Garr Reynolds on Making Lectures More Engaging

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last month at TED  in Osaka, Garr Reynolds gave this presentation on how to make lectures (lessons) more engaging. The talk is only about 20 minutes long but it is full of wisdom and presentation wonderfulness. The themes of engaging visuals for presentation and interaction in learner activities are very nicely dealt with.

But here is the problem: teacher-centeredness. Most teachers (in Japan, the main source of examples for Mr Reynolds, but also in other places) can see a presentation guru up on stage at a TED or other event and draw a direct connection to their own situation. Adding more visuals, better coordinating your slides and your message: these are things that the type of teachers who attend this type of conference can transfer fairly easily to their own classroom situation. The harder part, the really really hard part, is making a shift toward a more learner-centered, creative learning environment. Mr Reynolds offers some nice ideas, chiefly making higher ed classes more similar to elementary school classes. That will work for college-level higher ed, but it seems to be a hard thing to transition into for jr. and sr. high school teachers for many reasons (time, tests, training, expectations, teaching culture, infrastructure, to name a few). In a previous post, I described the present norm as I see it in English language classes at high schools and some of the reasons why this norm is accepted when it should be unacceptable.

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