Included in the Digital Ideas Advent Calendar with a new idea each day!
Undergraduate students taught by lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail than those involved in active learning. – Bajak, A. (2014)
In my new book, The 30 Goals Challenge for Teachers, I talk about how even the best lectures aren’t fair for the majority of students in our classes. They simply aren’t brain-friendly if the lectures are over 10 minutes and students are not actively involved either by taking notes, using a backchannel, etc. It’s actually natural for us to want to share what we learned the last 4 or more years in college with our new audience of learner, especially if we are inspired. I’ve lectured before and felt I inspired people. However, I’ve been trying to make even my keynotes and presentations more interactive with demonstrations, backchanneling, and a few activities. The idea is to change things up at least every 10 minutes so that you can awaken your learners’ brains. My art history teacher was a master at this. She’d throw in a funny image to make us laugh, then we’d move on. Try any of the ideas listed below to spice up your lectures and if you find them interesting then share them with your colleagues who lecture. Feel free to download the slide presentation below with ideas, examples, resources, and web tools. Keep scrolling to find the bookmarks with free apps, tools, and ideas.
Ideas
Find the presentation ideas listed below:
- Get them moving
- GoNoodle.com 5 min. brain breaks
- Try a different format
- Pecha Kucha– 20 slides, 20 secs each = 6min40sec. This Ultimate PK Guide should help!
- Ignite– 15 slides, 20 secs each = 5min
- Get them to try different note-taking tools or create visual maps. Find my bookmarks here, http://www.pearltrees.com/shellyterrell/notetaking/id8081893
- Demonstrations & experiments
- Give the lecture like a historical figure! Check out Amy Burvall’s cool Youtube history channel!
- Along those lines, use drama to animate your lectures. Here are a few ideas!
- Integrate humor. My Teach with Humor bookmarks!
- Get their input with tools like GetKahoot, InfusedLearning, Socrative, Linoit, Padlet, Tally.tl, Todaysmeet, Plickers, PollEverywhere, use a Twitter hashtag and other backchannel tools
- Play music
- Create a scene. Check out Jamie Keddie’s lesson here!
- Use puns, brainteasers, or optical illusions
- Try different questioning techniques like throwing a ball.
- Breakout in a rap. Check out Fluency MC’s Youtube!
- Do some magic, which is especially helpful for showing a science phenomenon
- Here is a great example of a teacher using magic to get his class excited about math, April Fools: Math Class Shadow Youtu.be/blOrY-nEGaE
- Introduce puppets
- Integrate short audio or video clips from subject matter experts in the field
- Use realia
- Try different presentation options, such as Prezi.com, Emaze.com, HaikuDeck, EduBuncee, and Slideshare. For more options see these bookmarks, http://www.pinterest.com/shellyterrell/presentation-tools/
- With Google presentations, your students can help you curate the presentation while you give it or even ahead of time.
- Flip the lecture- See my presentation, Flipping Out Over My Learning! and also my Flipped Classroom bookmarks, http://www.pearltrees.com/shellyterrell/flipped-learning/id7365557
Challenge: Use one of these ideas or resources to spice up your lecture!
If you enjoyed these ideas, you may want to get your copy of The 30 Goals for Teachers or my $5.99 ebook, Learning to Go, which has digital/mobile activities for any device and editable/printable handouts and rubrics. Subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!
Bookmarks
Included in the Digital Ideas Advent Calendar! Scroll the image below and each day discover free web tools, apps, and resources.
