Geoff Herbach

This seems small, but I base a lot of my in class activities on the use of technology. It is HUGELY important to understand the technical capabilities of a room in order to match the different teaching mediums to what's available. Great ideas in the course. I have been caught twice with technology that didn't match the room capability and that completely derailed a whole day of class each time. I will walk the room!

My tendency to let lecture bleed into discussions. It often happens after about fifteen minutes when I see students' eyes start to haze over. As I'm not too smart, it never occurred to me that it was natural attention span and not bad delivery on my part. Great strategy, the Mini-Lecture!!!

I have always done an "Oprah" exercise with my classes. I have the students break into pairs and they interview each other on a series of set questions. After, they introduce one another. Immediately one connection is made. Because the questions are the same for each pair, a bunch of connections are always made across the class. One semester, I decided the exercise was too much and didn't do it. The class NEVER gelled. Unbelievable what attention to this topic can do for you.

It's interesting to me to consider the "model" aspect here. I tend to run a very informal classroom where the students laugh a lot and enjoy themselves. I'm convinced they learn well in this setting, but am not sure I'm modeling in the way this module suggests. Will my students go into the world and fail because they've learned informality?