‘Take 20 minutes to move around the room with a partner …’ Those words can be music to the ears of many learners when we have been sitting for a long-time training or they have been in a multi-day event.
So why don’t we see this technique used much? Why do we feel we need to stay in the training space and can only use other spaces during breaks and down time? Why do we keep people in their seats so much when we know they are getting tired and distracted?
Years ago, I was on a Board of Directors for a local charity. Another board member always brought her knitting to our meetings and when someone asked why she did this, she simply responded, “It helps me concentrate.” After 30 years of meetings, trainings, and other convenings — in the role of facilitator, teacher, participant, member, Chair, Secretary, leader, professor, or facilitator
Many of us are back on the road facilitating in-person events. It feels great! We can move around the room to engage with content and each other, we can sit in a circle for personal sharing, and we can touch, add and move ideas around to co-create meaning as we stand at a wall or move around a table.
Visuals are critical for any learning event because visual learners need information offered to them in this way. However, “more visuals” do not necessarily mean “more learning.” Here are 10 things to remember: Visual learners need to...
Through the great Dialogue Education class Designing Learning-Centered Training for Peacebuilding at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University, I realized the importance of art in my life. The opportunity to explore myself through the use of...
Webinars offer a great alternative to holding face-to-face workshops as they save the costs and carbon associated with travel. However, they can easily become a sleep-inducing monologue in which a disembodied voice drones over a hypnotic barrage of never-ending...
Winding our way through Bali last spring, we observed people throughout the island offer small, hand-woven baskets to their gods. These daily baskets were lovingly filled with sandalwood incense, fresh flowers, and a local food item such as fish, or other real food,...
In an education event juggling work books, lots of paper, and other written documents is a challenge for any learner (and teacher!). When the learners are people living with dementia trying to find the right piece of paper or spot on a page can interfere with...
Tired of “death by PowerPoint?” Do you struggle with dull, endless, listless, droning presentations? It doesn’t have to be that way. If you’ve attended a PechaKucha Night in one of the more than 800 cities around the globe, it’s probably occurred to you already that...
[my doodle: June 2014] "Am I boring you?" I was doodling during a university faculty meeting. My department head noticed I was working on an elaborate abstract shape while he was talking about research budgets and changes in the grading policies. He assumed...
Numbers have a whole world of information beneath them. Making decisions on numbers alone can get you into trouble. At a recent meeting to evaluate and adapt the pilot of a six-week online course, my colleague Jeanette Romkema and I shared the numbers about level of...
As I write these words, my 13-year-old daughter is sitting next to me, entranced by the iPhone in her hand and the world of images to which she has access. From showing me silly cat memes to sending her friends pictures on Instagram and Snapchat, images are a huge...