Sunday, February 14, 2010

More from cool cat teacher

I found the coolest slide show on her blog this morning. It was all about how we learn and how to keep the attention when giving presentations and teaching. Here are a few quotes I took from the slide show. It is called "Brain Rules" and was created by Garr Reynolds.

"There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle" -Dr. John Medina

Passevely sitting is a very unnatural. Audiences have no patience for tedium. Think of the presentation from your audiences point of view.

People who are interrupted take 50% longer to complete a task and make 50% more errors.

Structure your presentations around meaning and the big picture then support key ideas with details.

"if keeping someones attention in a lecture was a business, it would have an 80% failure rate." -Dr. John Medina

after 10 minutes, audience attention steadily drops. So do something emotionally relevant at each 10 minute mark to regain attention. Tell a relevant story, show a relevant video, do a relevant activity, etc.

Fact: we have better recall fro visual information.

Hear a peice of information and 3 days later you'll remember 10% of it, add a picture and you'll remember 65%.

"pictures beat text...because reading is so ineffecient for us. We have to identify certain featires in the letters to be able to read them, that takes time." - Dr. John Medina

I think that everyone who has to do some kind of presentation or is teaching should see this slide show. I learned so much that I can take with me not only into the class room but also to other classes as well. I thought it was very interesting that after 10 minutes the interest drops off. I know from experience that this happens, if I am not interested in something I will start day dreaming about other things than what is being talked about. I now know that I need to make sure that I do whatever I can to keep the interest of my students. I will have to keep these points in mind when teaching and making lesson plans!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Beth,
    I went to the Cool Cat Teacher website and made a RSS link and then created a Google page. New things for me to play with. This blog looks like it has some potential for new ideas and information. I enjoyed your summary of the article about boring people during presentations or better yet how not to. I will keep some of these ideas in mind when preparing a presentation, especially the idea of using visuals more and doing something relevant every ten minutes.

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  2. I certainly try to do something different every 10 minutes or so. I think attention wanders even quicker when students are staring at a screen rather than being in a room with other students.

    These brain rules are good things to think about as you consider the classroom environment that you'll be creating. How many potential behavior issues can be subverted and avoided if you implement these rules in your lessons and activities?

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