My Experience Teaching My First Online Photography Creativity Workshop on Zoom

Just taught my first online zoom photography workshop and learned a lot. This is just a stream of some of my personal thoughts and lessons.

MY EXPERIENCES TEACHING MY FIRST ONLINE PHOTOGRAPHY ZOOM WORKSHOP

ERIC KIM WORKSHOPS >>>

Is this the future?

First thought–

Is this the future? Is there any more reason to teach in-person workshops anymore?

Zoom is amazing.

Holy moly… Zoom is fucking epic. It is sooooo much better than anything I have ever used or could imagine. To share screen, connect my screen via iPad and more… this is so seamless and sooo good.

iPad Magic!

Using Zoom and iPad connected via lightning cable to demonstrate composition

Best part:

Sharing my screen via ZOOM with my iPad and using pro-create to sketch images and draw.

Very fun!

A huge thing I didn’t anticipate:

How fun this would be.

I see several benefits of an online workshop vs in person workshop:

No time necessary to commute
More seamless
More efficient for teachers and students (no need to fly, commute, ride an uber, meetup)
Cheaper (no need to book a conference room in real life)
Easier to share-screens as an instructor to teach (no more needing to fuss around with real life projectors, contrast issues, connectivity issues, etc).
Ability to record the whole thing, only audio, and also the chat transcript.

Tips with Zoom

Some tips:

Upon entry, have all the students have their audio and video on by default. Introduce every human being in the room by name.
Ice breakers work well online: Have students introduce themselves by name, their passion, where they are from, and have an open ended question to answer like: “Why photography?”
Teaching online is similar to real-life. Switch it up. Switch between chatting via webcam, to sharing screen, showing examples, and keeping it visual.
I did my first 2-hour workshop online, and the structure was simple: Brief introduction to myself, using around 20 minutes for everyone to introduce themselves… around 1-2 minutes per person, and having a toilet break at the 1-hour mark. And then continuing the presentation until the very end.

Don’t just tell; show.

When you are talking, don’t just say… show.

For example when analyzing compositions, break it apart. Analyze it in real time!

Or when recommending an app to download, literally open up the App Store and show them which app you’re talking about.

Google Slides is epic.

PDF: SLIDES _ ERIC KIM PHOTOGRAPHY ONLINE CREATIVITY WORKSHOP #1 – 2020 Download

Google Slides Public Link

Also, create your presentation in Google Slides. Sooo easy. And drag in animated Gif files, and use it as a skeleton when presenting. No need to follow slide by slide; just skip around. You will always go off-script, and this is what makes it fun!