Non-verbal communication2

I saw the video Antonietta mentioned in her post and read Anna Franca and Paola's comments. I agree with them: we often miss our students' non-verbal messages, but one of the reasons might be that we have so many students in our classes...You can't possibly 'see' what 25/26 children are telling you with their eyes, or bodies - unless most of them are 'shouting out' the same thing (which may happen, and sometimes happens). Yet, it's also a question of what you choose to look for or not look for when you are with them and you're trying to help them learning something new: if you focus too much on what you are doing as a teacher, you have very little chance to get some useful hint of what is happening to your students.
Anyway, what mostly impressed me in the video was the part about virtual communication.
I was a tutor online last year (and I've been practising a lot of virtual communication: skype, MSN, e-mails, chats, fora) and I'm sure there's some kind of particular 'non-verbal communication' even when you use written words to communicate... I can't really explain -at the moment - how it works, yet after some time you've been 'reading' a person's messages, you become able to 'feel' how she/he's feeling, what's going on: confidence, disappointment, uneasiness, enthusiasm... You can feel it.

And...as regards our students, most of them hate writing the so-called "temi di italiano" but, at the same time, write wonderful involving thoughtful 'things' on their personal blogs. Almost 'correct', from a linguistic point of view, too...

Very, very late... Going to bed
'Night
Dani