I know that I can be quite remote at the best of times but today was the first time I have tried to teach without actually being there. I wasn't actually that far away, I can see the science building from my window, it's the green building, however I might as well have been on Mars. Early this morning I decided on using google groups forum, thinking that a discussion forum would be a better way to organize questions and answers, it wasn't a great success. The students were undoubtedly working through their assignments but I had little involvement. To make things worse the forum wasn't organized as i would have liked, my answers always appearing at the end not after the post I'm answering. Next class I tried google chat, this was worse. My third class of the day was a little different, this was a first year class doing their IA. They are working in google classroom so I could follow their progress, make comments and feel involved, I think it worked well. In class I don't always do that much but at least I'm there and can see what my students are up to, it's going to take some time to be able to feel I'm there when actually I'm not. Oh well, only 13 days to go :-)