IS STUCK

Interactive

This means that someone other than you (the teacher/presenter/speaker) is active. You can make your presentation or teaching interactive in many ways: using volunteers, asking questions, giving tasks, etc. Everyone does not have to be active but at least one person other than you. Also, the term interactive implies that there is an exchange (“inter”) between parties. This distinction is important because novice teachers often employ fake interactive techniques. For example, at the end of a long lecture s/he will ask the class “Are you with me?” or “Do you get it?” or even “Any questions?” in a way that they don’t actually expect a response from the students. And, even if the students do respond, it is generally the end of the lecture so there is only time to clarify misunderstandings. There is no “inter”action, especially about the material being taught. Interactive teaching helps students to interact with the information given to further their understanding, not simply providing an opportunity to hear misunderstandings. Fake interactive techniques are a bad habit that misleads teachers into believing everyone actually did understand completely. A general test to evaluate whether a presentation is interactive or not, is to ask “Could this lesson have been taught without students?” If the answer is “yes”, than you know the lesson is NOT interactive. If the answer is “no” then you have succeeded at being interactive.

Simple

To keep it simple is to start with what is known and then move to what is unknown to the audience. It means you also start with one piece or a simple part and then move to complexity. And, most importantly, it means you do not overload people with information but focus on a few crucial points that you want your audience to remember.

Example: Utilize anchoring analogies where you draw a similarity between something well known to explain something more complex. For example, when learning DNA, teachers often refer to the double helix as a spiral staircase. Cars, when they were first introduced were marketed as “horseless carriages.” Fog is simply a cloud touching the earth. In an atom, electrons orbit the nucleus the way planets orbit the sun.

Another way to keep things simple is to provide idea organization, where you represent complex information visually or broken down in an easily understood structure. For example, good teachers employ graphic organizers such as Venn Diagrams and Flow Charts. Keeping it simple sounds easy to do. Novice teachers make the mistake of thinking that keeping it simple means you don’t have to put in a lot of effort and can simply list information. But lists are not always simple. For example, in computers there are complex programming languages. Information can be stored as either True or False with corresponding symbols or as 0 or 1. There are a whole list of rules to follow as to which information should be stored in which language with which symbol. A bad teacher would simply write the list of rules on the board and tell students to cram it. A great teacher would find some way of creatively organizing the ideas so it is easy to remember. For example, one professor used plastic cups and glass cups to illustrate visually what kind of information falls in whichever cup. Glass cups use one symbol; plastic uses another. Throughout the term, as they learned more and more about complex computer language, the students would refer back to the cups—is it glass or plastic? Presenting Simple actually takes effort and creativity.

Unexpected

Qn: Boda Vs Lion. Who should you fear?

This is the skill of catching the audience’s attention, curiousity and imagination. A simple way to do this is by asking a question and getting students to guess. One of the most effective methods of being Unexpected is to reverse anticipated misunderstandings. For example, a teacher may inform her students that deers kill more people around the world than sharks.

Of course, you want to be unexpected in a way that relates to your actual topic. If this teacher says the shocking deer fact and then goes on to teach algebra, the unexpected technique is useless. However, if she teaches alegbra by calculating up the number of people around the world killed by both creatures, then her Unexpected technique is a success. The key is to be unexpected in a way that bolsters your topic instead of distracting from it.

Another way to describe the Unexpected technique is that it is a way of opening a knowledge gap that students are eager/excited/curious to have filled by your instruction. For example why is the sky blue? Why do men have nipples? Because molecules in the air scatter blue lights from the sun. its an unexpected shock. This shock is used to spark interest in an otherwise boring topic. Any topic can be made fun and interesting if the teacher puts in the effort and creativity to make it that way. Open a knowledge gap you can close.

Example: In a Oceanography class where you learn the boring, long list of the flow of ocean currents, the teacher asked at the beginning of the term, “if you put a message in a bottle and throw it in the middle of the ocean, where will it end up?”. This makes a cool mystery students can solve with the knowledge they learn in class.

Concrete

Make the information you teach something students (or can imagine) they can touch, see, or feel. Give real world examples. Make it real. Novice teachers often make the mistake of choosing the least effective way of conveying information or skills. If we are taught in a strickly classroom, academic setting, we forget that the best way to learn about experiments is by experimenting. Sometimes the best way to teach something is not by what we traditionally think of when we think about teaching (someone at the front of the room talking). Sometimes the best way to teach is for the teacher to provide a conducive environment and get out of the way of his/her students learning.

Refer to the activity of tying a shoe. What is the most effective approach? Should you lecture the class from the front of the room? Should you draw a diagram? Should you list out the steps? Should you start by first explaining the history of shoes and have the students memorize the parts? This may sound ridiculous but these are the exact same mistakes we make in teaching more complex, traditional topics. If your goal is to teach the class how to tie a shoe, bring a shoe, demonstrate or give an example, and then let them practice. Similarly, if your goal is to teach students to practice entrepreneurship, bring a case study of an entrepreneur, demonstrate key techniques, and then let the students practice entrepreneurship (either in a fictional sense or in reality with friends). Perhaps, eventually or in some professional settings, it is important for students to know that Joseph Schumpter is the father of entrepreneurship. However, what do you test? What do you emphasize and make sure the students learn? According to the concrete principle, it is more important that each student leaves the room able to practice entrepreneurship than able to recite the name and date of birth of the first practitioner.

Examples: In Educate!, when we teach marketing, we task scholars to market the products they have made.To teach simple math, one teacher used money in the market.

Knowledge

Knowledge refers to being knowledgeable about your topic. As a teacher, you should be able to talk around the issues you are teaching, and not be limited to the content you are covering in class.

It is also important to talk about the The Curse of Knowledge. This is a curse where once we have learned something or know something, it is difficult (if not almost impossible) to imagine what it was like not knowing that thing anymore. For example, once you know how to read, it is extremely difficult to look at text and imagine not to understand letters as just abstract symbols. Once you learn an equation, or how to read a map, or how to talk, not only is it difficult to imagine ever having those skills, but also frustrating to relate to someone who has yet learned it. This is a curse that makes teaching (imparting new knowledge) sometimes difficult and frustrating.