Digital fatigue

Like many I have spent much of the last few months holding meetings virtually – they feel twice as exhausting as meeting in real life!

I’m not really sure I can pinpoint exactly why meeting virtually is so tiring, perhaps its the intensity? In a face to face meeting, the ‘meat’ of the meeting is often interspersed with social niceties and banter adding some ‘light and shade’ to the proceedings. It is also far more challenging to be able to ‘read the room’ and judge people’s non-verbal cues when hosting meetings online and to add insult to injury you often have to see your own face on the screen!

The above are useful considerations when we try to unpick what makes effective practice when teaching groups of children virtually.

Doug Lemov and his team recently tweeted about this, noting the importance of maximising human interaction online by maximising face to face time – they call it Dissolving the Screen. It’s well worth a quick read!