Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

As some of you know, I’ve been teaching Modern Arnis/Filipino Martial Arts classes and private lessons on Zoom for the past year or so.

I’ll be the first to admit that it does not replace live teaching in any way, shape, or form. That said, with the lockdown in Ontario, I didn’t have any option but to teach on Zoom.

One thing about teaching on Zoom is the specificity of instruction. I’ve found that I have had to be far more specific in my instructions to students on the other end.

It’s one thing to demonstrate a section of kata in a live class with students mimicking you. However, it’s different on Zoom. I have found that demonstrating a move does not suffice. One has to impart specific instructions along with the demonstration.

“When you do banda y banda, shift your hips and feet toward the slash.”

So, from a teaching perspective, my pedagogical skills have improved quite a bit in the past year.

However, increased details in teaching mean more questions from the students.

This is where the closed captioning on Zoom comes in.

This picture shows captions for a Zoom class that I was teaching.
Captions during a class!

90% of the time, I can answer the students. However, there are times when I have difficulty picking up a question. Most of the time, it involves the student being a fair distance from their computer, and the echo effect takes over. I also have difficulty with children’s voices.

On February 24th, I found out that Zoom has live captioning available. Oh man, I was excited! I immediately spread the news to many of my deaf friends on FB and elsewhere.

Note: I knew that live captioning is available on Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams. Since then, I’ve learned that Webex announced live captioning capabilities at the same time Zoom did. So, this is great news for the deaf community.

I immediately tested Zoom’s live captioning capabilities. While it’s not perfect, it’s still amazing. When the captions are garbled, enough context exists to figure out what was asked or said.

There is one noticeable effect for me. I can relax a lot more when students ask questions or we converse over Zoom. Until the captions came along, I was quite mentally focused on what was being said. Often, I was exhausted after the Zoom sessions. Hopefully, with the captions, I will be less exhausted afterward.

All that said, I can’t wait to get back to live teaching via private lessons. Fortunately, with the vaccination process underway, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Additional Reading