#32 Empowering Students with Disabilities through Distance Learning with Laura Loy

In this episode of "Why Distance Learning?" we explore the innovative intersections of arts education, accessibility, and distance learning with Laura Loy. Laura, a seasoned educator and performer, shares how her work at PHAME Academy harnesses the power of the arts to engage and empower adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities through both virtual and in-person learning environments.

Laura delves into the unique challenges and successes of teaching arts online, particularly how virtual platforms provide a space where students who may be shy in person can thrive and express themselves more fully. She highlights the adaptations required to create meaningful online interactions and the surprising benefits of distance learning, such as increased tech literacy and connectivity among students.

The discussion also touches on the practicalities and obstacles of teaching music and performing arts online, where synchronicity and shared physical presence are often crucial. Laura shares her experiences with adapting to these challenges, emphasizing the ongoing need for innovation in online arts education.

Wrapping up the episode, Laura reflects on the broader implications of distance learning for accessibility in education. She posits that virtual classrooms can offer a more inclusive environment that accommodates individuals who may face physical and logistical barriers to traditional education settings.

This episode is a compelling look at how creative approaches to education can break down barriers and expand possibilities for all learners. It’s an essential listen for educators, administrators, and anyone interested in the future of inclusive education.

**Guest Links:**
1. PHAME Academy: Explore their groundbreaking approach to arts education for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. https://www.phamepdx.org/

**Show Links:**
1. Lola: A low latency AV streaming platform that might be recommended for online music classes. https://lola.conts.it/
2. Teach FX: Mentioned in relation to providing feedback on teaching practices. https://teachfx.com/

**Host Links:**
1. Discover more virtual learning opportunities and resources at CILC.org with Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell.
2. Learn how Seth Fleischauer’s Banyan Global Learning leverages technology to enhance educational outcomes for teachers and students alike.

Creators & Guests

Host

Allyson Mitchell

SF

Host

Seth Fleischauer

TM

Host

Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

The Why Distance Learning? Podcast explores the transformative power of live virtual learning and its role in shaping the future of education. Hosted by three seasoned distance learning experts, this podcast delivers insights, promising practices, and inspiration for educators, content providers, and education leaders integrating live virtual experiences into teaching and learning. Each episode features interviews with content creators, industry professionals, field experts, and innovative educators who are driving engagement, equity, and innovation through distance learning. By challenging common perceptions and uncovering the realities of live virtual education, Why Distance Learning highlights its true impact and explores how it continues to evolve in an ever-changing educational landscape.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.77)
Hello everyone and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for educators who are engaged with live virtual learning experiences, whether they be content providers who produce and facilitate or educators who want to compliment their curriculum and learn more about the medium. We interview content providers, industry professionals, field experts and educators who love and use live virtual learning and this week we have as our guest, Laura Loy. Laura, welcome so much. Welcome so much. Welcome to the podcast.

Laura Loy (she/her) (00:31.033)
Thank you. So much welcome. Thank you.

Allyson (00:31.278)
You're so much welcome.

Seth Fleischauer (00:35.128)
God, and I nailed the intro too. I've been messing up on that sometimes recently and I nailed it. And then I said, welcome so much. I'm going to start saying that now. I'm just going to, yeah, you should, you should be able to qualify the amount of welcome. Well, in this case, there is so much welcome. Tammy, Allison, welcome to you as well so much.

Allyson (00:39.415)
You did great.

Laura Loy (she/her) (00:40.514)
I was impressed.

Allyson (00:44.407)
Yes.

Allyson (00:54.498)
Hi, welcome so much to you on this day.

Seth Fleischauer (01:00.221)
It is lovely, lovely spring, although you are probably listening to this maybe even into summer because we're recording a lot of episodes this April. But Tammy, would you please introduce Laura for us?

Tami Moehring (01:13.008)
I would be happy to, Seth. And Laura has an amazing biography. So I'm gonna give you some of the highlights I've seen, and then hopefully we'll discuss more in depth some of the other things on her amazing bio. So Laura Loi is best known for character creation and devising as featured on America's Got Talent and The Gong Show. She believes in transformative power of art and the theater's ability to foster empathy and community.

Laura Loy (she/her) (01:31.879)
Oh no, my computer died.

Seth Fleischauer (01:36.174)
Okay, it's Tammy's computer.

Tami Moehring (01:40.448)
She is a graduate of the University of New York, Hampshire with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater, Acting and Musical Theater and holds a professional training program certification from the International School of Physical Theater, Arts Education. Hold on one moment, sorry, it's buffering really bad.

Seth Fleischauer (02:03.406)
It's okay, just keep going, it'll eventually upload.

Allyson (02:18.478)
Tammy.

Seth Fleischauer (02:18.59)
You can keep going, Tammy.

Allyson (02:21.71)
she may not be able to hear.

Laura Loy (she/her) (02:24.611)
Ham is frozen. I thought it was me. It's usually me. Pfft. Ha ha.

Seth Fleischauer (02:26.19)
Thanks for watching!

Allyson (02:34.027)
It looks like she's back now there.

Seth Fleischauer (02:34.125)
Um

Is she back?

Tami Moehring (02:40.172)
back now but I think it's good. Yep, it's dropping now.

Seth Fleischauer (02:41.27)
Allison, what do you think if I throw it? OK. Are you back? Are we back?

Allyson (02:43.362)
There you go. Okay. Tammy lives in rural Minnesota. So sometimes that just, it's just a moment.

Laura Loy (she/her) (02:51.271)
Oh, don't you know? Yeah. I used to live with a rural Minnesotan. Or previously.

Seth Fleischauer (02:53.633)
Or she does. She does know.

Allyson (02:58.463)
Oh!

Allyson (03:01.724)
Tammy, are you okay?

Seth Fleischauer (03:01.774)
Uh

Tami Moehring (03:05.46)
It's going up and down really bad here. So you might.

Seth Fleischauer (03:09.518)
Tammy, as long as you just keep like finish your thing, just like keep reading it, it will it will record it locally on your computer. And then you just keep your computer open long enough for it to like upload completely at the end of the recording and then we're good.

Tami Moehring (03:23.248)
Sounds good. Hold on one moment.

Seth Fleischauer (03:35.494)
You can just pick up wherever you left off. I want you to pick up with, she is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire, because it was not New York Hampshire, just New Hampshire.

Tami Moehring (03:42.968)
Why did I say New York Hampshire? Okay, sorry. Okay, she's a graduate of New Hampshire. Sorry, she is a graduate of University of New Hampshire with a BA in theater, acting in musical theater and holds a professional training program certificate from the Dell Art Day International School of Physical Theater. Arts education has always been interwoven with her artistic practice, starting with the creation of.

Allyson (03:43.167)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (03:43.927)
No, New York.

Allyson (03:46.455)
Don't be sorry!

Laura Loy (she/her) (03:50.511)
Thanks for watching!

Tami Moehring (04:10.304)
after school theater programming at the elementary school in her New Hampshire hometown, and leading to classes, workshops, and online resources for all ages, with many organizations including Northwest Children's Theater, Echo Theater Company, Oregon Public Schools, Tears of Joy Puppet Theater, and Mago Theater, and most notably, Fame Academy, where she currently serves as education manager. Fame is an...

Arts School for Adults with Intellectual and Development Disabilities that offers over 100 art classes and workshops annually, both in person and online, based on the core values of self-determination, opportunity, dignity of risk, excellence, and inclusion. Laura is currently based in Portland, Oregon. When not performing or educating, she spends her time catering to her dog's every whim and puttering in her garden.

Seth Fleischauer (05:03.518)
Ah, I too enjoy puttering. Thank you, Tammy, and thank you so much, Laura. I too live in Portland, Oregon. Maybe puttering is a Portland thing. But hopefully we can cross paths IRL one of these days. We really appreciate you being here. We can't wait to learn more about Fame Academy and the work that you are doing in online education. Thought it was so interesting when I learned about your work.

Laura Loy (she/her) (05:04.528)
I'm tired.

Laura Loy (she/her) (05:17.809)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (05:28.758)
because of the population that you work with, adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It's the population that I worked with back in the day. One of my summer jobs was at a group home for that population, and I think it's really interesting that you're reaching them through the arts and over distance learning. So you are in the right place to discuss.

Distance learning. So thank you for being here. I was wondering if you could start right off the bat with a golden moment. Do you have a story that you can tell us that can paint the picture of one of the best moments of using this technology to reach this population with your content?

Laura Loy (she/her) (06:08.311)
Yeah, well, I was thinking about this question and I think that actually one of the things, it's like many, many of the times I've found like golden moments in online teaching have been with students that I also know in person. At Fameway, we have a lot of students who take classes both online and in person and the thing that's kind of

wild to me is some people who in person are very shy and quiet and reserved when they're doing the online classes in their own space. They just blossom and you get to see their whole personality in a way that you just don't get to see in person because when people feel more comfortable

they're more able to be themselves. And I just love that aspect of it and the kind of accessibility of somebody being able to be comfortable where they're at. Like a lot of our students, if somebody deals with pain issues or something, and so many humans deal with that, and to be able to take class and learn art in a space that they can make comfortable for themselves.

Allyson (07:06.907)
Hehehe

Laura Loy (she/her) (07:30.995)
I mean, it's just that next level on like the Maslow's triangle of human needs that like you'll never be able to get to that creative thought if you are struggling for like the basic level of things. So I think definitely in our population, that's like one of the things that I think is coolest about online teaching. So I guess it's not like a specific moment, but it is it just it's a recurring moment

Seth Fleischauer (07:40.398)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (08:00.014)
Hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (08:00.252)
Oh, he's appreciate.

Allyson (08:02.646)
That's so beautiful.

Seth Fleischauer (08:02.96)
Yeah, and I think that's...

You go, Allison.

Allyson (08:09.559)
I was just, it's so reflecting on what you were saying. It's so beautiful. I think with the digital pivot, if you weren't working in online learning before, some of the built-in tools or that idea of the environment that the learner is in sometimes could have been missed because there's just so much happening and you're just trying to make everything work. So it's just so wonderful to hear that as a recurring golden moment, that idea that the tools built in.

or the ways that somebody can express who they truly are or feel comfortable enough to be in a state to express with a group of people or even individually to themselves is really wonderful for extroverted introverts and introverted extroverts.

Tami Moehring (08:52.992)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (08:53.988)
Hehe

Laura Loy (she/her) (08:54.151)
Yeah, one of the cool things about it is that, well, like say we're doing arts and we do all kinds of arts at Fame. So we do everything from like visual art to music to theater, but say like theater classes tend to be very loud, highly stimulating places. If you're in all in a room together,

because a lot of theater work is expressing these big emotions and the bigger human emotions get the sort of the more noise, more noise, more movement there is associated with that. So anybody who has a lot of sensory issues, that classroom isn't a great place for them to explore because they get so overwhelmed that then they just have to keep taking breaks and not actually doing the work. Whereas, like, if you're in your own space, you could mute the other, you know, you can turn off your sound.

Seth Fleischauer (09:31.874)
Hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (09:47.563)
while someone else is going, and on your turn, you can be big and loud still and have your own chance to express that, which is really cool.

Seth Fleischauer (09:53.314)
Huh.

Allyson (09:55.894)
Yeah!

Seth Fleischauer (09:57.326)
Yeah, and I think that echoes a lot of what people found during the pandemic and some of the enduring impacts of the distance learning pivot during the pandemic is that there are students who realize that this was a better platform for them than being IRL and we're hearing that with your population. Another thing that I thought about you said that initially the best golden moments with people that you knew in person as well and that's another model we've talked to, I think we're

Laura Loy (she/her) (10:24.581)
Oh yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (10:27.18)
Michelle Carlisle about this in Ohio. It's something that we do with Banyan Global Learning. We visit our students in Taiwan, have some of our teachers go out there and form those personal relationships with them. And I think it's one of those things where you can compare the effectiveness of online and in person, but when you use them together, they really can reinforce each other because you never would have known that this was a great medium for those students unless you had seen them in the IRL.

situation where they weren't being as expressive. So I really appreciate that part of your model to be able to have that IRL relationship in addition to the distance learning one. I do want to know, how did you get here? So this was an arts program that you're running for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Now you're on the Why Distance Learning podcast. Can you connect those dots for us? How'd you get here?

Allyson (11:11.212)
Yeah, so many fun things.

Laura Loy (she/her) (11:25.483)
Yeah, well, I actually started at Fame as a teacher, because I don't know if you know this about theater, but it doesn't pay very well. And so I have, in my career, mostly made the funds that feed me from teaching theater and acro and trapeze and singing and dancing and all the things that I do. And then I also perform, but...

Seth Fleischauer (11:35.392)
What?

Laura Loy (she/her) (11:55.271)
I came into fame about, I think about six and a half years ago as a teacher doing Commedia dell'arte, which is a mask performance technique with these cool Italian half masks. And it's a, it's a sort of the original sitcom, if you will. And I, yeah, yes, it's archetypes. It's fun. Anyway, I came into fame as a teacher and then sort of just was.

Seth Fleischauer (12:09.838)
I'm going to go to bed.

Allyson (12:13.051)
I will, yes.

Seth Fleischauer (12:13.186)
I'm sorry.

Laura Loy (she/her) (12:24.131)
just loved it. It's the chillest teaching job I've ever had, because I guess most of my other teaching jobs were teaching children. And children require a lot of just like care for them as people in there. And then they also don't necessarily want to learn the thing. So I was teaching in a lot of like outreach sun programs for like low income students after school.

Seth Fleischauer (12:41.606)
They're known for that, yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (12:47.903)
Hehehe

Laura Loy (she/her) (12:52.935)
And, you know, it's just, you know, you do the best you can for those kids. And if they learn some theater, too, that's great. But mostly you're just like, how can I support you and being a happy, healthy human being, and that's what the job is. But, I mean, when I get to actually teach art, that's the thing that makes me really excited. And so, fame, I was able to do that. And also, our students are just like the most generous group of people. It's very much a community here. So.

Allyson (12:58.316)
Yeah!

Allyson (13:06.85)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (13:24.051)
we have these like dual goals of being like a community and like an art school. And so sometimes they're really great hand in hand. Sometimes it's tricky, but it is what it is. I just, so anyway, I love teaching at fame. So I started sort of teaching more of the things that I teach at fame. And so I was a teacher and then 2020 happened and...

Laura Loy (she/her) (13:51.391)
So we moved the whole school online in three weeks from the start of the pandemic. If we just, we took one week off, like broke one week early, because we actually closed the school a little bit before everything else shut down because we work with a medically fragile population. And so we like ended term one week early and then started the next term one week late.

Seth Fleischauer (13:57.666)
Wow.

Allyson (13:58.018)
Yay for you and your team!

Laura Loy (she/her) (14:20.231)
and we were like back, we were, and then we were just all in these Zoom rooms where nobody really knew what was going on. And we're like waiting with click and everyone's like, I don't know, but I'm happy to see your face today. So, I mean, there probably were, we were talking, we were having like staff meetings to be like, okay, how do we?

Allyson (14:28.716)
Hehehehehehe

Allyson (14:34.705)
Oh, yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (14:45.699)
How do we do this? And Zoom was constantly updating their platform too. So, you know, we all, I think most of us went through that who weren't already in some kind of online teaching capacity previously. And so, yeah, we just kind of went through it and we were only online for about a year and a half.

Allyson (14:49.89)
Oh yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (15:12.551)
because we really couldn't come back until people had vaccines. So anyway, what ended up happening was that the online programming was so successful that we were like, we will never get rid of this now. So, you know, I don't know without the pandemic if we would have gone online. I don't think we would have considered it, honestly.

Seth Fleischauer (15:18.69)
Hmm.

Allyson (15:34.379)
Yay!

Seth Fleischauer (15:39.702)
Hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (15:41.767)
Um, so it was, but it's been, we had, we used to at our staff meetings have these moments where we would share zoom boons, which are like the good things that happened because of zoom. And we started sort of tallying those up in our meetings to be like, this is happening in zoom and it didn't before. Like the biggest thing I think is tech literacy. Um, many of our students like didn't have an email.

Allyson (15:51.307)
Mmm, yes!

Seth Fleischauer (15:51.597)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (15:56.499)
Ha.

Allyson (16:11.939)
Hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (16:13.348)
before the pandemic or were not allowed by caregivers to use the internet, either because it takes some training to be able to use the internet well. And there just wasn't, there wasn't anybody available to train people or there was like, you know, people didn't have the tech they would need to get on the internet and all of a sudden it became a necessity. So then all these people who maybe didn't have a computer, all of a sudden have a computer.

Seth Fleischauer (16:18.071)
Ha.

Allyson (16:22.648)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (16:41.239)
because it's the only way for them to connect with people. So when it became a necessity, many more people kind of jumped on board, which was cool. And now I see our students being much more connected in person and online just with each other outside of class because they're all, you know, they're all texting each other and they're all on Facebook and doing all these things that nobody was doing, not nobody, but like.

A large percentage of our population was not connected via internet previous to the pandemic.

Seth Fleischauer (17:15.512)
Wow.

Allyson (17:16.587)
Wow. So you can, your community became more connected and that is such a zoom boom. That is, I love that you went around it as a group and said, look at this good thing that is happening in a time when it's really, when it was really easy not to, to always look for the good moment. Cause as you mentioned, updates are intense.

Laura Loy (she/her) (17:23.747)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (17:36.423)
We in those same meetings.

Allyson (17:39.154)
And you're like, did I, do I have to restart my computer? What's open? Did I save it the right way during that time? Cause it just felt everything was everywhere. But it's just nice to, it just speaks to your community that you took that time, not just the community that you serve, but also the community that you cultivate with your team, that you would take that time and say, this is our tool. How is it still being a benefit? How is it still a beneficial tool?

Laura Loy (she/her) (18:03.515)
Yeah, I mean, those same meetings had the moments where we're like, this is not working, I can't teach anything that I need to teach. Oh, I make it happen. And you know, we found a few things that really we still don't know how to use Zoom for in a successful way. And every so often we try new classes over Zoom and like sometimes teachers are just like, I can't teach this. Uh oh, it's me now.

Allyson (18:06.082)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (18:28.691)
I don't have a stable connection. Oh, I'm supposed to keep talking. Right, okay. Cut that out, Lucas. So yeah, we got online and then, another cool thing that happened when we went online is that we're in Portland metro area here in Northeast Portland, and we got students from farther afield. And then...

Seth Fleischauer (18:32.762)
Heh.

Seth Fleischauer (18:56.43)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (18:57.123)
farther and farther afield and then farther and farther and farther afield like Massachusetts. And so that has been very cool because we're offering programming that's not common.

Allyson (19:06.571)
I risk.

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Did you see your community grow outside of, I know that you spoke about the in-person and virtual, so is that now, do you see people that maybe wouldn't always be coming to Portland in your community think about coming to Portland and how big did that grow for you? It's just so exciting when you go online and you can open up so much to so many.

Laura Loy (she/her) (19:35.163)
Yeah, so most of our students are still based sort of in this area, but because there are like a sort of limited access to arts education targeted towards adults with IDD, some of the students who maybe come in one day a week, but they live you know an hour and a half away, they'll come in the one day a week and then take the rest of their classes online. Or we have some students who like

Seth Fleischauer (20:01.047)
Mm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (20:05.167)
I have one student that lives between Portland and Denver, depending on time of year and stuff. And like that student takes classes sometimes in Denver and sometimes in Portland. And yeah, a cool thing has been like we've had at least one student who has moved to Portland after starting online with us to like be closer to this community. And like another student, the one from Massachusetts.

when he was in town. I'm the only person who gets these bubbles. Cut that out, Lucas. Yeah, the student from Massachusetts visited Portland and came and took a class in person, just one, on a vacation, but it was really fun.

Allyson (20:49.791)
Ah!

Allyson (20:53.646)
That's so cool. That's so fun to just hear about how everything expanded and also who's making stops or changing where they're living to come and be part of your community in a different way. That's really great.

Seth Fleischauer (21:07.186)
Yeah, yeah, and I had a question because you mentioned that you're not going to stop doing the online learning because it was so successful and I think we've heard some ways in which it is successful. You mentioned in the golden moment that there are students who are more expressive in this space as opposed to IRL. You mentioned that there's an enduring impact in terms of the internet connectedness of your student and the population of... Sorry.

There's an increasing interconnectedness via the internet of the community, where they're actually both empowered with things like email and Facebook, but also building community that way. And you also mentioned for fame itself, you have a broader impact where you're recruiting students from outside the Portland metro area.

I'm wondering, are those the metrics that you're using to measure success or is there other things? Like what led you to say like, it's this is a success and so we're going to keep going.

Laura Loy (she/her) (22:09.219)
Yeah, it's I think it's mostly the accessibility issues that has led us to stay online. So the, it's more accessible to people who live farther away from Portland, although our goal is always to, I mean, our programming goals are largely focused around students who live within a

Laura Loy (she/her) (22:39.027)
we've had opportunities to like kind of do big things outside of Portland that currently we just don't have staff for. But so accessibility is the biggest thing. There's the great neutralizer of the zoom window. We all look the same size. We all look the same size in these zoom windows, more or less, which for the people at Fame, some people are like particularly small humans.

And some people are particularly large humans. And sometimes that's tied to a disability. Like folks with Down syndrome tend to be more petite. Not always, but it's sort of everybody has the same, takes up the same amount of space here. And I think that can be a really powerful tool for learning.

Allyson (23:08.47)
Ehh

Laura Loy (she/her) (23:35.443)
because everybody feels like they're meeting at the same level. So it's sort of a psychological thing. And the other thing that's really great about accessibility is, I always say when I'm teaching a Zoom class that I hold the power of mute. Because if more than one person talks, it gets too much. So I can help people learn the boundaries of taking turns and listening.

Seth Fleischauer (23:52.277)
Hehehehe

Laura Loy (she/her) (24:04.923)
in a way that is not as possible in an in-person classroom. So you're sort of forced to really listen and watch, like listen full body listening, which is very important for acting and performance. You're forced to do that in an online classroom.

because I can pin the student you're supposed to look at. So literally the only thing you can do if you got your headphones on and you're looking at the screen is listen and watch this other student share their story or their whatever it is they're sharing. I mean all art I would say is storytelling on a space level. And so it provides an opportunity for everybody to do that and I can very easily

Allyson (24:42.41)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (24:51.995)
make sure that everybody's getting equal time in a class, which is sometimes trickier in a big classroom, because some people just naturally end up taking up more space in that physical world. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. I think there's wonderful things about the fact that we are different when we're together in person.

But I do think that this like other way of being where we're online and we all take turns is like really helpful too.

Seth Fleischauer (25:30.67)
That's so interesting because there's like there it sounds like there are things that you've figured and this makes perfect sense but there are things that you've figured out that work really well for your specific population that distance learning has provided you the opportunity to teach it in a new and different way and that's like that's what we're all about here. It's like what we're all about here on this podcast.

Allyson (25:50.43)
Right. I'm like getting so excited. And it's like, and it's of course, because the way you're even lining it out and the passion, the core value of it, it's just, it's all connected to the arts. How does that, how do you want to tell your story and how do you get, how are you able to have tools to help tell it? It's really cool because a lot of the intrinsic learning that's happening with your programs is fun to think about.

the idea of the digital communication skills, the digital skill sets that in certain populations you take for granted. The idea, even when I look at even just the younger generation, all of what, the way that they can work a computer is gonna be so much different and quicker in a lot of cases than some of us in our generation or any generation. So.

It's great to think about, take that step back and think about what works in this digital platform and what doesn't really work in this digital platform and how do you make someone be comfortable, teacher and learner, to have that communication. I wonder though, I just wonder, because we talk a lot about what does work, but I think it's cool to say, sometimes this doesn't translate virtually. So I wonder what are some of the things you found were more challenging to teach online?

Laura Loy (she/her) (27:09.727)
Music is really hard to do online with more than two people. It, because, oh, I haven't found a platform yet, although maybe you all can help me out with this. I have not found a platform where multiple people can sing together online. Do you have one? Is it new?

Seth Fleischauer (27:27.229)
Mm-hmm.

Allyson (27:31.202)
Yeah, I'm like internet too, lolas, they are, oh my goodness. I will send, no, it's actually should be more for, I will send you definitely things after this because there are a couple different things that could help that. And there are some video evidence as well that I could send along to show like concerts as well as musicians. But that's just because they're really.

Laura Loy (she/her) (27:35.231)
Is it really expensive?

Laura Loy (she/her) (27:51.719)
Yeah, we've done workarounds with editing and stuff for performance type stuff online, but basically we do all of our Zoom, we do all of our online classes over Zoom because it's a platform that is well known by a lot of people and we kind of have to stick into something, into an app that

Allyson (27:55.297)
Right.

Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (28:07.147)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (28:13.947)
not only our students will learn, but also like their providers and any caregivers that everybody kind of has a handle on a little bit because while we do have tech support in every classroom, it's you know sometimes you're just on the phone being like all right now is there a bubble in the top window that says this and it's like no there's not and I was like oh what device are you on? Zoom looks different on every device.

Seth Fleischauer (28:37.141)
and

Seth Fleischauer (28:42.547)
Yeah.

Allyson (28:42.602)
every device.

Laura Loy (she/her) (28:42.839)
which is so annoying. If Zoom, if you're listening, please make it all the same. Yeah, generally speaking, music also, you can't feel the individual vibration with that. One thing that is really important in most performance, most performance forms,

Seth Fleischauer (28:45.55)
Do you see the three dots?

Allyson (28:48.238)
Please, the toolbar. Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (29:12.335)
is the shared breath, which coming out of the pandemic was a whole issue. I mean, I've definitely had some crises over that myself as an actor being like the basis of what I'm doing is sharing breath with the audience. That's how we, the most baseline communication we're doing here. Musicians who sing together in like a choir or something

Seth Fleischauer (29:20.902)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (29:42.039)
their heart rates start to line up. And also in theater, breathing together is the way that the rhythm works. And even the audience starts breathing with the actors. That's why you spend a lot of time in acting classes breathing. If you've ever taken an acting class, it will always be a part of it. So you don't have that on Zoom.

Seth Fleischauer (29:44.686)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (29:55.242)
No way. Huh.

Laura Loy (she/her) (30:08.851)
And I mean, I like to hope that maybe neuro neurons are still doing their job a little bit over Zoom, but I don't believe it is the same as being in the physical space. That being said, it's just like the classes we teach online are different than the classes we teach in person. And if I'm teaching an online acting class and an in-person acting class,

that are both like our exploratory level, which is like anybody can come to this class, acting class, is gonna be a totally different class in person versus online. And I know that has been a challenge for our teachers sometimes. Like whatever form you started teaching the class in, if you have to translate out of that, it's really tricky because it's a totally new lesson plan.

which I've had happen to me, I piloted a Broadway dance class online, which was really fun. We just like learn Broadway dances and dance them because for fun. It's fun and it's great exercise and it's good dance and lots of different styles which you don't usually get always in a dance class. Anyway, it was a really fun class.

Allyson (31:12.118)
Yay!

Allyson (31:15.946)
Yes! Because why not? Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (31:29.859)
piloted online and then because of just the way we were putting together our, you know, our term and what we needed, where, and because I'm the education manager, my stuff gets moved wherever it needs to go. I was like, I had to start teaching it in person and it was so hard. It was so hard to teach my like class that I built as an online class to make it function in person. I had to change a bunch of things about the class. And I was like,

Allyson (31:49.131)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (31:49.584)
Hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (31:58.783)
oh, but this wasn't online. Like, this is meant to be done this way. And so I think just taking into account that form there, and also then the tricky thing is sometimes I need to say to a teacher, like, hey, we have all of the in-person space that we have, because we have a, our campus we have from like 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and we offer about 30 classes a term, so.

30 classes don't fit on that campus in those hours. So we can fit like 20 to 22 classes in that space. It is over there. And yeah, so that's kind of the tricky thing sometimes is asking someone who's used to teaching in person, especially newer TAs, teaching artists, that's our lingo, TA, teaching artist.

Allyson (32:30.937)
Yeah, I was just trying in my mind organizationally being like, what's your schedule look like?

Allyson (32:56.736)
Yay.

Laura Loy (she/her) (32:57.663)
to go online, a lot of people are really like, oh, I can't do this, I'm an artist, I work in person, it's my thing. And so that I think is one of the biggest challenges is just kind of being like, but what if we rethought this and you did it online? Improv is very hard to teach online. I did it. It's not easy.

Seth Fleischauer (33:13.666)
How about some yes and here?

Laura Loy (she/her) (33:26.139)
And it's not really preferable. That's the thing we found is like, there's just some classes that really do better on person. And then there's some that could be either or, and there's some that work better online. So it's a real toss up there for me. I don't know if that answers your question.

Allyson (33:39.007)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (33:42.49)
Can you break down so many answers and so many things I'd like to talk about? We are running out of time though. But one question I have is, like you talked about the Broadway course that you designed online and then it moved in person. You were like, wait a minute, this was designed online. Can you break that down for us? Like what were the things that you designed specifically for the online space that worked in the online space that didn't work IRL or you had to change them IRL?

Allyson (33:44.202)
Yeah, it does.

Laura Loy (she/her) (34:06.347)
Well, it was a class designed around watching Broadway performances and then playing with those. So the ability to have people set the video in a way that they can totally see, moving into a classroom, when you put out a projector in a dance class, all of a sudden you have this fragile object in the middle of the floor around a bunch of dancers.

Seth Fleischauer (34:33.831)
Meh.

Allyson (34:34.478)
..

Laura Loy (she/her) (34:36.531)
you know, or you show it on the TV on the AV cart, but then it's kind of small and everybody has to get close. Like how do you get the people to watch the thing? And then like anytime, it just, that was, it seems like a really small issue, but it was much easier to do that. And then the other thing that I would do more when we were online versus now in person, it's just reference back to the video. Like watch a little bit, try a bit, see if we got it.

Seth Fleischauer (34:41.566)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (34:53.226)
No, no, but it's, yeah, it's significant, right? Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (35:02.482)
Uh...

Laura Loy (she/her) (35:06.311)
and then go back and watch another thing or like multiple videos throughout class like little snippets of like different companies performing the same dance number from a musical and noticing how they're different and then playing with them. It's really hard to make that work in an in-person classroom. But online it was very successful because when people were drinking their water in between dancing we'd watch another clip and then be right back into it. So

Seth Fleischauer (35:25.458)
Yeah, interesting.

Laura Loy (she/her) (35:36.019)
Now I have to like take water breaks and they're just like nothing happens during that class moment.

Seth Fleischauer (35:39.078)
Yeah.

Allyson (35:39.09)
Yeah.

Tami Moehring (35:40.016)
I suppose. And also you're physically moving on from watching to walk over here to doing it. I mean, that's a little.

Laura Loy (she/her) (35:47.355)
Yeah, and it's like all the chairs moving and yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (35:51.67)
Yeah, interesting. Okay, so my next question is actually for my co host, because I feel like we have a Tammy's tech trouble here, where Laura was saying that, you know, one, she doesn't feel like that shared breath can really happen in the virtual space. And then two, teaching music in the virtual space, you said you had a lot of tools you could send her, I'm sure our listeners are also interested. What are some solutions to these problems that she's having?

Tami Moehring (36:17.292)
Well, I know Alison had a whole bunch, so I'm going to give this hand this over to Alison, the microphone, because she had the list ready to go. It sounded like I do know that when it comes to like each three to threes and bigger polycom seemed to be like the top one for a long time that a lot of our music performing studios use. So like the Manhattan School of Music, they would come in on that.

Allyson (36:26.926)
Ha ha!

Seth Fleischauer (36:27.438)
You

Tami Moehring (36:45.324)
because that was something that they also had an issue with. It's really hard to teach choir, they found, like you said, with singing over it, or they would just get a continuum. Also, I've heard a lot from recent performers is that over time, platforms have gotten so good at canceling out background noise.

that often singing with a large group is considered background noise. So children singing is automatically like blocked out because there are annoying sounds on platforms. They're not annoying, children aren't. But sometimes what you would consider an annoying sound is automatically blocked out. So it has become, I think, I think it's become more, I think it's become harder as we've used it more that we've gotten better at.

Seth Fleischauer (37:25.088)
No.

Allyson (37:26.023)
No, you're stupid.

Seth Fleischauer (37:30.671)
Thanks for clarifying, Tammy.

Tami Moehring (37:40.408)
finding ways to hide those kind of noises.

Seth Fleischauer (37:44.884)
Yeah.

Allyson (37:45.83)
Yes, I would agree that is a challenge. And also sometimes the buttons that help you optimize video and audio are so, so small. And you're like, this is the most important thing. Like let's make them bigger and brighter for everyone to see and click and touch. The, what I was referencing because as many know here who, I am a big nerd about technology, specifically AV. How do we make video conferencing?

and this transmission really amazing. I always talk about the video conferencing machines like Polycom because it's made just for that. The H323, for example, is just one, but it's made just to do that. So how did that even get better to play with different software and hardware opportunities? So what I was talking about was Lola, which is a low latency AV streaming experience that you can line up.

with how you use your video conferencing. And the only reason I mentioned that was because I, in the past, worked with an organization, Internet2, yay. And they specifically used this and they were working, this was in maybe 2012 or 2013, where they were using this in certain big concert performances where people were doing music in Australia, but people were singing in the US. So it's still available.

Laura Loy (she/her) (39:06.69)
Yeah.

Allyson (39:08.126)
I can totally send you that and some other options that are friendly. And for anybody else that wants to know about it, yay, I'm also going to tell people that I know there that we were talking about them on the podcast. So we'll drop the link so that everyone can check that out. Because it is, and the other thing I was thinking was we could maybe connect you at the Country Music Hall of Fame to see how their content providers do some of their live virtual field trips, which is great.

Laura Loy (she/her) (39:11.755)
would love that.

Seth Fleischauer (39:24.648)
Awesome.

Laura Loy (she/her) (39:35.503)
That would be great. Yeah, one of the things we were just run into is the like everybody's internet speeds being so different that like, you know, when we're trying to dance together, even online, it's like everybody's at a hearing different music. You know, they're all at a different second mark in the music, which is, it's just, you know, for what we're doing most of the time here, it doesn't matter. We're not so much doing virtual performances anymore.

Allyson (39:50.244)
Right.

Allyson (39:56.759)
a chat yeah

Laura Loy (she/her) (40:04.155)
Or when we do, we record separately and then spend some editing time knitting everybody together.

Seth Fleischauer (40:12.115)
Yeah, yeah, that's the trick, right? So I have one last question. It's our titular question. It's the name of the podcast, Laura Loy of Fame, Why Distance Learning?

Allyson (40:14.456)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (40:24.984)
Why distance learning? Because being in person isn't always a good choice for people. Really, that's like what it comes down to for us. It's like sometimes you can learn better when you're at your own space. And sometimes like travel is really hard, especially for our population. If you don't drive, you know.

Seth Fleischauer (40:32.552)
Hahaha

Seth Fleischauer (40:38.6)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (40:51.291)
or you have to use public transit or rely on rides from other people, you should still have access to arts classes. So our online programming really fills that need of like, if you aren't well enough to leave your home today, you could still be well enough to do some acting or drawing class or yoga.

Seth Fleischauer (41:14.007)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Loy (she/her) (41:20.215)
And maybe actually being able to do yoga at home makes you more likely to be able to get out into the world another day. So that's for me the big.

Seth Fleischauer (41:20.44)
Yeah.

Laura Loy (she/her) (41:32.527)
Why?

Seth Fleischauer (41:33.472)
Wow.

So well said, amazing. And exactly why I wanted to have you on this podcast. I feel like you represent this little corner of this world, this live video world that has a unique perspective on this. I love the way you say that, because sometimes in person is not a good decision. I forget how you said it, but it was, yeah, that's very profound. Thank you so much for being here, Laura. We will leave some links in the show notes

Allyson (41:35.242)
So well said.

Laura Loy (she/her) (41:35.247)
Thanks for watching!

Seth Fleischauer (42:04.052)
the work that you do in addition to some of the stuff that Allison referenced today. You can find those show notes wherever you hear your podcast, but also on calc.org slash podcast. Thank you to our editor Lucas Alizar, who works with Laura and who introduced me. So thank you, Lucas. If you want to support the podcast, please follow us, rate it, leave a review, tell a friend. We'd love for you to get the word out.

Laura Loy (she/her) (42:07.096)
Great.

Allyson (42:18.146)
Hey, thank you, Lucas.

Seth Fleischauer (42:30.234)
And if you want to know the answer to the question, why distance learning, please check out the people we highlight here. These are the people who are leveraging this amazing technology to truly transform the learning experience. Why distance learning? Because it's accessible and it's awesome. See you next time.

Laura Loy (she/her) (42:47.459)
Bye.