After Months of Training from Home.. 5 Things I Miss the Most
I was in Cairo when the news came: “Go Back Home!”
It was my second trip to Cairo in a few months. I was there to deliver trainings to different newsrooms as part of the Google News Initiative Training. I have never been to Egypt before, and on my first trip in December I did not get the opportunity to visit all the places I wanted to go to, so when I went in March, I thought to myself: “its a great opportunity to continue my tour, and at the same time meet my old friends, while of course giving my training during the day.”
Of course, nothing was finished: not the visits.. not the meetings… and of course not even the training.
After goin back to Dubai, where I am based, I found myself in a strange situation, where I had to think about my training on virtual platforms! Reading this now, it might sound normal, but at that time, it was new and weird!
When I used to deliver trainings face to face, there are certain things that I used to worry about: connecting my laptop to a projector, size of the room, air conditioning, arriving on time to the training after a long drive, and of course driving for long hours after finishing a training.
Now, with the new reality, I have to worry about the following: my background is simple and not that distracting (or boring), my wifi does not cut, and I am not using my hands that much.
It has been a long learning curve; moving from a face to face training into a virtual training, where you have to come up with new ideas to interact and teach.
But, there are certain things that I miss about those trainings before Covid-19, here are a few:
1- Learning more about newsrooms: training was not only about teaching a skill; it was also more about learning about the different opportunities and challenges faced by journalists, how does the work environment look like, what is the technical infrastructure they have, what are the backgrounds of people working there… and many more.
2- Questions were different: my training setup used to be as follows: my laptop, connected to a projector, a notebook with a pen on the right, my mobile phone on the left, a green ball that I used to play interactive games with and a bottle of water. My notebook is always filled with questions from journalists that I used to take back to my team or manager to ask or request. Never have I ignored any of those questions, as I felt personally responsible to answer them. Now, it’s different. I barely get any questions outside the lesson or tool I am teaching.
3- Face expressions: looking at people’s faces, it used to give me the indication whether people are interested or felt bored. Now, everyone is behind a computer or a phone. I cant ask people to turn on their cameras for many reason, one of them is respecting the social surrounding they are in. This approach makes me feel as if I am talking to myself.
4- No good memories: I remember in my last visit to an Egyptian newsroom, we struggled to connect the laptop to the projector which was hanging there in the ceiling. After 2 hours of trying to solve the problem, the technical team brought me a long HDMI cable, and there it was: the HDMI cable hanging in front of me (see photo below). Those were great memories to keep. I don’t have that any more.
5- Travel: This probably is something that everyone misses. I miss those times of being by myself. This needs a different post.
Nevertheless, this is for sure a new experience, that requires a different approach. The new situation is making me research more, and learn more. I will probably write something later about the different new tools I learnt during the last few months.
