Discussing Effective Teaching Techniques: Finding Relevance

1/14/2013

"Chance Favors the Connected Mind"

Creativity
and
Innovation

We will begin our collaborative session with this short video from the RSA Animate lecture series. In this video, Steve Johnson, an incredibly innovative and popular thinker, takes on one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? Steve dissects the spaces that traditionally produce the emergence of innovative and creative ideas.

PART ONE
LOGIN
TO
GOOGLE

Using Google Chrome, go to Google.com, and login with your deeprunwildcats.org account information. If you don't know how to do this, simply turn and collaborate with person nearest you.

PART TWO
DIVIDE

To make this lesson more efficient, the entire faculty will be divided into two distinct groups. We will call these groups A and B. This will allow us to cover more content in less time.

PART THREE
VISIT THE LINK
& MAKE A COPY

[2 MINUTES]

Click the appropriate link below according to which group you were assigned.
.........................................................................................................
Group A members should click here
.........................................................................................................
Group B member should click here
.........................................................................................................
Once you have logged into Google, and have visited the appropriate link, you will need to make a copy of the presentation so that you can manipulate it without disrupting the original.

To do this, look in the upper left and select:
File > Make a copy

Then, rename your copy something that intuitively makes sense to you. To rename the presentation, click the title in the upper left portion of the document that reads "copy of..."

PART FOUR
SKIM,
EDIT,
& ARRANGE

[5 MINUTES]

Now that you have the presentation in order, take the next 5 minutes to quickly skim the content, delete the slides that you don't think are relevant, and leave yourself with 3-5 slides that are relevant. Do this quickly based on your initial gut reactions. And please be sure you are not deleting slides from the original!

Once you have narrowed the entire list down to 3-5 slides, you should quickly put them into a rank order of how relevant the techniques are to All Subjects. Keep the best ideas at the top.

Feel free to create your own slides that describe better teaching techniques that are much more relevant to all teachers than those I provided today. Ideally, you have much better ideas those shared today, and your ideas will make it to the final list to be shared with the faculty at a later date.

PART FIVE
GROUP
DISCUSSION
& DEBATE

[15 MINUTES]

Now let the debate begin. Get into smaller groups of about 5 teachers, and try to sit with some new people in order to establish more unity among the entire faculty.

The main goal of today's activity is to promote a dialogue among professionals about good teaching practices,

Create a list, using paper or your computer, of your group's top 5 most relevant and effective concepts from your group's list of slides, and rank them in order of Relevance to All Teachers.

If your group discussed other concepts that are More Relative and More Effective... please put those in your top 5 list!

PART SIX
VOTE

[2 MINUTES]

The top 14 choices refer to Group A, and the bottom 14 refer to Group B.

SUMMARY
LEAVE
FEEDBACK

[ON YOUR TIME]

Below is a space to leave feedback about today's instructional faculty meeting. This is not mandatory, but it will be appreciated. If there is information that you'd like to add to the presentation, or just some constructive feedback about how today could have been more effective, please fill out the comment section below.

22 Comments

Facilitated by
Mike Guyer

I was asked by Lenny Pritchard to lead this instructional portion of the faculty meeting. I wanted this meeting to be relevant and helpful for ALL teachers, so I included everyone in a collaborative idea exchange.

I wanted to avoid a long-winded lecture, and did not want to come across as "preachy". Additionally, I wanted to avoid difficult technology that would confuse people and eat away at the idea exchange opportunity.

Becky Lambert

1/14/2013 09:48:08 pm

Great way to share! I wish you had more time!!!!

Mike Guyer

1/15/2013 01:01:47 am

Becky,

That seems to be the common thought here. I think we are going to revisit this in February for staff development. Hopefully, we can have even more good ideas that are relevant collected by then.

PMStockdale

1/16/2013 10:09:48 pm

Great work!

1/14/2013 09:48:15 pm

Terrific presentation, Mike! Thank you.

1/15/2013 01:03:35 am

You are always so positive! Thank you very much.

Hattie

1/14/2013 09:48:35 pm

Great stuff and ideas. LOVE the video. Just wish we had a little more time so it wasn't so rushed.

1/15/2013 01:06:41 am

I love those RSA Animate videos. I use them a lot in my classroom because the are do dynamic. I whole-heartedly agree that we needed more time to make that session work as well as I had planned it to. I don't think I've ever put so much time into a 30 minute class before.

Beth Berry

1/14/2013 09:49:00 pm

Thanks for all the great ideas, Mike. I loved seeing the ideas from teachers in other content areas.

1/15/2013 08:15:47 am

Thank you so much for your willingness to help me out with all this. This lesson wouldn't have been nearly as good if I didn't reach out to a wide range of teachers from different disciplines. Perspective is everything.

Dan Dickey

1/14/2013 09:49:34 pm

This is great! I have been feling stale recently with my lessons and this is a great way to infuse new ideas! Thank you Mike!

1/15/2013 08:23:13 am

I'm glad you got something out of this. Feel free to send me any effective techniques you currently use, so that I can continue to build a space where teachers can collaborate. If everyone contributed one of their most effective techniques, and we were to sort through all of them as a faculty.... it might affect the way we do things in this building as a whole.

Jessica Slota

1/14/2013 10:31:25 pm

So helpful, thank you! I wish it wasn't so rushed though, maybe we could revisit during our staff development day in a few weeks?

1/15/2013 01:07:39 am

I think the plan is to revisit some of that content. I think when we do, it will be much more relaxed and creative. That's my plan at least.

McL

1/14/2013 10:36:48 pm

Great lesson! Felt bad that you had to rush. Good ideas for all disciplines, appreciate yout time and your sharing.

1/15/2013 08:11:39 am

Yeah, I felt incredibly rushed. It would be idea if I had an hour and a half to walk everyone through it, give enough time to contemplate everything, provide a creative space in which to work, and allow teachers to pool their thoughts and invent new teaching strategies that were not yet discussed. At least we had an overview, and the feedback so far has been pretty positive.

Shannon Brown

1/14/2013 11:49:42 pm

Great ideas! I think we should look at this again during a staff development ...relevant to all content areas. Thanks!

1/15/2013 12:59:57 am

I think we will be revisiting this during our next Staff Development Day in February. Hopefully, we can do it in a more creative space than the auditorium. A place where there are tables and chairs we can move between, sheet of paper to write on, music, etc. That's how I like to get things done, and that's how students enjoy working also. :)

1/15/2013 12:04:59 am

Looks like we be on Pacific time!

Mike Guyer link

1/15/2013 12:31:57 am

I absolutely agree about wishing I had more time. More than anything, I wanted to get a lot of content to everyone fast, and thought that this method could work. I'd like to revisit some of this content again for sure in a longer staff development session, so that even more relevant and effective ideas can be shared.

I also want to thank all of the teachers who collaborated with me in this process, without your shared content, this would not have worked.

Emily Pierce

1/15/2013 11:22:59 pm

I sent you the email yesterday but I just thought today was great. I wish the whole time was yours to share with us. I do hope that we follow through in February because, as I told you yesterday, I think a lot of people took something away from it and really want more. Cheers!

Drew Baker

1/16/2013 01:24:53 am

Love it Guyer! I had fun looking through it all, and seeing the final product. Maybe next semester we can do a combo Staff Dev. Lesson?
Your organization, by the way, is insane.

1/16/2013 03:07:48 am

Drew,

Thanks for the props on the organization. I'd love to collaborate with you on a staff development at some point. I think we could come up with something creative and relative. I don' t like not being able to pop into your classroom like I used to. Come back to Deep Run.