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Letting go and staying close: presentation to GMR Institute of Technology, India, August 2020

Letting go and staying close

Here are my slides from a presentation I gave to GMR Institute of Technology, Rajam of Srikakulum District, Andhra Pradesh State, India, last week. I gave the presentation from a car, parked in a camp site in the midst of British Columbia, surrounded by mountains and lakes and forest, taking advantage of a surprisingly decent 4G connection via an iPad. It was sadly not interactive, but I hope that those present learned something useful (even if, as my presentation emphasized, they did not learn what I intended to teach).

The general gist of it is that, when teaching online, we need to let go because the in-person power we have in a classroom simply isn't there. There are other consequences - the need to build community, to demonstrate caring, to accept and value the context of the learner, to accept and value the very many teachers that they will encounter apart from us.