Why Teaching via Zoom is More Beneficial Than You Think

Lyric Kinard (00:02.136)

Hello friends and welcome to Creatives on Camera. I'm Lyric Montgomery-Kinnard and today we're diving into a game-changing way to share your skills, grow your business and connect with students all over the world, teaching live Zoom workshops. And you're probably thinking that teaching a hands-on skill like quilting or sewing or crafting or knitting or weaving or woodworking on Zoom will never be as good as in person.

That's okay, I get it. I used to think that way too. Many people feel that personal interaction in person is crucial for effective learning, especially in hands-on skills. But here's the truth. Teaching live on Zoom allows you to reach students beyond your local area, eliminate travel time, and offer flexible learning options all while building deep connections with your audience. And here's the best part, you don't need fancy tech.

or a big production set up to get started. Just a simple plan, a couple tools and a willingness to show up.

So, whether you're ready.

Lyric Kinard (01:15.872)

So whether you're already teaching and looking to expand online or just starting to explore the idea, I'm here to help you navigate the process and set you up for success. So let's get started. First, I have a question for you. Would you prefer to limit your teaching to those who can attend in person or would you like to explore how online methods of teaching via Zoom can reach and impact a wider audience?

If we stick solely to in-person teaching, we miss out on a larger audience of learners who could benefit from what we have to teach them. What you do, my friends, is bring joy and creativity and good things into the lives of the people you serve. That's what teachers do, right? We serve because we love what we do and we love other people to find the same joy that we do in

the thing we're making, the art, the creations, all the beautiful things that we bring into the world. So in my experience, I have taught for a long time, both in person and online, not as long on Zoom. There was a little bit of a learning curve there, but the thing is it's almost less tech to teach via Zoom than in person. So here's the story.

I teach textiles, I teach crafting, quilting, surface design. One of the things I teach in person for, I've done it four years, is beading on fabric. Tiny little beads. How do people in a classroom see what I'm doing? I used to bring them up six at a time. They would crowd right around me. I would have people stand right over my shoulder.

and I would use the biggest beads possible to teach a technique and then I would send them back to their tables to work and bring up the next crowd. Then I moved to carrying AV equipment with me. So I have a tripod, an overhead camera, a cable, a projector. It needs to have an extension cord and I project the demonstration up on the wall. So now everybody learns at once and I'm able to

Lyric Kinard (03:36.376)

teach more. With Zoom, I can show people, with Zoom, I can show people what I am doing super close up. It is almost like they are sitting on my lap. I can get my camera right down over what I'm doing and everybody can see on their own big screen. And I don't have to carry any tech around.

I'm here, I plug in a cable to my phone as my overhead camera and off we go. Now think of everything else we're going to talk about today as benefits for your students. Here's another huge benefit to taking classes via Zoom, packing and hauling. As a quilt teacher, when somebody takes a quilting class, they are often loading a whole sewing machine.

and a whole stack of fabric and sometimes an iron, cutting tools, all kinds of stuff into their car and into a room. Often they need a giant suitcase or a wagon to get everything they need. When they are learning in their own space, none of that happens. They are right there with the equipment they are used to.

Sometimes their equipment is so nice that there's no way they're gonna take it out of their house. So they bring the crappy sewing machine to the classroom and then it doesn't work and then they get frustrated and then they have a terrible experience in your class. But when they're home, they can change their mind about what color of fabric they're using and just walk over and pick it up off the shelf. And then they're happy with what you're teaching them.

They have access to all their tools, all their supplies right there.

Lyric Kinard (05:33.014)

Also, they're comfy, right? They don't have to dress up. They don't have to go into an unfamiliar environment. They're probably wearing like socks and slippers and pajamas, right? They are learning in their most comfortable space. And when your students are super comfortable, they're more open to learning. That's one barrier down from

thinking it's okay to try this scary new thing. Now, I am also not saying that in-person classes are bad. I love them both. This is apples and oranges. Both of them are never going away. Let's talk again about the way your student sees and hears and learns. When your student is at home looking at you on a screen, they have close-up views.

super close up views. They're not trying to see over somebody else's shoulders or seeing from the back of the room. And think about people with vision issues. They can turn the brightness and contrast up. They can watch you on a big screen if they can cast your Zoom meeting. If they can't hear as well in a classroom, they're struggling even if they're sitting right up next to you at home on Zoom.

They put in earbuds and they can turn it up as loud as they want. What if somebody has mobility issues or health issues so they can't travel out of the house? What if somebody is a primary caregiver? All of those things are barriers to the joy and creativity that you provide when you teach them the beautiful skills to make the beautiful things that you're making.

via Zoom, it's a whole new world of access for people who were not able to come to you before. This isn't just about a broader geographic distance. It's about people who might be right there who want to learn from you, but they can't get out. And let's talk about geographic distance. I taught a Zoom class just a couple of days ago, and I had people from

Lyric Kinard (07:59.598)

coast to coast in the United States, four different time zones, people in Canada, same time zones, right? But also I had somebody there who was living in London. Granted, it was midnight, her time, but she was willing to stay up for it. You can reach such a huge audience of people who need what you have to offer. When you get brave, my friend, and...

learn how to teach via Zoom. So it doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be scary. It can be such an amazing and wonderful experience for your students. And don't we all want to reach a broader range of students? Now let's talk a little bit about the...

the teacher benefits. As I said, I teach textiles. I mostly get hired by quilt guilds and I've traveled all over the world doing this and I love it. I really do. I love being in person. I love traveling to new places. What I absolutely do not love is spending two or three days packing all the supplies, trying to get them into two 50 pound suitcases. I usually travel with two.

49.9 pound suitcases are really heavy carry-on because they never weigh that and an AV bag that fits under my seat with all of my audio visual equipment my projector and that overhead camera I was talking about It takes me a couple days to pack up all those supplies and it's exhausting to get to the airport dragging all this stuff and then travel all the way there and

I have lists upon lists that I check off to make sure I don't forget to bring anything, but it still happens. Every once in a while I still have forgotten to pack a vital supply. At home, when I teach via Zoom, you know what I do? I plug in my phone, I turn it on. I have all of my step outs for every class organized and in a cart and I just pull them over and that's it.

Lyric Kinard (10:25.806)

I have everything I need. And if I don't have anything I need right on that tray, I walk to the other side of the room and get it, right? So the things that you as a teacher can share are the wonderful things that will lift your students. And this miracle of live technology of Zoom is a wonderful way to do that.

Lyric Kinard (11:01.644)

Now let's talk a little bit about the

Lyric Kinard (11:11.156)

Now let's talk a little bit about the student interaction because that's the thing that we worry about, right? When you are in the room with a bunch of students, you can look over their shoulders and immediately see if there's a problem, if there's something going on. And you can't look down on somebody's table when you're looking at them through a screen. It is a different skill set as a teacher to draw out

what your students need to show you. So I ask them all the time, I ask them, how are you doing? I make sure I keep a list of all my students and I make sure I talk to everybody one at a time and say, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Are you struggling with anything? And I never asked them to hold their stuff up to the camera because their lighting is terrible. If they've got the blurred background on Zooms.

algorithms make it impossible for them to show you anything. It kind of disappears in and out. It's made to just show your face, right? So what I do is I teach my students to take a nice photo of their work that they're doing with their phone. I teach them to clear off the space so there's not a bunch of junk around it, take a level photograph, and then I have them email that photo to me straight.

from their phone. And I then can share that picture with everybody on screen. When you are in person in a class, when you are helping one person at a time, looking over their shoulder and talking to them, only that person is learning at that moment from you. Maybe the people next to them stop what they are doing and look over. However,

If you share screen this way and if you cue your students and say, hey everybody, look at this, this is a really great thing that we need to learn. This is a trouble that was happening and this is an opportunity to understand why and how to fix it, to make it better, to here's what you do, right? Everybody learns at once. It saves so much time. When I teach in person,

Lyric Kinard (13:33.58)

I'm teaching the whole time. It is a lot of information I try to cram in. And so usually what takes four hours in person, because I'm helping people one at a time, often at the end of that time, I go around and we talk to everybody all at the same time and mention all the things that were learned so everybody can learn. But on Zoom, everybody's learning concurrently. They are looking at the screen.

They see it up close, they can hear it, and you save time. So I can get through easily in two and a half to three hours what takes me four hours in person. Another convenience for both you and the students is scheduling. When you're in person, you have to have a venue, you have to have a room. There's a start and an end date, and usually a pretty expensive cost for whoever has hired you. Via Zoom,

You don't have any of those restrictions. Often I will take a longer class, will teach a three hour block where I give them the technique, I show them the how, and then we take a week for them to do their own thing, to work with it, to explore it, to get farther in the project. And then we meet back for another hour or two for show and tell, for Q and A, for catching up.

So it's so much more flexible. You don't have to rely on a space so you can break things up so your students actually have time to implement the things that you are teaching. And then you can come back and clear up any worries, any troubles the students were having. Now, because I also have on-demand classes for the live classes I teach, in my week in between,

the beginning and the end of that live Zoom, I offer my students access to my on-demand course that has pre-recorded tutorials of the same thing they were learning. It also has an area where they can ask me questions and I can answer them during that week. Now, it's a copy of my on-demand course, which is easy.

Lyric Kinard (15:55.784)

On almost all on-demand course platforms, OneClick copies the course. So I give them access to that. Here's a little trick, teachers. This is added income for you. One, when they get to that on-demand course, they have to register and you get their email. So you can add them with their permission, of course. They have to click the box. You can add them to your list. And...

throw out a welcome sequence of emails that really nurture them and really, while they're hot, right while they are working with you, develops that relationship so that they become a loyal customer as they read your newsletter going forward. After the second part of that week, they've been told at the beginning that that online space they have is going away. But here's the wonderful thing.

If you didn't have time to get through the extra tutorials, because there's always so many more tutorials in my on-demand classes than we have time to get to in a Zoom class, I tell them, hey, here's a coupon so you can have permanent access to this material. And I get a really high percentage of buy-in. I remind them a couple times that, hey, this material is going away. This is your last chance to look at it. If you want to keep it, here's the link, whatever. So it's...

added income. Now if you don't have on-demand classes, that's not a worry. We'll talk later on in this series about ways that you can use Zoom to create on-demand classes or use your on-demand classes in Zoom. The cool thing is you learn one thing, you implement it, you learn how to make it work whether it's a live Zoom course or on-demand and you're already halfway to the other part.

You learn Zoom, you learn how to use that video technology, you already know how to use technology to create pre-recorded videos, or you can even record your Zoom class and offer that up as an on-demand class and vice versa. So I hope this has given you some ideas. I hope that you can imagine this. Imagine the impact you could have.

Lyric Kinard (18:17.464)

by bringing your skills to a global audience, reaching students who may never have had the opportunity to learn from you otherwise. Whether it's quilting, crafting, painting, any other creative skill, your knowledge has the power to inspire uplift and bring joy into the lives of so many people. Stop being afraid. You've got this. You are so smart. You have learned a skill.

that you can help other people learn. Learning Zoom technology, learning how to turn on your phone's camera is not that much harder, not harder at all, in fact. The thing is, you also don't have to do it alone. Join us at the Academy for Virtual Teaching. Our free membership gives you access to a supportive community and valuable resources and expert guidance to help you confidently step into online teaching. Head over to

academyforvirtualteaching.com and sign up today. We'd love to see you there. I can't wait to see you bring your skills to a whole new audience. Thanks for listening and until next time, go share your creativity with the world, my friend.