Reflection microteach
1: Less may be more.
Speak less fast,
Food for thought for me…How to approach a “dreamer”… When a student is maybe absent-minded in class (or online). As long as they are not disruptive this may just be necessary. We never know what is happening “on the other end”. I was called upon, after I <JUST> finished a call with a student who needed to discuss something. I was getting back to BBCollab and found that I was prompted for a question in the PGCert class by the presenter at the time. Oups.
Note different style choices: One can validly spend 20 minutes on a single slide – vs – 3 minutes on a slide (which is what I did). Depends on slide; depends on style and topic.
I am so happy that some of the colleagues have – upon my prompt in class 1 – decided to not use any slides at all. 😀 BIG SHOUTOUT <3 😀 We love mini-mannequins!
Major reflections on “When Tech fails you. “
It really feels that less is more.
I have the habit of never ever making tech a non-negotiable condition on the success of a lecture or presentation.
In fact I explicitly go through my presentation under the assumption that my projector/beamer can fail. In fact, I usually have a backup USB stick with the presentation, and a copy “in the cloud”. That means my device could break/get stolen/fail and I still continue my work. I have Backup- tech, and Backup-backup tech.
For important and essential meetings (PhD Viva) I even have backup-backup-backup contingencies. In this case this means I have A3 sized prints of my slides which I can blue-tack on the wall if needed.
I have little (numbered!) physical speech cards with my talking prompts if I need to be <absolutely> certain everything goes perfect.
This over-preparation gives me a lot of relaxation and a calmness and interactivity that makes public speaking a thoroughly enjoyable part of my work. I can focus on the audience (as I don’t have to focus much on myself).
It is a lesson I have been taught a while ago myself by watching a colleague have a complete nightmare of a presentation. They were a nervous speaker to begin with, and then EVERYTHING went wrong that could have gone wrong.
Seeing this made me even more adamant that I will never fully rely on any tech or item (usb sticks) when on presentation duty. I can – after all – only trust myself and my skills. Everything else is a nice supporting technology; I do not let any of this be an essential need.
“Denise, are you with us”
“Sorry I have to sign up to Miro”.
I regret to concluded that – for me – I don^t think that new tech is not appropriate for a 20 minute session.
Rachel appreciated that I call my CWs “Housekeeping”. I am glad this was noticed and picked up. This was an intentional decision on my part.
Also my term “class choreography” was picked up; as it is signposting an explicit political stance in terms of my pedagogy.
I try to give the right balance of “warm up” and the “content” of the lecture with the appropriate ratio.
“SHE STAYED SOOO COOL! “
One of the presenters had a major tech failure, which illustrates a wholly different approach to dealing with tech failures.
However, the speaker stayed SO COOL during the tech failure and patiently persisted until the issue was resolved. Metaphorically speaking, I feel one could have been set the speaker on fire and you would have just extinguished yourself whilst keeping a clean grasp on the class.
The speaker persevered, accepted that this would into her time, and just waited for the issue to be resolved.
I, instead, would have thrown out the video immediately and carried on without it.
MAYBE that may have been the right call? (It would have been for me) – but I would have done things differently. That is exciting food for thought.
Once again, a note to myself: KNOW YOUR TECH!
Example: Chrome and BBcollab are much more friendly with each other than Firefox and BBcollab.
Make sure you know your tech. BBCollab is bad at best.
Another speaker gave a fantastic example on how to bring race and politics into the classroom.
This speaker was much less subtle than with Annie; and that is more my style. If I only have 20 minutes; I want to go bold.
They used an image from Camberwell. Nice. I like that. It acknowledges the local ecology.
And briefly mentioning Gillette maybe relates to men in particular. This nod, however did not distract from the Black&Female intersectional emphasis of the class. It was merely a segway to relate to bodypolitics and advertising. In a classroom setting having a main focus on more female centred themes; but juxtaposing that with the Gillette ad may be really smart and strategic.
I wonder:
If chat is taking on a great dynamic; maybe keep a record of that? Sometimes the best lecturer is taking themselves back and just becomes a scribe (whiteboard and pen). And just documents the discussion.
In conclusion:
The image was outstanding and a brilliant provocation that sparked a lot of discussion/debate/fruitful conversation. I thought this was an extremely extremely successful conversation/provocation. I think I would have found it useful to order the conversation.
Hunter chat contribution: I think this image was an extremely successful provocation that opened up a very deep, thorough and meaningful conversation.
It would have been maybe great to hear you sum up the conversation again at the end. Did you take notes of the conversation? The group steered the conversation really well after your prompts.
In such instances I try to reduce my function to “scribe” from “lecturer”.
Social semiotics session:
Difficult to follow. I wonder… this is <my> field, but it may as well have been in a foreign language. Why did I not connect to the lesson at all? I haven’t made time to think about this yet. Maybe in the future. I don’t have the emotional space for this right now.
Hunter: On lighting (presentation by a tech-focussed course participant).
I thought that was really really clear. I really loved the beginning especially.
Towards the end I think rather than go into some more detailed aspects of lighting, I would maybe have preferred to hear about your favorite lighting artists, or current and past trends in light design? (Maybe how LEDs have changed the discipline/practice)?
This is mainy because I have no direct relation to this topic.
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Then comes my presentation…
(in a different blog post).