Eventually I decided to invite Elizabeth to my online Zoom training. She'd given birth to twin boys in May but was happy to bring them along. She's not sure where their father is at the moment. Most of the other delegates laughed when she logged on. But that didn't surprise me; you've not seen Elizabeth. She didn't say anything and only stayed for five minutes. I've not seen her since but I did email afterwards to see if she was OK - and to say how much we valued her visit.
Elizabeth is a four-year-old goat. She lives at Cronkshawfold Farm in Lancashire, UK and for £5.99 she'll come to your online meeting. On the face of it, a novelty, a welcome relief among 200 lockdown Zoom calls. But also a gift to the wonderful educators in the training session:
Our 5-year-olds would love this during teacher check-in.
We could show our own pets.
We could build a STEM lesson on this (see below)
We could invite neighbourhood professionals for a Q&A.
We could get our friends to show the view from their windows - in Ohio, Dubai, Skye, Nairobi...
We could show an object close up and slowly zoom out.
We could, we could, we could....
Elizabeth (and her two kids) kick started our creativity with their perfect innovation. Perfect in my eyes because her fee helps fund Cronkshawfold's purchase and installation of renewable technologies. A loss transformed to a gain - see previous post here.