There’s an exciting, new world out there for ESL teachers. Work out a policy that works and is fair to both of you. If your connection is down for over 15 minutes your student has the option to reschedule the class. Be sure to work out an agreement with your student for example, if your connection is down for less than 15 minutes, you extend your class to make up for it. Will there be technical glitches? Surely! But students know this can happen anytime no matter what they’re doing online. If you want to watch a video online, simply wait till you both have the page and video loaded, and hit play at the same time. Unless you’re a real techie and figure out why this happens, or you have an uber modern laptop, I recommend that you simply paste the URL of the website you want to go to in the IM chat box so your student can click on it. I find that there’s quite a bit of lagging during screen sharing – things run slower than usual. Now, having presented these options, I have some recommendations.

Show your student a PowerPoint presentation.Go to a website and read/discuss what you see.Draw on a whiteboard like Microsoft Paint.As the name indicates, you basically share your screen with your student, which means he/she will see exactly what you’re seeing. The Share Screen feature (also found in the + “plus sign” menu) is handier for looking at websites and PowerPoint presentations. But for the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the most popular free videoconferencing tool, Skype, and how you can make the most of it for online lessons. There is a variety of software you can use – some paid, some free. Yes, there are technical difficulties you must overcome. Students and teachers may schedule lessons to suit their needs and everyone is happy. There are students who don’t have the time to travel to a language school and online lessons offer a great deal of flexibility in that regard. Although I was skeptical at first, I gave it a try, and I must say I’ve never looked back. But you live and learn, and I’ve been teaching online for over three years. About ten years ago, someone asked me if I saw myself teaching in front of a computer, and I said, “No way!” There are certain things you can only convey when you have the person sitting right in front of you and certain activities you can only do in a classroom.

Teach english online skype