Reflection #2

Technology has been a part of my professional and personal life for such a long time that I think that I had become a bit complacent in the technology that I use in my day to day life. This class really challenged me to explore more and look at what’s out there, how can it be adapted to benefit my child, his learning experience, and broaden his horizons.

I learned so much in this class, the importance of 21^st century skills, common core standards, and how the classroom is changing, in regards to flipped classrooms, are two things that I will not forget tomorrow or anytime soon. I have become more aware of how the classroom will be changing once my child is in school and the skills that teachers will be focused and how these skills will be taught.

As far as how I will apply what I have learned to teaching, I will probably never teach, but I will apply much of what I learned to my child. Surprisingly, I think that I may have been a bit scared to expose him to technology because I was afraid of what might happen (end up with a computer game playing zombie) or what he might be exposed to. I think my fear was more about how to regulate the exposure and what he should be learning. This class gave me so much insight on how handle technology exposure, but also how to regulate it and turn it into a more collaborative and bonding experience.

Blog Post #3

Here is the blog post I am responding to:

http://www.thethinkingstick.com/the-evolution-of-the-lecture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-evolution-of-the-lecture

The Evolution of the Lecture

In my last blog post a couple days ago I talked about lectures not being a bad thing. 

Both Will and I make livings now lecturing to people. Lectures aren’t bad when used properly to motivate, inspire, or push thinking. So the flipped approach is not about replacing the lecture.

That quote has been tweeted a bit and it has me thinking about the changes we have seen in lectures and how they do not need to be should not be the sit and get sessions we remember from our time in school.

In fact I think lectures are making a come back in some sense. We all love TED Talks which are nothing more than a lecture. But a lecture with something we all really enjoy….a time limit. 18 minutes is all you get for a TED Talk and because of that time limit it’s an intense 18 minutes. I know when I was giving my TEDx Talk I was watching the clock to make sure I was on time and within the limits as they will cut you off. 

Lectures aren’t the problem….Bad lectures are.

There is no reason a lecture today should not be interactive and engage the audience in the ideas being talked about. Or fast and engaging to the point where people don’t want to be off task. This is what TED does so well.

Will Richardson (I’ll keep picking on him for now) at his ISTE presentation lectured…and it was a great lecture. But what made it even better was that he used Today’s Meet a free chat room for those in the audience to share their ideas. Will did a great job of asking people to get involved, to give him feedback, and then he used the audiences input to change and adapt his talk. Taking time to check the stream, to engage with his audience. That is what a good lecture today should be. 

There is absolutely no reason why this can’t be done in a classroom. There are so many ways to engage your audience when giving a lecture that it should be just what we expect from a lecture in today’s digitally connected world. 

We also know more about the brain then ever before and know the brain needs processing time, or think time about every 10 minutes. Which is why whenever I’m giving a talk, about every 10 minutes I give the audience a 3 minute talk and process time. This also allows me to look at notes, chat rooms, tweets, or whatever system I have set up and reflect on how the lecture is going, see where I need to make changes and adapt to the audience. Again TED Talks are so good because they are no longer than 18 minutes and most are much shorter than that. Giving us that perfect chunk of knowledge that we can handle, process, and make meaning of.

I still find it fascinating how many times when giving a talk that this idea of back channeling is a new concept to so many. As if “sit and get” is still what is expected. It shouldn’t be!

Simple ways to back channel in the classroom:

• Collaborative Notes: The simplest and probably most rewarding for students is to allow collaborative note taking by the class. Once you introduce students to this, whether in a lecture, in reading text, or just studying for a test it changes the note taking process forever…and I would argue for the better. Google Docs works perfect for this!
• Chatroom: There are so many free ones out there or you can use a simple Google Doc and have students chat in the doc if you have that available. So many possibilities with a chatroom I don’t know why this isn’t more common.
• Class Twitter Hashtag: I personally have never used this in a classroom but I know of others that have and as long as every student has a Twitter account (and they should) then this adds power not only during class but anytime students are connected they could be sharing, learning, engaging in the class.
• Class Facebook Page: If you set up a class Facebook page students can chat, take notes, discuss, and stay connected long after the period or school is over. In fact just today on one of the class Facebook pages that I helped a teacher set up at ISB a graduated Senior posted he passed the IB exam and gave a shout out to the teacher thanking him for his teaching and helping him the past two years to find his voice and have a new respect for literature. Pretty cool if you ask me. 

If you find yourself in a situation where you are giving a lecture make it interactive….and no, a 100 slide powerpoint presentation is not interactive no matter how many times the letters fly in from the left, top and right. 

Lectures aren’t bad…..bad lectures are bad. Take time to make your lectures interactive, to put the focus on those listening and give them the power to interact with the content and with each other and you change the dynamics in a classroom really quickly. You put the focus on the learner not the content and that is never a bad thing.

 

Response

http://www.thethinkingstick.com/the-evolution-of-the-lecture/#comment-11522

I really enjoyed your post. In general, the classroom should be more interactive, allowing for you as the lecturer to see where people’s interests are and if they are not understanding what is being discussed. For me, lectures have been same in many of my classes, where you just sit and listen, follow a powerpoint session, and maybe ask a question, but in general as the student you tend to zone out.

I’m not sure if Twitter or chatroom would be best route to take, as it would seem there is the potential for people to spend more time chatting or tweeting versus paying attention to the lecture, though I do like the idea of a class Facebook page. I feel that the Facebook page may be more beneficial in engaging people outside of class.