Remote Education: Yea or Nay?

 

This week I attended a Zoom presentation with Doug Tallamy, a free event sponsored by the Cherokee Library Garden which is part of the Atlanta History Center. Many years ago, I attended a presentation by him sponsored by the Georgia Perennial Plant Association held at the Atlanta History Center. Both presentations were just as effective but a huge difference was not having to drive 90-minutes each way to be there. Of course, I missed out on seeing friends in person but the glass of wine I enjoyed during the talk smoothed that out.

While the pandemic restrictions will continue for many more months, I think that the availability of remote education will greatly outlast it. There are too many advantages of remote education to ignore.  First of all, people who can’t travel or don’t like to travel at night will now be able to attend events they could not before. This means that education can now reach more people than before.

Second, events that were limited in attendance due to physical space can now serve more people. In fact, the ability to have some folks in person and a separate feed via Zoom (or another tool) is more likely than ever. Most of us were too inexperienced with streaming to consider that before.

Third, using tools like Zoom also brings us closer (if not entirely there) to recording sessions for people to watch later.

Fourth, savings associated with remote education (lower speaker fees, zero location costs, digital handouts) should allow more groups to be able to host more education events than before as they can stretch their budgets further.

And finally, the ability to provide remote presentations means that even small remote groups can tap into speakers that might have been unable to travel for an in-person meeting.

So, if you haven't tried an online presentation, take the plunge. As I said earlier, I think they are here to stay, at least part of the time. There are many free ones to test drive how you like the experience. The photo at the top is for a presentation by the Cobb County Master Gardeners. Upcoming for me is the co-sponsored symposium by the Georgia Native Plant Society and Georgia Audubon on Feb 27-28 (2 sessions).

P. S. I also like the ability to take a quick screen shot to remind me of things to follow up on, like the recommendation by Dr. Tallamy to register my property at the Homegrown National Park's website (which only has 61 properties registered in all of Georgia - let's get to it, Georgians, it only takes a few minutes):