaching aids. If you know one that you always use that you think is amazing that is not here, let me know. I'm always curious about what else I can do with my students in my virtual classroom and I'm eager to learn more new different teaching aids because there's so many out there as well. It's hard to pick just one. So if there's one that you love that you think is great, share it with us in the comments please. That'd be great. All right, we have Abdullah here watching from Sudan from Nyala. Wow, now it is four. Is it 4 a.m.? It's really awesome watching. Thank you, good to have you here. How are you doing? Okay, good. And this is my row, what I really like to use. It's a whole virtual classroom situation. You can, you have this whole board available. You can insert videos and images and text and you can create like whole games in there. It's very interactive. And this is my personal favorite for virtual classroom or board. That's what I really like to use. So there you have it. So this is number two, all about lesson planning, teaching aids because this is totally different than teaching in person. It's an extra step to think about not just because or not, it's not that you, in the real world you just walk in the classroom, you have your board right there and your pens and you can start teaching with online teaching. This is a bit of an extra step. You need to think about what to use for board and classroom and virtual classroom basically. All right, good. Moving on to the third point here and that is specifically for Zoom now. So this is one that only works for Zoom as much as I know that I'm aware. And that is called breakout rooms. So what are breakout rooms? And this is actually only useful when you're teaching a group of students, right? So in ESL teaching or just teaching in general, pair and group work is just very efficient and encourages learning is really, really great for any kind of classroom. And so a lot of times now when we teach online we're kind of missing out on this pair work and group work kind of experience. And this is why Zoom came up with breakout rooms. So what you can do is use the breakout room feature on Zoom which means you can assign students to different rooms to practice English or do different group work. So this is super, super useful and some people don't actually know about this feature so I wanted to mention it here. So you can group up your students, send them to a different room but you as a teacher you can actually pop in and out of these rooms and listen and check on them and see what they're doing. And then you can all bring them back together into one big room for the whole class and you can share and they can share their group work. So just wanted to mention this because we all really love pairing group work and I think a lot of teachers just think well with online teaching we can't do that but you actually can with Zoom's breakout rooms. All right, let's talk here, great virtual teaching aids. Thank you for sharing. I'm interested to know more about Eli ESL library. Yeah, Google it and you can have a look around. I think it's great. I have not used it that much because you actually need to pay for it. So I am curious to check it out more so I think it looks amazing. I think they have a trial so go ahead and check them out. And yeah, here with the picture this is just how it works with the breakout room so you can see here breakout room one, breakout room two and you can pop in and out and you can group the students how you want. So great feature for group and pair work in the virtual classroom. Let me take a sip of coffee. Has anyone here used breakout rooms before? Maybe raise your hand. Give me the raising hand emoji if you have. I have actually not used this feature because I am only teaching one-on-one but I think this is so great for bigger classes. So super awesome feature and I just wanted to let you guys know that this feature exists because I did not know that about Zoom. Okay, then we have number four, very important tip when teaching online, check for technical difficulties. There's actually two ways you can do this. So one would be the check before your lesson actually starts and then the check during your lesson. So before the lesson to just kind of minimize technical difficulties, any kind of trouble, it is recommended that you just send when you're inviting your students to have a class with you via Zoom or any other platform for that matter. Add a link to a quick video, a YouTube video for Zoom or for whatever platform you're using with the Zoom link in your email. This will just help your students who have not used Zoom before to be more confident in joining your virtual class. So that they know how it works and they don't have any difficulty joining, right? That would be a great idea to do. And then also during the lesson, so at the start of each class, just make sure that your students are settled and they know how to use the online tool, they know how to use Zoom, how to mute and unmute and how to annotate and how to text, write, type and stuff. So you can use that. And before the lesson begins, ask the students if everyone can hear you, if everyone can see you. A great way of doing that is by using the raise your hand tool. So this is another cool feature on Zoom. Instead of having just a messy situation of everybody just yelling, and yeah, I can hear you, I can see you, I can't, I can't, especially the youngest students, just have them use the raising your hand tool. This, taking these precautions just will ensure a smoother learning experience and a good start, right? So this is how you use the raising hand feature if you didn't know. So this is Zoom. And here you would see your students in the middle here and down here you have the reactions button. So you can actually click on that. And you can also use emojis, but raise hand is the most important one. So you can click on that and use this feature for checking for any difficulties, technical issues. And if somebody has an issue, kind of try and walk them through how to solve it. So yeah, cause this is usually valuable time at the beginning of the class. I know a lot of teachers are struggling with that, especially with younger students who are not actually any age of student, right? If they're not super familiar with Zoom or with online teaching, these technical difficulties, they can just cost a lot of valuable time. So you wanna minimize this as much as possible by sending them a quick link to how Zoom works before the lessons, they can watch it, they can understand how they need to, how they can turn on the webcam, how they can turn on the sound, et cetera, how to use the raise hand features and so on. And then during the class ask them, can you see me? Can you hear me? Please use the raise hand feature. And then you're good to go. You're all set up. All right, Juliana here says, I don't use it but my professors use it, the grouping, the breakout rooms, okay, cool. My university uses Adobe Connect and Ring Central meetings, okay. Oh, I have not heard about those either. I know Adobe, I use Photoshop and Lightroom and stuff but I didn't know about Adobe Connect. So that's cool, okay. Nice, good. So this is, which tip was it? Was it already number four? Yeah, so now we're five. So this I think is one of the most important ones if you use Zoom regularly, right? So take advantage of Zoom support. And this is also something I did not know, but Zoom actually, so it's important that you learn how to use Zoom or the other online tool that you work with, right? Just so that you actually know what you can do with it, right? All the different features, the breakout rooms, the mute tool and sharing screen and all the little polls and everything. Just know what it can do and then you can make your lessons even more engaging and fun, right? But it also takes time to learn about those things. So Zoom has a lot of really cool features and that's why it's so popular both with teachers and with students because it's so interactive and fun. Zoom also knows that all these features, they might be a little overwhelming to some users. I mean, you turn on Zoom and now they have added all these apps and there's so many different apps and you just don't know what to choose and how it works and everything. So that's why they actually have Zoom support courses. So these are completely free for you to use and watch and they are broken down into different courses and modules about different topics on how to use Zoom and all the different features that Zoom has. So that's really, really cool. So even if you know the basics, you can just skip through the sections that will be beneficial for you and you can check them out here. This is the link. You can also just Google Zoom support courses and it will lead you to the page but here's an example of what they have. These are like the basic ones before the meeting, getting started with Zoom, getting started with Zoom phone, et cetera, getting started with Zoom rooms, Zoom webinar, et cetera. Those are like the basic things but what they also have, what's interesting for us is the lessons focused on Zoom education. So here they have lessons or courses on how to engage your students with Zoom, all the features that you can use on how to engage your students. Getting started with Zoom for education, Zoom in, focus mode, what is focus mode? You can learn about that. Collecting classroom data, starting class on Zoom. All of these are super cool, super good to know for online teachers if you're using Zoom. So I highly recommend getting into this and watching some of these, they're all free. So I'm also going to watch these because I feel like I don't even know, like I feel like Zoom is an iceberg and I only know the tip but there's so many other things that you can do with Zoom and I'm all about making my classes more interactive and more fun because it's also fun for me and obviously I want it to be fun for my students. So I think that's really important. Okay, here's a comment I want to read out from Mathir. Ma'am, I am from Bangladesh and fasting as Ramadan is going on, local time is 8.15 a.m. Thanks a lot for the wonderful presentation on a wonderful topic. Thank you so much and thanks for joining during your Ramadan holiday. That's awesome. Happy Ramadan. All right, good. So let's do a quick recap of all the five tips and tricks that I've mentioned today. The first one was to set up properly and prepare for the worst. So make sure, keep that image of my set up desk in your mind. Have, always have a drink nearby in case you have throat problems. I think that's the most important thing. Make sure your webcam works. You don't have any updates on your computer that need to be installed, mute your phone, all of those things, right? Then we have lesson planning. Make sure you know which online tool you want to use. Which online classroom do you want to use? Google Docs. Do you want to use MyRow online classroom? You need to figure that out before your class, right? Use the breakout rooms, especially for bigger classes when you're teaching more than one student. That's really helpful for pair work, for group work, to keep that real life classroom feeling going. Then we have check for technical difficulties. So send your students if they've never worked with Zoom before or whatever platform you choose for teaching. Send them like a quick YouTube link to watch a video, how it works. And then at the beginning of your class, check if they can see you, if they can hear you clearly, if they can see your screen share, screen sharing, et cetera. Make sure that that all works. So you have a smooth class. You don't have to waste so much time on that. And then take advantage of Zoom support. So this is specifically for Zoom. I think most of us use Zoom. So yeah, they have a lot of free courses like I just showed you guys, especially also for teachers, specifically for teachers. So you can learn how to engage your students with Zoom, what awesome features you can use to make your classes more exciting and engaging. So those are my five tips and tricks for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed that. And if there's anything that I forgot, any tip or trick that you would like to add, please let me know right now in the comment box. And then we can add it as our sixth tip and trick here today. I'm sure there's so many more that I didn't even cover. And I know many of you guys are already super amazing online teachers. And I would just really like to know if there's something that I forgot, then you were like, hey, we should really, really also mention this one. That's an important tip or a good trick. Let me know. Let me know. While I'm waiting for you guys' comments, if there's a comment coming through, I just wanna mention here real quick how you can find ITTT online. So on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, if you have any questions regarding the topic we talked about today or our courses or anything related to ITTT, Tefal, TESL, whatever, you can email us at courses at tsalminustefal.com at any time and me and my team will get back to you and answer you questions. And yeah, then we are officially in the Q&A part of this live session. Again, I wanna mention 30% off, we still have this opportunity. You can scan this QR code, sign up for the course that you're interested in and get a 30% discount. Or if you cannot scan this QR code, no problem, you can just click on this link down here and fill out the application. Also get your 30% discount. Okay. Good. Then I'm going to make myself a little bit bigger again and if you have any questions about today's topic or anything else related to Tefal, TESL, ITTT, now is your time in the Q&A part of this live session to ask away. I'm still here, I got a couple of more minutes, so feel free to ask. Anything you're interested in, hopefully I'll be able to answer. And yeah, let me know guys. Okay. All right, Juliana says actually Adobe Connect is easier to use than Zoom. Okay, I need to check that out. Adobe Connect, haven't used it before, haven't even heard about it before. So that's cool. Okay. Adobe Connect. I'm going to just put that in my browser right now so I don't forget Adobe Connect. Okay. I haven't even seen this icon before like their logo. Interesting. See, that's why I really enjoy these live sessions because I also learned so much from you guys. I really appreciate it. All right. Well, if there are no other questions about anything else, Tefal, TESOL, ITTT, teaching abroad, teaching online, if you're all happy, then we can come to an end, but I don't want to turn this off too quickly because, oh yeah, here, let's hug. If I would add one more, we have to plan to approach every class with a fun and happy mindset. I love all your tips, Linda, so helpful. Yeah, I think that's such a great tip. Yeah, totally. And I think this also goes for not only online class, right? In class as well. Always have a happy and fun attitude because when you're happy as a teacher, it just really spreads over to your students as well, right? If you smile, they will smile and your class will be that much better. I totally agree. That's a good tip for sure. Thank you so much. That's a good tip for life in general, actually. If you smile at other people that you encounter in your daily life, at the bakery, at the coffee shop, wherever, at the supermarket, when you smile and be friendly, they'll be friendly to you, right? So not only for teaching, you can just keep that in mind keep that in mind in general for daily life. Have a fun and happy mindset and good things will come around to you as well. I agree. Awesome. Okay, well, this was great. Just waiting a couple of seconds if any other comment is coming through. Don't be shy. If you have any questions, feel free to ask away. I will be back next week as well. So don't worry about that. I will be here. If you have any topic suggestions also, let me know what you want me to talk about next week, perhaps I don't know yet. I usually make up my mind on Monday, Tuesday. I started thinking about what I want to talk about on Friday. So if you have any suggestions for me, let me know. Amitara says, thanks a lot for all of your suggestions and tips for online teaching, Linda. Thank you so much for being here and taking time out of your day to spend it with me. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate all of you guys. Coming back week after week, it's so nice to see you all and our Teflon family grow. I appreciate it. I think it's so much fun. All right, well, then maybe it's time to say goodbye then. Juliana says, same here. I love to participate in each of your live sessions. Thank you. I appreciate you coming week after week. It's so nice. Awesome. Okay. Then I think it's time to say goodbye if there are no questions coming through, but as you know, I'll be back next week. So if you have a question, you're thinking about something during the week you can just ask me next week or also if you're watching this, when it's already over this live session and you leave a comment, we'll still get back to you. Don't worry if you think of something later. Abdullah, thanks again. Thank you. Luturg, thank you, Linda. We enjoyed your live session. Have an amazing Friday. Thank you. You too, guys. Have an amazing Friday and an amazing weekend. And then I hope to see you all again next week as well. I'll be here same time, same day. Lakshmi, yes, came late. That's all right. How are you doing? Maybe next week or Lakshmi, you can watch the replay. And if you leave any comments, we'll get back to you as well, okay? Have a nice weekend. Thank you, guys. You too, have a nice weekend and I'll see you again next week, hopefully. All right. Bye, guys. Bye-bye.