It’s been over two years now since I taught my first Skype lesson, and I absolutely LOVE having technology that allows for such incredible flexibility and opportunity for teachers and students alike. I have some full-time long-distance students, and multiple times every semester I use Skype or Facetime to teach students on vacation or who have some emergency situation that prevents them from making it to the studio for a lesson.
The technology today makes it very simple to offer long-distance lessons, but I know that it’s still pretty unnerving to jump into a situation like this when all you’ve ever known is in person lessons. I recently came across a couple of posts that are very insightful in presenting some of the benefits and drawbacks of long-distance teaching:
One Student, One Teacher, 1500 Miles by Steve Betts – I could echo word for word the three points that Steve Betts shares that he has learned from his long-distance teaching experience!
The Pros and Cons of Music Lessons Via Skype or Google+ by Chad Twedt – A very extensive list of pros and cons, along with the addition of why Chad eventually stopped doing long-distance lessons with several students.
I really appreciate the time and thought put into both of these posts and think they are very helpful for teachers considering offering long-distance lessons. It definitely pays to know what you’re getting into ahead of time! That said, I encourage anyone whose interested to give it a try and just see what you think for yourself. Just see it as a learning experience, an opportunity to contribute new ideas for improvement to the music education community, and something that you can do on a trial basis so that you and the student can constantly evaluate what’s working and what’s not.
If you have experience with long-distance teaching and/or a post you’ve written on the topic, please feel free to share!
Hi Natalie, how fun to offer this. You must have a strong bandwidth to get clear sound and picture vis Skype. Do you offer the lesson at the time of the schedule lesson time or do you offer it as a makeup to whenever the student is convenient? As I do not offer makeup lesson at my studio, if the student is prevented from coming to lesson at scheduled time, she is probably not available at that time to have a skype lesson! I am glad to know that it works for you.
Lydia
Thanks so much for this post and the links to the other articles. Very helpful!
I’ve used it a couple of times: once when a student had a contagious skin rash (but was otherwise feeling perfectly fine), and another time when a snow storm prevented the family from driving the 20 minutes to get to my house. I have a retired adult student who will be wintering in Florida — we might try to do a few lessons over Skype while he’s away for 3 months.
Wow, this is really cool. Teaching piano lesson via Skype or Facetime is really an interesting but I think it is quite hard to do. How much do you usually charge for this? I am interested to have a lesson with you.