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The PL Team made a really neat Padlet with info all about public speaking.

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I really liked this one! It is all audio so you can listen to it like a podcast. If you want tips for sounding confident/natural/smooth check this out.

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Pete Mockaitis | How to Be Awesome at Your Job

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Great speaking skills are a must-have - Speaking Confidently and Effectively Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

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Speaking well is the new competitive advantage. Take a look at a few case studies where learning to speak really changed someone’s life.

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Learn video skills to turn your next boring training session into an exciting visual presentation.

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Turning Boring Presentations into Engaging Training with Video | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

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Most of us rely on slide presentations for conducting training at work. But no matter how much energy you put into your slides, they can still turn out so drab and ineffective, which can cause your training to fall flat. In this course, instructor Rob Glass shows you how to use video to create more…

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This portion of the training focuses on breakout rooms. The whole session is really great! It focuses on ways to effectively lead meetings in Zoom.

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Creating breakout rooms and automatically assigning participants - Zoom Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

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Breakout rooms are a great feature that allows you to place your participants in smaller groups within a larger meeting. Learn the first basic steps for creating breakout rooms for your participants.

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This article brings up important things to consider when designing PD sessions.

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1. Use What You Are Teaching

If a method of teaching works, that method should be used for teaching the teachers in your PD sessions. For example, if you're teaching cooperative learning but you're lecturing about it, that's undermining the message. Teachers notice what you do, so model what you're teaching by teaching with it. If you don't have enough time to use the methods that work, then you've just given an out to the teachers who will say that they don't have enough time to do it either.

2. Develop Something That You'll Use Right Away

The best PD classes had us teachers create lesson plans that we could use within two weeks of completing that class.

3. Use the Lesson and Receive Feedback

Then, using a rubric created for the class, we would try out the lesson we'd created in our PD session less than two weeks ago and receive feedback from a trained administrator or a peer. If you wait to implement, you'll never implement.

4. Improve and Level Up With Another Lesson

After receiving feedback, teachers worked on another lesson. This approach of lesson design, lesson performance, and feedback is powerful. Not surprisingly, important features found in a recent study included integrating new knowledge, learning together with colleagues, and being actively engaged in meaningful discussions ( van den Bergh, Ros, and Beijaard, 2015).

5. Local Responsibility and Buy-In

"Drive-by training" is rarely helpful. Without local acceptance, accountability, and follow up, teachers leave the PD class with continuing education units and not much else. Someone on staff needs to have responsibility for making sure that teachers use the technique and receive feedback in a way consistent with the class. Be sure that this person attends the class and takes part.

Ken Blanchard says in Leading at a Higher Level (p.213):

People often resent change when they have no involvement in how it should be implemented. So, contrary to popular belief, people don't resist change -- they resist being controlled.

6. Long-Term Focus

PD should fit in with the long-term vision for a school or district. Some teachers groan about their district's "technology du jour" approach. Like the soup of the week, some districts don't know which technology or technique they want implemented. It takes time to learn, practice, and improve teaching. With too many different initiatives, it can send mixed messages and frustrate teachers. Fit PD into the long-term plan.

7. Good Timing

Fifteen years ago, I showed to up to train teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. As I walked on campus, I heard these words come over the speaker:

We have scheduled training for today after school. If you do not come, your contract will not be renewed. No excuses!

These angry teachers didn't know about the class (set up for months, by the way). They had their own children to pick up, and it was near the end of the school year. This was a horrific situation that happens all too often.

When teachers are in the midst of testing, let them focus on testing. I'm not sure why some state conferences insist on keeping their dates even when they know that their mandatory state testing will happen that week. If we want highly effective PD, the teachers need to be there in body and mind. While it is harder and harder to find a time that someone isn't testing, it can be done.

8. Empower Peer Collaboration

A great untapped potential lies in our ability to teach one another. Some teachers are curating Pinterest boards and sharing ideas, but we can do more. This past summer, our teachers hosted a personal learning community (PLC) and read Harry Wong's The First Days of School. We met for lunch three times and taught the chapters to each other. It was one of the best training classes I've ever attended -- and we did it ourselves!

Professional development is a vital part of improving your technique as a teacher. Learning best practices and practicing best practices are both important. You can make a school better by improving its teachers. Effective PD can do that.

Please share your ideas. What makes highly effective PD?

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If a method of teaching works, that method should be used for teaching the teachers in your PD sessions. For example, if you're teaching cooperative learning but you're lecturing about it, that's undermining the message. Teachers notice what you do, so model what you're teaching by teaching with it.

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University of San Diego - Professional & Continuing Education

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Most teachers are also passionate lifelong learners. In fact, courses and programs that provide opportunities for professional development for teachers are extremely important in the education field.

Motivated by intellectual curiosity and a desire to be the best educator they can be, many teachers also take professional development courses to help position themselves for salary advancement or to further their career goals.

So, what is teacher professional development and why is it so important?

Professional development for educators usually takes the form of either in-house, school district-sponsored training sessions or continuing education courses and programs, delivered on campus or online, under the auspices of a college or university.

Courses range from general topics that help educators stay on top of the newest standards and strategies, to specific subjects designed to help them enrich their teaching practice and improve classroom learning.

Unfortunately, enough educators have had an underwhelming experience with professional development that many do not hold the concept in high regard. According to a study cited in the Center for Public Education report there is no shortage of opportunity. Researchers found that 90 percent of teachers reported participating in professional development, but "most of those teachers also reported that it was totally useless." That is why the emphasis must be on "Teaching the Teachers: Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability," effective professional development.

Why Teacher Professional Development is Important

The field of education is constantly changing. So it makes sense that teachers must embrace the idea of being lifelong learners as well.

Professional development describes programs that enable educators to improve their own teaching - both by learning new teaching styles, tips and techniques, as well as subject areas; and by interacting with expert instructors and experienced educators in the program of their choice.

Federal, state and local educational organizations all place a high value on ongoing professional development for teachers. And it's easy to understand why. For one, there is research to indicate that teacher professional development can enhance student comprehension and achievement, according to a tolerance.org report titled "Teaching Teachers: PD To Improve Student Achievement."

Here are several of the perceived and proven benefits of quality professional development programs for teachers:

Enables teachers to hone specific skills and learn new ones.

Provides new strategies for educators.

Can enhance student learning.

Encourages the success of new teachers.

Is an opportunity for teachers to go in-depth on specific topics.

Promotes a professional growth mindset.

Can be used to meet salary advancement requirements.

Creates better planning and organizational skills.

Keeps educators engaged, motivated and positive.

The Learning Policy Institute authored a report in which it defines effective teacher professional development as "structured professional learning that results in changes in teacher practices and improvements in student learning outcomes."

10 Strategies for Effective, Engaging Teacher Professional Development

Ranging from in-school workshops during so-called professional development days to in-depth courses and programs taught by college-level instructors in a university classroom or online setting, professional development programs for teachers can range from obligatory to inspiring.

So what are some ways to ensure that such programs deliver the most bang for the buck - for teachers, for their school districts and, most important, for students? Here's a closer look at several strategies aimed at ensuring that teacher professional development efforts are as effective as possible.

1. Focus on honing classroom teaching skills: This goes to the heart of the idea that one of the most important purposes of teacher professional development is to enhance student learning. There are many teacher professional development courses created specifically to help working teachers improve their practice, ranging from programs for Beginning Teachers Introduction to Instructional Design for Educators ) to courses on Classroom Teaching Techniques Using Inquiry, Discussion and Experience to Develop Critical Thinkers and Inspire Lifelong Learning

2. Use it to develop subject matter expertise: Helping teachers gain advanced expertise in key academic areas, especially those that track with their personal and professional interests, can pay dividends in student achievement as well as teacher engagement and satisfaction. For example: A teacher who takes an in-depth course on the interconnectedness of Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics is likely to return to their classroom with a fresh head of

3. Provide strategies for overcoming specific challenges in the classroom: Teacher development programs on such important topics as Bullying Prevention Classroom Management provide valuable insight and perspective into aspects of the educational experience that can help set the stage for optimal learning.

4. Consider different formats: While in-depth professional development courses and one-off workshops are two of the most common formats for teacher professional development, there is a range of other models as well. From "unconferences" and lab classrooms to creating professional learning communities (PLCs), education blogger Jennifer Gonzalez examines nine different models in a post titled "OMG Becky. Professional Development is Getting So Much Better!"

5. Don't forget technology: The transformative impact of technology in education is vitally important, but occasionally overlooked. Though some teachers are resistant to technology, others may be surprised to discover that it can enhance their ability to help students thrive in the digital age. Examples of technology-themed professional development courses for educators include: The Tech Savvy Teacher, STEAM: Supporting Creativity for Innovation Digital Literacies for the 21st Century Classroom.

5 REASONS WHY CONTINUING EDUCATION MATTERS FOR EDUCATORS

Download eBook: 5 Reasons Why Continuing Education Matters for Educators

Popular Topics for Teacher Professional Development Courses

Topics for professional development courses run the gamut from Common Core Standards to Introduction to Coding for Educators. Differentiated Instruction, Adolescent Literacy and Closing the Achievement Gap, are among those cited by Teacher.org

The University of San Diego, which offers hundreds of high-quality professional development courses for educators through its Division of Professional and Continuing Education, lists the following courses as among its most popular:

Teacher Professional Development FAQs

What is teacher professional development?

Teacher professional development typically refers to programs focused on continuing education effort for educators. The goal is to provide teachers with opportunities to continue to improve their skills and learn new strategies and techniques, thereby leading to better student outcomes in the classroom.

Can teacher professional development courses be used for salary advancement?

Yes. Many school districts provide financial incentives for teachers who continue their professional growth by offering salary step increases for completing professional development programs. Note: The requirements for obtaining such salary increases vary widely; therefore, it is important to seek pre-approval from your school district to ensure that courses taken for salary advancement will fulfill district requirements.

Do some states require teachers to complete professional development training to maintain their licenses?

Specific requirements for license renewal vary greatly from state to state, with most states requiring some amount of continuing professional development training be completed by teachers to maintain their licenses, according to teachtomorrow.org. (California, New Jersey and Rhode Island are among the exceptions.)

Are there different formats for teacher professional development?

Yes. Teacher professional development is often thought of as in-school training programs administered by the individual school or district, either on designated teacher development days during the school year or in the summer. Educational conferences and workshops can sometimes count as professional development. Additionally, educators can find a world of professional development opportunities in online and on-campus courses offered through an accredited college or university.

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University of San Diego - Professional & Continuing Education

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10 Strategies for Effective Teacher Professional Development (with Examples) - University of San Diego - Professional & Continuing Education

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10 Strategies for Effective Teacher Professional Development (with Examples). Advance your career with professional and continuing education from the University of San Diego.

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Following the pandemic, the world has had to adapt to a new way of life in an almost entirely digital space. A significant amount of innovation has arisen in response to this sudden shift towards a digital world, among which is online education and virtual events, such as webinars. Despite the absence of in-person interaction that is often necessary to hold an audience's attention, there are many creative ways to make your webinars more engaging. We asked the experts at InsideScientific, a webinar, virtual event and content creation company recently acquired by Scientist.com, to share some of the insights they've gained while navigating the world of virtual events over the years. Read on to learn their ten tips on how to improve your webinars in 2022.
1. Take advantage of the poll feature.

Only 15% of webinars use polls. This is a huge missed opportunity, not only to collect valuable data from attendees, but also to get them to participate and engage with the actual live event. Poll the audience before the webinar even begins using the registration form. Find out ahead of time where the audience's interests lie and what common questions or misconceptions about your topic exist, then use this input to start a discussion during the live event. Be sure to incorporate polls with the presentation material - polling questions are much more engaging and have a better response rate when you keep them relevant to the topics you're speaking about, particularly if you share the results with the audience and include them in the conversation.

2. Lights, Camera, Action! Engage with the camera as you present.

Think about how your video feed/webcam can be different or better - consider lighting, camera angle, background and the extent to which you engage with the camera. Try to avoid being a head in a random room looking down at a laptop webcam (like most webinars).

3. Break the mold, and be original with the webinar format.

So many technical webinars follow a didactic lecture format, followed by a live Q&A. Try to shake things up by injecting more frequent short breaks for audience questions, use polls or live vote tool and experiment with presentation media (video to show equipment and procedures, screen share for software tutorials, whiteboard for live diagrams and concepts).

Intersperse short, demonstrative videos into your webinar to keep the session dynamic. Even webinars utilizing a webcam can feel static if all the presenter does is look into the camera and read. Creative use of short video can help a webinar provide viewers with a sense of action.

4. Utilize the chat feature to facilitate discussion.

For a very interactive webinar, consider opening up the Chat feature and having the speaker ask and respond to questions in real time. Utilize a panel discussion format, including non-speakers, as your Q&A session for engaging discourse post-presentation.

5. Plan for more than a webinar!

Document how you will use and host the on-demand material. Think about how you might use or repurpose content from your webinar in different ways. Examples would include a blog summary of the presentation highlights, short video clips of key concepts or even a quick podcast interview with presenters in parallel.

6. Expand your webinar into an educational journey.

Plan your webinars as a program, summit or series of events. Explain how the collection of content and experience will provide value and take the audience on an educational journey. For example, check out our Cutting Edge Conversations Series or a Cardiovascular Research Day to get an idea of how you could turn your webinar into a series.

7. Move beyond a simple PowerPoint presentation.

Use the whole buffalo as they say. There's more to a webinar than just the slide deck. Customizable environments and resource links are what separate an engaging environment from one likely to induce snores.

8. Provide your audience with a clear call to action.

Strategically plan your CTAs and present a clear "next step" for your registrants and attendees.

9. Create a dynamic marketing campaign.

Expand your marketing communications strategy. Don't use the same invitations for your webinar for the entire promotional campaign. Adjust your marketing communications strategy to focus on the presentation, who the speakers are and the type of work they are doing, the experience attendees will have, what they will learn, exclusive access for registrants, etc.

10. Use audience feedback to improve future webinars.

Collect feedback using a post-event survey. Don't just ask them to rate the webinar, but ask questions that can help shape your content strategy: "What topics would you like to learn more about in the future?" "What sections were most interesting or valuable to your work?" The key thing here is to review their feedback and suggestions and incorporate them into your presentations moving forward to continually refine your processes.

Please contact marketing@scientist.com for more information about how you can host a webinar with us.
Thank you to InsideScientific for providing these insightful tips!
Contributors: Andy Henton, Shiv Nair, Darius Soo Lum, Sydney Mensen, Andrew Davies

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10 Creative Ways to Make Your Webinar More Engaging

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Following the pandemic, the world has had to adapt to a new way of life in an almost entirely digital space. A significant amount of innovation has...

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This has great info for how we lead and plan webinars.

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How do we create a webinar that's engaging and interactive? The following ideas and webinar best practices were all submitted by professionals who organize online events, virtual conferences, and webinars and who attended my recent online workshop, Creating Dynamic, Engaging Online Conferences & Webinars. This list of engagement strategies is meant to help event planners, moderators and speakers make webinars more interactive. It's a combination of online presentation formats and strategies to use when thinking about how to create a webinar presentation. Or to use when planning an online conference session. Each of these engaging webinar best practices is listed along with some of my own additional commentary about how to make for more interactive webinars.

Breakouts lead to engaging webinars and more interactive conference sessions

As a webinar best practice, I fully agree with the importance of breakouts to increase engagement in meetings, both online and offline. First, you need to have an outstanding, compelling speaker if you want to keep your attendees engaged for more than 15 or 20 minutes. Most speakers at conferences or presentations are not professional entertainers or speakers and just don't usually have the capacity to carry a presentation for 45 minutes.

It's much easier to put people into groups and have them discuss or share. Getting people to participate keeps them from drifting off into other work like email or texting, and really values the people in the room as well as their expertise. We could write an entire book on how and where breakouts could or should be used in conference sessions or interactive webinars. The bottom line is that the typical model of someone doing 30 to 60 minutes with a slideshow presentation will not usually beat people getting to talk and meet with each other on a topic that they care about.

Less intro but more content

For sure. I'm often mystified by the amount of introductions that people will do even in a 30-minute presentation where the introduction may be 10 minutes and three or four of those minutes may be reading almost the entirety of someone's CV or the resumes of all five panelists. In most cases, all of the attendees already know who's speaking; that's the reason why they're there in the first place. This isn't to say that you should skip all of your introductions to make for a more interactive webinar.

One thing that we all see a lot of today is skipping any sort of explanation of the technology platform that we're using to have the meeting; then 10 or 20 minutes in we realize that people don't know how to mute and unmute themselves and we still have to spend that time and it really takes the energy out of the session. But as the old maxim goes: "Start where the action is!" For me, I try to get to small breakout groups pretty quickly to get people invested and engaged in the session and to feel like they're connected to other people there. It's not uncommon for me to introduce myself 10 minutes into the session. It's a little unconventional but that pays off when it comes to front-loading good energy and webinar engagement.

Have a moderator or facilitator to handle the chat, admitting people, help with any technical issues, etc. Then the presenter just has to present.

As someone who is both a presenter and someone who is often running a meeting or webinar platform in the background, I can tell you that the person behind the curtain makes a really big difference. This is, of course, even more applicable when you're talking about doing more involved activities where you have a larger audience. Just to keep track of what people are saying in a chat window when you have more than 10 or 20 people in a room can be overwhelming for a presenter and frustrating for attendees. As the old saying goes, behind every successful, engaging webinar presenter is a skilled online facilitator.

Have Q&A in various sections of session, rather than all at end, for a more engaging webinar

Totally! This is one of the easiest and most effective webinar best practice prescriptions that I write for people. If we think about why people go to presentations or conference sessions or webinars, it's often because they have an issue or question that they want addressed or solved or want some feedback on. People are there for the questions, perhaps more than they are there for the content of the presentation. (For more on creative conference workshops and content, check out this other write-up.)

When we talk about a "flipped model" of presenting, I would actually use it more frequently in this context than in the way it's usually meant. In many, many cases it's probably more valuable for the audience - and less work for the speaker - to do 10 minutes of presenting content via a slide show and then take 45 minutes of questions. Or to take some questions in the middle of the session, particularly if that's going to steer what's discussed for the second half of the session. In the end, put a star next to this webinar best practice because it's one of my favorites.

Side high fives to increase webinar interactivity

I've used the number of different activation like this, particularly at the beginning or end of sessions. They're a good energizer and get people to think outside the very real box of being inside little square video conferencing grids. I think people get caught up being behind the screen and interacting with each other like computers instead of like people. These "side high-fives" are pretending to give someone on the webinar a high-five when you're in the grid or gallery layout.

I've also done things like passing an object, such as a pen or a ball. (This is a meeting facilitation colleague of mine in Germany who did a neat little video of the #handover challenge and you can see how it breaks down the walls between people.) It's fun and it gets people to laugh. Of course it doesn't make any sense to watch it as the other participants because not everyone is in the same order. But it's still pretty fun. If you get a big group, it gets old after maybe a half-dozen or a dozen passes; I wouldn't advise trying to do this with a group of 20 or 30 people.

Take a "quiz" then poll participants about where they ended up; then the content is adjusted based on the largest response group

What I like about this is that it's sort of choose-your-own-adventure. Speakers plan out every little bit of a presentation and this doesn't lead to interactive webinars. And, on a larger scale, conferences will plan out every session weeks or months in advance. As such, it doesn't leave room for new topics and new ideas. It's important that presenters not be afraid of just having empty time to fill in a session. If you don't know if the group wants to work on one idea or the other, give them that choice and then use a meeting technique that makes sense after that. I think it's a good idea to adjust where a conference session or webinar goes based on the will of a group and using polling is a fun way to do that.

Bring the outside world inside: go outside during break; look out the window; bring an object and share something about it

This is indeed a webinar best practice, particularly if you're going to incorporate it into a break. You should definitely have breaks from people sitting and staring at a screen for potentially hours on end. In a case like this, doing something like reporting on what's happening outside could very much be a pretext to get people to leave their computers and give their eyes a rest and do something different. But you could also do something that's functional and practical that uses the same idea to create engaging webinars. I was actually just talking with a colleague about having a group replicate an ethnographic study by sitting at their windows and recording what they see outside.

Assign reading in advance; skip the slideshow and have a discussion instead as a webinar best practice

I'm almost always in favor of an activity if it's going to replace a slideshow or PowerPoint. Very little good comes of most slide decks with respect to creating engaging online conferences and interactive webinars. However my caution here comes from participating in book clubs over the course of years as well as thinking about the flipped model of education which has become quite conversation-worthy these days. This is a great idea ... if people actually do the reading in advance. The world is littered with book clubs that come up with a book to read and then set a date to discuss it, only for everyone to arrive and have nothing to talk about because no one actually read the material. It's definitely an idea with merit, but you may want to think about how realistic it is that people are going to do work in advance for your session.

You may also want to think about content becoming part of your session in a way. Maybe it's a watch party followed by a discussion for a panel or a fishbowl (shown here in a typical classroom environment) or some brainstorming. I have a friend who runs a podcast club and its advantage over a book club is that we all come together and spend 30-60 minutes listening to the podcast before discussing it. It's much easier to get buy-in to an event like that if you don't require people to do work on their own and they can just show up. We adapted that podcast club fairly successfully to an online format using Zoom.

Assign staff roles and use breakout rooms! Use the meeting format vs webinar so it is more social and you can see people.

While there may be exceptions, webinar platforms (by definition) don't build in a lot of the engagement opportunities that we'd like to see in a conference session or presentation. Webinar platforms seem to somewhat blindly replicate this staid format to which we're accustomed: someone in front of a room talking and a bunch of people just passively listening. It's a methodology that's built on one-to-many communication. It's almost adversarial where it's the experts or speakers on one side and then an audience of groundlings in front of them who are neither seen nor heard. Yes, webinar platforms may allow you to ask questions or virtually raise your hand, but they just seem pretty hard to make engaging compared to online platforms designed for meetings or more engaging sessions.

In terms of assigning staff roles to breakout rooms, it makes sense to have a meeting facilitator or someone leading a discussion in a breakout room. This is especially true if there are more than four or five people in that room. It's very difficult for groups to self-organize without a leader when you talk about 6 or more people online. It can turn into a rather awkward session of people staring around trying to figure out who's going to talk and when.

Break-time activity like yoga or stretching

Breaks are good and help to create engaging webinars. You should have breaks in your conference sessions or webinars, especially if you're going for more than an hour and certainly if it's more than two hours. I'm a big proponent of using those breaks for a dual purpose. First, it gets people up and moving and adds some energy to a group that's typically just been staring at a computer. And it allows them to take care of things that may otherwise be distracting them like taking care of a kid or replying to a text. But then you can also use breaks to do things that are fun, engaging or practical. I have been doing a lot of virtual scavenger hunts during breaks. I've been in sessions that have included more physical and kinesthetic activities, even something like improv.

It obviously depends on who your group is and whether they're up to do yoga during your session, but it's a totally valid idea. Even if you don't do something like yoga, there's probably a watered-down version of this like just rolling your shoulders or reaching for the sky that doesn't feel like a big leap to most attendees or participants.

Choose a platform that allows for the webinar engagement that you are planning

The platform that you use for an online conference or webinar is indeed really important. Of course, what that platform can do doesn't really matter if all of your speakers and all of your sessions are simply going to be one person or a panel talking to an audience that's passively observing. To this end, think about what you want your conference sessions to look like and what you want them to do ... and then go looking for a platform that will fit.

One of the big head-scratchers in the market today is virtual exhibit halls. If you ask conference managers what they want to happen in an exhibit hall versus what an online platform is delivering, it's a very wide gulf in many cases. Think about what most webinar systems are built to do. Most of those are really designed to have one speaker or a panel address a room full of people or potentially thousands of people. But most of their systems invite very little true interactivity or engagement. It's great if you have a platform that allows for a lot of flexibility and engagement, but I'd almost argue that it's more important that your speakers or presenters are thinking about how to be engaging-and then you can think about how you can make your existing platform at least try to fit what your speakers or presenters are trying to do.

For example, I ran a session a few weeks ago using Zoom meetings and a tech snafu meant that we couldn't use breakout rooms. Instead we ended up shifting to a fishbowl session and it went great. It's not what we planned, but it still allowed us to do something different, more engaging, and more valuable than just having one person talk to a room of people who may or may not actually be listening.

Designate leaders for each breakout group beforehand

A big problem that organizers seem to overlook is they get to the point of saying that there's going to be a breakout room or a small group and they put people in those rooms or sessions ... and then they just hope that group will self-organize and hopefully some capable natural facilitator will emerge. It turns out that doesn't usually happen; instead, you get a room with one or two people having an awkward conversation with 10 or 20 silent, bored bystanders. So assigning a leader or facilitator to each room makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, it's actually not that hard to get groups to have good, meaningful, productive discussions among themselves without a leader if you give them clear instructions and you keep the groups relatively small, like three to five people.

Do more prework to start from a point that is further along

As we list out webinar best practices, there are a couple suggestions like this that talk about doing work before the webinar starts. I'm all in favor of it and - assuming it works. The point of failure here is that people are busy or lazy and there are no repercussions to not doing this pre-work. Part of this question, then, is also: How to get people to do the pre-work?

Ensure time zones are considered for domestic and international sessions

Considering optimal meeting times across time zones is pretty self-explanatory but makes a lot of sense when we talk about how to engage people in global online conferences or webinars. I've been on a number of international sessions where people are talking at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. If attendees are already yawning and rubbing their eyes before you even start your presentation, it really puts you behind the 8-ball.

Flipped classroom; reversing the classroom

This was actually a popular suggestion that came up a few times and we see the same spirit of a flipped environment appearing in a number of other suggestions for best practices for interactive webinar formats and conference sessions. Again, this makes a lot of sense but I have two points of push-back or consideration before offering a coronation of the flipped classroom as a great, viable approach to conference sessions, webinars, or virtual learning.

Quickly, as an overview the idea of a flipped classroom assumes that there's content that's typically delivered in a classroom that doesn't actually have to be delivered during class time with other students or participants present. We often think about this as a teacher lectures about the history of the French Revolution, for example; a flipped approach would say that the teacher could record that lecture and post it, allowing students to watch it outside of class whenever they want. Then the class time is used for interaction and discussion, assuming that everyone has come prepared and has done the pre-work.

1. My first push-back with a flipped classroom model is that we know a lot of that pre-work and pre-recorded content just isn't going to be awesome. A lot of it is probably going to be fairly mediocre speakers talking about fairly uninteresting topics and perhaps doing it for 30 or 45 minutes. It's hard to get excited for that as a student or participant. In many ways, it's the same affliction of training, education, and presentations: that the presenter and the material just aren't that interesting.

2. My second point of push-back is that a flipped classroom or a flipped approach requires that people actually do the pre-work. If it's a junior high history class, it's not unrealistic to think that those students will feel compelled to do the homework before getting to class. Maybe. It seems less of a sure thing when we're talking about conference participants or adult learning scenarios where there just isn't much accountability or any repercussions to not doing that work in advance. And, of course, if people aren't doing the work in advance, then the flipped model doesn't really work the way it's designed to.

Fun chat questions to get know people

Overall, it's very important to consider that attendees do, in fact, want to get to know each other. Yes, even introverts. A lot of times it seems that organizers or speakers focus almost solely on conveying their own intelligence or imparting or sharing the wisdom they possess; they forget that there are other people in the room. The feeling of a room - be it online or in person - changes very perceptibly when it's a group of strangers who know nothing about each other versus a group of essentially strangers who know even a tiny amount about each other.

It's good to have chat questions that are fun, but my challenge to people is to think of prompts or ice breakers that aren't just fun, but also serve some larger purpose. In our workshop that we just did on creating engaging webinars, my first question to attendees was to think of a favorite TV show or movie and to share that with someone that they're just meeting for the first time. On the surface, it seems like just a dumb but fun icebreaker. But I chose a question because it tied into a larger theme that was going to be repeated over and over throughout the session: how difficult it is to create compelling content that people are willing to sit through four 30-60 minutes. There's no reason that you can't have fun questions in a chat or an icebreaker but those questions can do double duty.

Also, we can put too much emphasis on people having to come up with fun, funny, smart, or intriguing answers. It's not uncommon for a facilitator to ask a group to share a fun fact about themselves. That can actually be pretty stressful and feel a bit competitive. A prompt that I heard not too long ago that I've been using and really like is the opposite of that. You simply ask the audience to share a boring fact about themselves. It might be that someone likes cheese or has an older brother. Still, it's amazing how something so mundane and dumb manages to connect people and start conversations.

Gamify the opening. Do a virtual scavenger hunt to start things off (the first three people who find something in their house that is red, square, old win a gift card); participants rush to find those things

There's a lot here to work with. Using gamification is great as a webinar best practice. Scavenger hunts work really well online. Offering some sort of prize is nice. This is a good idea, but my only caution is to be realistic about who your group is and what the norms are there. If you're talking about a bunch of senior accountants who don't know each other and show up in suits and ties to your webinar, you may have a vision of starting your session with a bang ... and they just don't bite and it becomes a flop right away. So if a virtual scavenger hunt to find three specific things is more complicated (perhaps 5 on a 10-point risk scale), what could you do that's a "2" that would serve a similar purpose and not scare people off at first? Maybe that's sharing one thing right in front of you on your desk, for example.

Have a host to connect all sessions

It's pretty important that you have somebody running the show in terms of guiding the discussion and then also someone to handle the tech and make sure everything runs smoothly. In a well-run online session, these things can almost seem invisible and you can forget how difficult it can be to manage a group and to make all the tech work well.

Vary formats from session to session, have a "point/counter-point" with panelists with opposing views; bullet-point session with four panelists with three bullets each

Variety is indeed the spice of life. I very much support the idea of varying formats from session to session, be that in person or online. However, as a starting place I would think about adding a little bit of diversity before worrying about adding a lot of diversity. In other words, what we're accustomed to seeing in most conferences and webinar formats is either a 45-minute individual PowerPoint presentation for a 45-minute panel discussion with three or four presenters.

Even if you add another two or three different webinar formats or different segments, it may pay huge dividends. And, to be fair, it's not even that you have to blow up an entire session when you could just add to it or tweak it a bit. For example, you could still have a panel with three experts but instead of them talking for 45 minutes straight and then taking five minutes of questions, you could have them talk for 15 or 20 minutes and then have the audience generate questions for them. Or you could use other webinar formats where you break into small groups and generate questions or do small breakouts and discuss what was just said; then you can come back and have the panelists finish their discussion or reply to questions. It doesn't take a huge amount effort to make a significant improvement in a session.

I also like the bullet point sessions and having opposing viewpoints. The bullet point idea forces a presenter to be concise in the same vein of something like a Pecha Kucha presentation. Or even an 18-minute TED Talk that distills a really complicated topic in a relatively brief amount of time. In short, we don't usually need 30 or 60 minutes on a topic if we're thoughtful about what the audience really wants to hear and needs to hear. And on the subject of a debate, that's a really interesting and engaging format. People get scared off by adding some fire to a discussion but, as anyone who's watched any TV will tell you, discord, debate, and disagreement definitely keep people's attention.

Virtual career fairs

If done well, a lot of events and exhibitor halls that were happening in real life could be successful in a virtual environment. The devil, however, is in the details - and in the technology platform. It seems that a lot of the solutions that are out there now are really pretty passive and not very engaging. I don't know much about virtual career fairs but I've been following online exhibitor marketplaces and virtual exhibit halls. The hype often overshadows the reality and they can miss the mark on why we even bother doing them. It's hard for me to get excited about watching a video or clicking on a link and going to someone's website or filling out a form as a proxy for a real exhibit hall at a conference. Exhibitors and attendees (i.e., potential clients) want to have some sort of meaningful engagement. There are a lot of good ideas to do that but I'm pretty cold on a lot of the approaches I've seen.

Having staff roles on the day-of: advancing slides, muting or unmuting, fielding questions, someone active in the chat box, and technical support.

It's not that you can never have too much support for an online conference or a webinar, but having more hands on deck is certainly helpful. I was a presenter a few weeks ago and had a co-presenter, along with five people behind the scenes who were doing many of these jobs. Honestly, I can't imagine having to manage everything on my own (at least with a bigger group) and I'm pretty adept at this work. This probably isn't realistic for relatively small presentations and trainings; however, if you're talking about dozens of attendees (and certainly if you're talking about hundreds or thousands of people), it certainly makes sense to have a team working behind the scenes.

If you assign co-hosts, they can record breakout rooms if you want the content

This was actually a conversation that I was having recently about webinar best practices. This certainly adds complexity to the system, particularly if people are recording locally to their computers and not to a shared cloud account. It may not actually increase engagement during an online session or webinar, but it certainly would make watching those sessions more interesting and insightful if they're recorded and used in the future.

If you use slides, make them graphical/photos; provide a separate handout with the content

Some of the best advice that I ever got about preparing a PowerPoint or a slideshow presentation was to never agree to give your actual presentation slides to people in the audience who are asking for them. Which isn't to say that you can't give information or you can't give them a slide deck. If you go into a presentation thinking that it has to make sense for someone to look at and read through a year from now, in your absence, you tend to design a slideshow that is very, very heavy on text. You design a presentation that is basically a book or a research report divided up across a number of slides with some graphics. So you're welcome to create that presentation and give it to people afterwards. But the presentation that you actually use should be really different that should not be heavy on text and your presentation should probably survive more on your speaking than your reading.

To summarize, do two versions of your presentation if you think people absolutely want to have the information. Or do your presentation the way you want to do it and then just send them a Word document or PDF with all your sources written up. Trying to present something that was designed to make sense as a research report is not particularly compelling or engaging.

Interactive webinars and events: stretching, ice breakers, fun backgrounds

A number of these elements are covered in other parts in this document but I'll quickly talk about the fun backgrounds as a tool for engaging webinars. Honestly, a lot of "fun" backgrounds look unprofessional and they're pretty distracting. (In fact, that's true for non-fun backgrounds too.) This is doubly true if people don't have a proper green screen and their background ends up becoming a kaleidoscope, as they fade in and out and colors jump around as the software tries to make sense of where the background should be. That said, there's a lot of value in using backgrounds that are functional. For example, if you're presenting on a new trend, it makes a lot of sense to use a background showing what a graph of the trend so that people can look at you and see what you're talking about, weatherman-style.

The other way I've used fun backgrounds is kind of like an ice breaker. If you let people choose photos that are interesting or meaningful to them, it provides a pretty natural conversation starter for people to ask what the photo is and what the story is behind it. Sharing stories is a pretty easy and natural way for humans to interact with each other, much more so then accosting someone with a question like, "What do you do?"

Let people work at their own pace or out of sequence; get creative with timing and flow

This makes me think how sessions are typially structured where one person talks and talks and talks and everyone else just listens; everything happens in a very prescribed way and comes from one expert. I really like sessions were people can do their own work and build something on their own. I also like it when people can work independently or in small groups; here, an expert or a few experts may occasionally drop in on that table and offer guidance or answer questions. And, in a way, sessions like those can be more meaningful and successful for both the speaker and the attendees.

Bear in mind that a lot of speakers speak because they want a way to connect with whomever that audience is. And a lot of attendees go to events so that they can make a contact with the speaker. If someone is just up on a stage, real or virtual, talking to an audience and then the event ends and everyone turns off their computers, it wasn't very successful if we think about why the speaker in the audience were there. Even if the speaker or experts only drop in on tables and don't do a full presentation, it may be that everyone is much happier.

Limiting amount of content

Yes! We all are guilty of this I'm guilty of this. It is very difficult to feel like you know an awful lot about a topic and you're passionate about it and you just can't cover as much as you want. The analogy that I use is that it's fairly easy to make a lot of food to put in front of someone and overwhelm them with a smorgasbord - but that person can only eat so quickly and it doesn't matter how much food is piled in front of him or her. Think about this like packing for a trip. When you're first packing, you put in everything that you think you might possibly need. Then you need to go back and take out all the unnecessary stuff to leave yourself with a manageable amount.

Planning and rehearsal; pre-interviews and dry runs

The reality is that most of us have probably thought that we need less planning and rehearsal than we actually do. But, on this point, it's important to think about what's realistic for you or for your presenters. Most people are not professional speakers. Most people have day jobs and then they occasionally do a webinar or speak at a conference. As a conference organizer or as someone hosting a webinar, we may have a vision for our presenters doing something akin to a TED Talk. However, the reality is that people who do TED Talks may spend weeks, if not months, rehearsing for what is only an 18-minute presentation (or shorter). Is it realistic that your conference presenter is going to spend 100 or 200 hours preparing for a 45-minute presentation? Probably not.

So while I totally, 100%, support the idea that planning and rehearsal improves engagement and online conferences and webinars, I also think it's important to think about ways to structure presentations so they lighten the burden of planning and rehearsing.

Polls

Polls are good, but I've attended many online sessions that have advertised themselves as being "engaging presentations" or "interactive webinars" ... and what that meant in the end was that someone did a poll or two. To be clear, one or two minutes of polling over the course of an hour doesn't make for an engaging webinar or presentation. Polling is good but, on its own it's not necessarily a home-run webinar best practice. Also, a number of webinar platforms seem to pat themselves on the back for having an online polling function, thinking that this is some sort of engagement panacea.

On a similar topic, people seem to get wrapped up in having high-tech polls. Maybe it's Zoom's poll function or it's something like Mentimeter or SurveyMonkey or something like an app that's doing cell phone voting. I've actually had pretty good results by using polls where people just raise their hands or visually use the height of where their hand is to signify how comfortable they are with something or how much they agree with something. I don't think a poll has to be as tech-y as a lot of people want to make it.

Pre-record presentations and have the presenter available to chat during the recorded webcast

A really big issue today is how to deliver engaging pre-recorded content to foster interactive webinars and conferences. This can reduce some of the worry and headache that comes from producing a live event over technology that may not be trustworthy. This suggestion is one of the advantages of doing an online presentation or webinar; it's like an individual musician being able to play three or four instruments on a song and then harmonize with him or herself on a number of different tracks. The technology lets you replicate yourself and be in multiple places at the same time.

Ultimately, there's still a question about the quality of this pre-recorded presentation. If it's not very good and engaging, then I have my doubts about how compelling the overall presentation is even with the presenter mirrored there in real time to be part of the discussion.

But I really like the idea that the presenter is still there and present and able to interact with the audience in a way that he or she couldn't while in the middle of giving a presentation. It's very difficult to both present and answer questions from the audience at the same time. It may not be a perfect solution but it's a pretty good compromise to add in some engagement and value on top of something that could otherwise be pretty dry.

Provide networking opportunities to allow for discussion at the end between presenters and attendees

Whenever I see people trying to build networking into what we would usually consider content-driven sessions, it makes me happy. Doing this at the end is kind of a logical thought. After all that's usually what happens in a physical space after someone has presented and there's a time when people mill around and try and talk to the presenter. My challenge to organizers here is to think about how to provide networking opportunities before and during the session to allow discussion between the presenters and the attendees as well as attendee to attendee.

There's a traditional philosophical divide between sessions that are supposed to provide content and those that are supposed to provide networking. When we look at a conference agenda, we see things labeled as presentations or learning sessions and then we see other activities labeled as networking receptions or the like. And the reality is that you don't usually find much content in the networking sessions; no do you find much networking in the blocks that are built around content. I love it when people break down that wall and are able to do those things at the same time or in the same session. Here's a list of fun networking activities for conference networking.

Seeing questioners on screen during Q&A

There is indeed a lot of value to this. It seems kind of crazy how excited we are to be able to have good quality, reliable video conferencing platforms today and then we don't really use them the way they should be used. The beauty of having an event that's connecting people with video is that it actually connects people with video and we can see what's happening. This is another one of these pitfalls that we find in webinar platforms. They just assume that it's the experts who are the speakers and they're meant to be seen and heard and the audience is kind of an afterthought. There are a lot of benefits that come from having a question come from someone who's on camera.

As a word of caution though, if you have really big audiences, it can be very problematic to just let anyone speak on a microphone for a variety of reasons. I like having some sort of vetting of questions before letting anyone grab the metaphorical mic and address the crowd. I don't mean that you should censor tough questions. Instead, you should keep in mind the best interests of the entire group. We're all very familiar with people who get up and ask questions where it's clear they're just doing it to show off or to hear themselves talk. There are people who are asking questions that just go off on a tangent or aren't relevant to anyone but the person asking the question.

I like the idea of people submitting questions or chatting in questions or voting on questions or forming small groups and choosing questions from within that group. At that point, I feel pretty good about letting someone get on a mic. On the other hand, just inviting anyone to talk usually doesn't net the best results.

Self-diagnostic to take during the webinar

This is similar to the suggestion about taking a quiz and then letting that determine the webinar format. Or maybe it's a case of the audience doing something to better understand themselves. In any case it sounds like something that would pull people in and lead to a productive path.

Send handouts/exercises after the meeting (especially if there's high attendance)

It makes sense, but the challenge is how would it make a webinar or online conference session more engaging at the time? One thing that I've often done is to have a group create something together and then distribute that to everyone afterwards. It's easier to feel like you're part of a team and you're contributing to something worthwhile if you know that it's going to result in some product that will benefit this whole team. In fact, that's exactly what this is. This is a handout that I've added to extensively, but it all started with the best ideas from maybe 15 groups of three who had distilled their own 10 or 20 ideas to get to this list of best practices for engaging and interactive webinars.

Sending a "know before you join" email with webinar best practices and how to join

It's frustrating how many people don't read emails or instructions before events, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. One thing that I try and do for my own online presentations is to prepare people for an event that isn't just going to be passive, but it's going to have them talking and interacting and using audio and video. And then I also want them to be prepared with their technology, whether it's having downloaded an app for having headphones available. This is a pretty small, easy thing to do with respect to webinar best practices, but one that can have a really big effect on engagement.

Sending everyone "lunch" via Grubhub gift certificates

This opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities in terms of engagement. Lunch is a good idea, but there are so many different things that you could send to people or have delivered to break down one of the really big barriers video conferences: that we're not all in the same room at the same time having the same lunch or holding the same objects. Also, to be fair, if I was part of an online presentation that included lunch, it would probably send a message to me that something was new and different and my interest would be piqued.

Set breakout rooms according to participants instead of random groups

This is a really good idea. It just takes a good amount of thought and manipulation, as well as time, to get right. You can pre-set or at least pre-think about who you want to be in these different rooms. It's really simple if it's different committees within your board of directors and it's a logical break-out that way. I use online name tags and labels in concert with who gets matched with whom in a breakout room.

It may be that I want to match veteran conference attendees with first-year conference attendees. It may be that I want to match board members with non-board members in a room. It may be that I want my sponsors or exhibitors to get to interact with real members and see if they can build rapport. It might be a session where it's venture capital funders intermixed with startup founders and I want to make sure that the funders are only meeting with the founders because it doesn't do them any good to meet up with other VC people. If people are willing to make a note in their name tag about their role or what they're looking for, it makes this much easier for a facilitator.

Show videos of awardees in between sessions; virtual award ceremonies

I like this for a couple reasons. First, we know that a number of conferences do awards presentations and they're struggling with transitioning those to a virtual environment. I eavesdropped on one of these the other day and, to be plain, it was not engaging. An online awards presentation may not be as glamorous as getting a plaque in front of a thousand people in a ballroom, but it's something. Second, these videos usually have a fair amount of thought and production value applied to them. We expect them to be better and more compelling than a lot of the pre-recorded content that mostly consists of someone turning a webcam on him- or herself and reading a bunch of slides. Also if we think about people needing a break, to sit back and just watch some celebratory videos seems like a pretty light lift in a good way.

Silence is ok! We are so uncomfortable with silence in the virtual setting and it is ok to allow it in the virtual spaces the same we do in real world spaces

I'm really happy to see this suggestion. I try to build some silence into a lot of my sessions and it's something that I wish I was better at doing. Usually, a couple times during a session, I'll at least give people a minute or two to write down some thoughts or ideas, or to do a mini journaling exercise, or to record what it is that they're taking away from the session. Also when I use a "hat storm," part of the reason I do it is to give the room a minute or so of reflection where there isn't a rush to type in answers and hurtling the session forward.

Solicit input from your members to be sure you are providing content in the format they prefer; (maybe it's doing four half-day sessions instead of two full days)

This is an important, foundational suggestion. My challenge to organizers is to not just ask what people want covered but, yes, to ask how they want it covered. The problem, of course, is that most attendees have only seen a very limited spectrum of presentation formats. Most attendees have seen panel discussions and individual PowerPoint presentations. So it may not be that helpful to ask them what they want because they don't have a frame of reference beyond that.

But, for example, if people are saying that they really want to learn how to do something or they really want to create something, my suggestion is to use your time to actually have them try it out or actually create that thing instead of just having someone do a presentation talking about how to do or what the ramifications are of doing it. If your audience tells you what they want, think about how you can deliver it in a way that's more engaging than whatever the default might have been. Think about someone talking about "how to do X" compared to a session where people actually work through doing X.

Something specific to do; just talking isn't an engaging webinar

It's pretty common for sessions to talk about topics and have experts opine about topics. I'm amazed by the number conference sessions and webinars that exist where the word "how" is in the title, but no one actually learns how to do the thing that's advertised in the end. I was recently talking with someone who had run a session about "how to write a grant" and it featured a very knowledgeable expert talking about best practices. However, what she realized in the end was the audience would have benefited from actually spending that time working on writing the real grants that they needed to work on. What can you do that's hands-on or productive in the time you have that would really benefit your audience? Can you look at an example of something? Can you discuss a case study? Can you create something?

Spotlighting the speaker

In Zoom you can use a spotlight to make someone stand out in the array of attendees. This makes sense and there are probably a lot of related techniques in terms of who is on camera and who's featured that would make a session more engaging or compelling.

Standing up to present

This is one of my webinar best practices and it's been very helpful for me. Usually when we present in person, we're standing. There are a lot of reasons for this, but when it comes to online presentations, it's very common for people to sit at a desk and speak to webcam. A recipe for a dynamic, interactive webinar does not start with someone speaking to a piece of metal and glass for a long time. Nor should that recipe include sitting down and speaking to a piece of glass and metal. When we stand, we just have a different energy and a different presence, as well as more movement than we would if we were seated. This also touches on where your camera is. I use a standing desk and try to have the camera right around a natural eye-level for me. It's a bit awkward and unnerving to have a presenter speak to you with a camera that's pointing up and shot from under his or her nose, or pointing down from the sky. The small change of standing to speak can make a really big difference

Tap into collective knowledge

This is something that I get up on a soapbox and preach about all the time. Yes, you or your speaker may have 20 or 30 years of experience. But, inevitably, that person is addressing a room that might have 500 or 5000 years of cumulative experience. Also, there are certainly people in many audiences who are just as knowledgeable and just as passionate about the topic as the person or people who are on stage. And if you have an audience filled with people who have specific problems and questions that they're looking for answers to, you also have an audience full of people who could potentially offer those suggestions and solve those problems. People love to be consulted and made to feel smart. The opposite of that is feeling like you have something to contribute and you have no choice but to sit passively in the audience.

Tactics to tap into the collective knowledge of a group also work well when you have an audience with a wide spectrum of expertise. If you have a lot of very junior people and a lot of very senior people in the audience, the speaker may shoot for a medium-expertise presentation, which is too advanced for half the audience and too basic for the other half of the audience. If you can match up people with low experience and people with high experience, both people may feel like they benefit. In a lot of cases where speaker or panel is trying to suggest solutions or prognosticate, the chances are better that more truth exists in front of the stage than on the stage.

Tech video before conference to help people get familiar with the platform

This would teach people how to use the video platform that you're on, like Zoom. I would assume it would go through basic functions like muting, turning on your video, changing your name, switching camera views, and a few other basics. It's a great idea.

Themes and interactivity (e.g., themed cocktail hour with costumes)

Depending on your audience, this could either be a huge hit or fall really flat. I've been surprised by how well some things like this have worked when I didn't expect people would want to dance on camera in the front of a bunch of strangers, for example. One thing that I really like about this is it provides a lot of natural conversation fodder. Conversations tend to start themselves if you're naturally asking fellow attendees what they're drinking and how they made it and where they got the ingredients and how they learned about it or where they got the shawl or the necklace or whatever it is that they're wearing. I'd only say to be realistic when planning this because people may opt out of an event if it's billed as a fancy cocktail party and they're not convinced that other people are actually going to show up; no one wants to be the person in a tuxedo among a room full of t-shirts.

Use interactivity where appropriate, possible, and consistently

This is probably a point that's well taken, but my own feeling is that there's so little interactivity in most presentations today that I might be willing to take some that's inappropriate and inconsistent. To return to an earlier point about webinar best practices, I think about the number of webinars I've seen that use polls and surveys over and over and over again as if that's what's going to make the hour of content interactive and bearable. In that case, that attempted interactive activity is probably not appropriate. Use different webinar formats to increase engagement.

Use music during quiz/poll questions

Using music is a really nice addition in a number of places. Here it would seem that it's being used at a time when you might otherwise have quiet, which is fine. I've used it in the beginning of sessions when people are entering. It sets the mood, partly because of what the music is and how it feels, and partly because it's something different; it shows that the organizer is thinking more and cares about this session rather than just letting there be dead air. On that note, it feels pretty awkward at the beginning of a session when no one's talking and nothing's happening; music can fill that void. I also have used music as a timer and as a way to let people know how long a break is; when the music is over, then the break is over. And then I have used music at the end of a session to end on a high note or to provide some energy and enthusiasm, or some sort of parting message.

My experience with using music on a videoconference is that you're best to do it directly from your computer. In other words, you could (a) play music from your phone near your computer and have your computer pick it up through the microphone (b) play music through your computer's speakers and then have your computer's mic pick it up, or (c) use an option in your videoconferencing platform to play the sound directly from your computer. This third option has produced the clearest sound for me. On Zoom, there's an option at the bottom of the "share screen" window that you can check to "share computer sound" which is good if you were sharing a movie clip (on YouTube, etc.) or maybe even if you were playing a song and wanted the image available (of your Spotify window, for example). On Zoom, there's also an option at the top of the share screen for "basic - advanced - files" and if you choose" advanced" you can select to only share music from your computer without sharing video (which is probably a more typical scenario when playing songs).

Using a white board like a flip chart with annotation

I agree with this idea although I've been disappointed by the results that come out of using a whiteboard. Some of the online collaborative whiteboard products like Mural or Miro might win me over more than the built-in whiteboards within online meeting platforms for this. To be honest, I really like Jamboard because it's so simple and people tend to figure it out pretty quickly.

Virtual exhibit opportunities; virtual exhibit halls

This is similar to the suggestion about virtual career fairs. I'm more familiar with virtual exhibit halls than career fairs. To reiterate the point from the other section, a lot of the virtual exhibit halls are very underwhelming. There's a real opportunity to do this well but that doesn't just mean letting an exhibitor or vendor post a video and add a link that takes attendees to their website. I don't need to go to a conference or a webinar to watch a video or click on a website link. The other side of this that I feel quite strongly about is the more opportunities you offer for people at an event to naturally mix and meet each other, the more likely it is that vendors, exhibitors, or sponsors will meet at in a way that's productive and doesn't require someone making a hard sell in a demarcated selling space.

Virtual scavenger hunt

We did this in our workshop and I use it quite a bit. It's also come up a number of times in the other suggestions here so I'm not going to go into a lot of depth about it. I have been pleasantly surprised how well this works, even among diverse audiences. It's really easy to do and the results are really nice. I've been using it as an activity that coincides with a break, but you can certainly build it into other parts of a presentation. As with the other suggestions around ice breakers, I would ideally like the object that people are finding to somehow tie into what we are talking about in the session. So while it's fine to have someone go out and scavenge something green, as perhaps a slightly better webinar best practice, I have tended to ask people to find something that's meaningful and connected to their work, for example.

Improve the production values of the session

This touches on a number of the other topics in our list of best practices for webinars, especially the one on a flipped classroom. I'm just generally pretty dubious that attendees want to watch something that's low-quality. We're in an age when people think nothing of turning off a TV show or movie that cost a $100 million. It may not be a solution for the quality of the video, but one of my most common suggestions to people is to replace a single individual doing some sort of presentation with two people having a conversation on the same topic. It ends up being a lot more natural and watchable even if the production value isn't that high. Think about all the podcasts that are just people talking and it's done with a microphone and no video. You also don't need a great interviewer to produce a good interview. If you're interviewing someone who's passionate about what he or she is doing and has a lot of expertise, it doesn't require a lot of art to get that information out of your expert.

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51 webinar best practices for engaging interactive webinars

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How do we create a webinar that's engaging and interactive? The following ideas and webinar best practices were all submitted by professionals who organize online events, virtual conferences, and webinars and who attended my recent online workshop, Creating Dynamic, Engaging Online Conferences & Webinars.

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Interesting topics and facilitation advice

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18+ Professional development activities and ideas for teachers in 2023

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In any profession, it is important to continue growing and pushing yourself to be better in your occupation. It is important for teachers to work on professional teacher development activities throughout the year so that they are better for their students and continue to be marketable for job opportunities.

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This article has a TON of resources and brings up some interesting things to consider when we design PD? What aspects of a flipped classroom could benefit the way we deliver our PD?

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Leveraging the Flipped Classroom for Professional Development and Continuing Education

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Using the flipped classroom for professional development and continuing education is a big opportunity for lifelong learning businesses. Find out more!

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Micro-Presentations: Saying More in Less Time

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Micro-Presentations: Saying More in Less Time

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Brevity is key to effective communication, especially in a world where capturing the attention of an audience has become increasingly challenging. But how do you ensure that your audience gets the information they need when time is limited?

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From the course: Micro-Presentations: Saying More in Less Time

Why develop a micro-presentation?

- Think back to the last time you packed a suitcase for a trip or a vacation. Maybe you started by pulling out everything you thought you'd need, an extra swimsuit, three pairs of shoes, four different jackets, and then you found yourself sitting on your suitcase just to get it to close. We've all been there. This is how many presenters approach creating their presentations, trying to cram in everything they know because they have so much great stuff to share. In a micro presentation, which is just five to 10 minutes long, you don't have room for anything extra just in case, no. Building a micro presentation is like pulling out your smallest bag, like your backpack, and then only filling it with the perfect items for your exact needs. In your micro presentation, you only have room for the essentials. My name is Lisa Braithwaite, and I'm a public speaking coach and presentation skills trainer. I'm on a mission to help people build visibility, credibility, and influence through engaging presentations, and I'm especially excited about helping you create concise, well-structured, and compelling micro presentations. In this course, I'll share best practices for building the key elements and preparing to give a micro presentation, like identifying your core message, structuring your presentation, and engaging your audience. I'll also explain the different ways you can approach scripting, and how to avoid mistakes in pacing, and feeling overwhelmed. Now, just because a micro presentation is short doesn't mean creating one is easy. Developing a micro presentation is a paradigm shift from what you've come to know and expect in your presentations, but it's well worth it to invest in developing this skill, so that you can feel confident presenting in any timeframe. So let's get started.

Download courses and learn on the go

Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.

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Why develop a micro-presentation? - Micro-Presentations: Saying More in Less Time Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

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Due to the new remote meeting and training environment, presentations are getting shorter. Business professionals who speak are being asked to get the message across in a fraction of the time they're used to. This lesson helps you identify the value to you in developing an efficient message.

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Did you accidentally click on that message, but you're busy and can't read or respond right now? Afraid you'll forget about it? No worries!! You can mark it as UNREAD and go back to it when you're free!!

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MS Teams:  How to Bookmark/Save Messages

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MS Teams:  How to Bookmark/Save Messages

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Teams Bookmark: HOW TO BOOKMARK A POST IN TEAMS.pdf

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MS Teams:  How to Pin Contacts/Chat Groups To Top of List (Like a "favorites" list) 

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MS Teams:  How to Pin Contacts/Chat Groups To Top of List (Like a "favorites" list) 

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Rather than searching down your long list of chats to find the contact or group you need, you can pin several of them to the top to prioritize them, like a list of "favorites."
(MySpace top 8, anyone 🤣?)

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MS Teams _ Pin Message to Top of Chat.pdf

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M6bIeVbCqA

This fella has a lot of simple ideas in his 7 minute video and links out to many other productivity influencers

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My Simple Productivity System (for normal people)!

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All about gamification in online learning! How fun would it be to have a gamification session?!

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This is a great short video that highlights key components of teaching adult learners.

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adult learning facilitation: Online Courses, Training and Tutorials on LinkedIn Learning

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Learn business, creative, and technology skills to achieve your personal and professional goals. Join today to get access to thousands of courses.

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This guy has TONS of relevant info on his YouTube channel. All kinds of topics including UDL philosophy, using tech tools with students, gamification, remote teaching strategies, etc. This is a great channel to subscribe to if you want to stay up to date with the latest ed tech trends.

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Everything You Need to Know About Teaching with Technology!

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Hey amazing PD leaders! This article has some interesting ideas to consider as we develop PD.

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This is a really cool resource that Casey Swift shared after her AI training!

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When ChatGPT became a hot topic in education late last year, 8th grade history teacher Drew Yanuszeski knew he wanted to teach his students how to properly use the artificial-intelligence-powered tool that can write anything with just a simple prompt.

"Could AI help or hinder society? The answer is yes to both, and that's how I'm going to frame it when I chat with students," he added.

So far, Yanuszeski has mostly been doing his own research on AI, but he has also been pushing his district, the Spokane public schools in Washington state, to provide professional development on what AI is and how it will affect education. District leaders are open to the idea, he said, but they've decided they're not going to do anything yet "because it's just going too fast. They don't know what to cover."

Joseph South, the chief learning officer for the International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE, said the major barrier for school districts providing professional development on artificial intelligence right now is that "you have to understand AI, and most of us don't."

Why educators need to know about AI

It's crucial for teachers to be AI literate, to be able to explain what it is, and to understand its powers and limitations, so they can use AI-powered tools responsibly in the classroom and as everyday consumers of the technology, according to experts.

"It's important for teachers to understand what AI is because the errors that you make in overestimating AI or underestimating AI are significant," South said.

"If you underestimate AI, you're more susceptible to misinformation, you're more susceptible to stealth advertising, and you're more susceptible to systems that are not working in your best interests," South added. "If you overestimate what AI can do, then you're more likely to rely on an algorithm that isn't ready for prime time, that is not going to give you the best or most accurate information even though it sounds like it is."

What professional development on AI should look like

Educators will need to learn "pedagogical content knowledge specific to AI," Ganelin said.

For example, here are some questions that should be tackled, according to experts: What is machine learning? What is a dataset? What are neural networks? What will AI mean for the economy? What are the ethical considerations?

Educators will also need "real time that's dedicated to it," said Kleiman, whose work focuses on how technology can enhance teaching and learning. They need time to use the technology both as teachers and as learners, time to try different approaches with students, and opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and talk about what works and what doesn't.

Policymakers also have a role in all of this, Kleiman said. "In a lot of states, they've limited the amount of time for professional learning in teacher contracts. They wanted to increase student learning time-which is critically important particularly after the pandemic-but that came out of teacher learning time. That's very unfortunate and won't get us where we need to go with this."

In Georgia, they're already beginning the work of building up teachers' knowledge of AI. The state education department received a grant to build a curriculum for artificial intelligence to use in middle schools; and as part of the grant, teachers receive professional development on the topic and the curriculum, said Bryan Cox, the lead computer science specialist for the department.

More than a dozen teachers have already gone through the pilot professional-development courses since 2021. The teachers have access to self-paced, asynchronous online courses, a professional learning community, and in-person workshops and summits, Cox said.

In June, the department will offer the online professional learning courses to all middle school teachers, "so hopefully we'll get a groundswell," Cox said.

'Education doesn't move at the speed of AI'

The biggest challenge with AI professional development, according to experts, is that there is a lot of content to cover, and for many teachers who are brand-new to computer science topics, it can get overwhelming and intimidating.

Schools also have a lot on their plates already, as they help students recover from the pandemic, so professional development on AI might not be at the top of the priority list, ISTE's South said.

Another challenge is the speed at which new AI developments are coming, experts say.

"Education doesn't move at the speed of AI," Kleiman said. Districts need time, expertise, and resources to provide professional learning. Those resources will be coming but "not all that quickly," he said.

Many education technology organizations-such as ISTE, CS for All, Code.org, and AI for K-12 -already have some resources for educators to learn more about artificial intelligence and how it can be used in the classroom.

Beyond professional development, the K-12 education system will need to change to adapt to AI, said Hadi Partovi, the founder and CEO of education nonprofit Code.org. Schools will need new curriculum standards, more effective ways for students to do schoolwork, and better ways to measure whether students did the work.

"In the short term, teacher training is honestly a little bit of a Band-Aid to figure out what we can do now, before we figure out a change to the entire system," Partovi said.

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Teachers Need PD on Artificial Intelligence. What It Should Look Like

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Schools are just beginning to think about how to integrate AI into teacher professional development.

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Today, many priorities for improvements to teaching and learning are unmet. Educators seek technology-enhanced approaches addressing these priorities that would be safe, effective, and scalable. Like all of us, educators use AI-powered services in their everyday lives, such as voice assistants in their homes; tools that can correct grammar, complete sentences, and write essays; and automated trip planning on their phones. As a result, educators see opportunities to use AI-powered capabilities like speech recognition to increase the support available to students with disabilities, multilingual learners, and others who could benefit from greater adaptivity and personalization in digital tools for learning. They are further exploring how AI can enable writing or improving lessons, as well as their process for finding, choosing, and adapting material for use in their lessons.

Educators are also aware of new risks. Useful, powerful functionality can also be accompanied with new data privacy and security risks. Educators recognize that AI can automatically produce output that is inappropriate or wrong. They are wary that the associations or automations created by AI may amplify unwanted biases. They have noted new ways in which students may represent others' work as their own. They are well-aware of "teachable moments" and pedagogical strategies that a human teacher can address but are undetected or misunderstood by AI models. They worry whether recommendations suggested by an algorithm would be fair. Educators' concerns are manifold.

Everyone in education has a responsibility to harness the good to serve educational priorities while also protecting against the dangers that may arise as a result of AI being integrated in educational technology.

NEW!! Report on AI and the Future of Teaching & Learning

Key Insights

AI enables new forms of interaction. Students and teachers can speak, gesture, sketch, and use other natural human modes of communication to interact with a computational resource and each other. AI can generate human-like responses, as well. These new forms of action may provide supports to students with disabilities.

AI can help educators address variability in student learning. With AI, designers can anticipate and address the long tail of variations in how students can successfully learn-whereas traditional curricular resources were designed to teach to the middle or most common learning pathways. For example, AI-enabled educational technology may be deployed to adapt to each student's English language abilities with greater support for the range of skills and needs among English learners.

AI supports powerful forms of adaptivity. Conventional technologies adapt based upon the correctness of student answers. AI enables adapting to a student's learning process as it unfolds step-by-step, not simply providing feedback on right or wrong answers. Specific adaptations may enable students to continue strong progress in a curriculum by working with their strengths and working around obstacles.

AI can enhance feedback loops. AI can increase the quality and quantity of feedback provided to students and teachers, as well as suggesting resources to advance their teaching and learning.

AI can support educators. Educators can be involved in designing AI-enabled tools to make their jobs better and to enable them to better engage and support their students.

Recommendations: Call to Action for Education Leaders

Recommendation #1: Emphasize Humans in the Loop

We reject the notion of AI as replacing teachers. Teachers and other people must be "in the loop" whenever AI is applied in order to notice patterns and automate educational processes. We call upon all constituents to adopt Humans-in-the-Loop as a key criteria.

Recommendation #2: Align AI Models to a Shared Vision for Education

We call upon educational decision makers, researchers, and evaluators to determine the quality of an educational technology based not only on outcomes, but also based on the degree to which the models at the heart of the AI tools and systems align to a shared vision for teaching and learning. The figure to the right describes the important qualities of AI models for education leaders to consider.

Recommendation #3: Design Using Modern Learning Principles

Achieving effective systems requires more than processing "big data"-it requires more than data science. Applications of AI must be based on established, modern learning principles, the wisdom of educational practitioners, and should leverage the expertise in the educational assessment community around detecting bias and improving fairness. Going forward, we also must seek to create AI systems that are culturally responsive and culturally sustaining, leveraging the growth of published techniques for doing so. Further, most early AI systems had few specific supports for students with disabilities and English learners and we must ensure that AI-enabled learning resources are intentionally inclusive of these students.

Recommendation #4: Prioritize Strengthening Trust

Technology can only help us to achieve educational objectives when we trust it. Yet, we learned through a series of public listening sessions that distrust of educational technology and AI is commonplace. Because trust develops as people meet and relate to each other, we call for a focus on building trust and establishing criteria for trustworthiness of emerging educational technologies within the associations, convenings, and professional organizations that bring educators, innovators, researchers, and policymakers together.

Recommendation #5: Inform and Involve Educators

We call on educational leaders to prioritize informing and involving educational constituents so they are prepared to investigate how and when AI fits specific teaching and learning needs, and what risks may rise. Now is the time to show the respect and value we hold for educators by informing and involving them in every step of the process of designing, developing, testing, improving, adopting, and managing AI-enabled educational technology. This includes involving educators in reviewing existing AI-enabled systems, tools, and data use in schools, designing new applications of AI based on teacher input, carrying out pilot evaluations of proposed new instructional tools, collaborating with developers to increase the trustworthiness of the deployed system, and raising issues about risks and unexpected consequences as the system is implemented.

Recommendation #6: Focus R&D on Addressing Context and Enhancing Trust and Safety

Research that focuses on how AI-enabled systems can adapt to context (diversity among learners, variability in instructional approaches, differences in educational settings) is essential to answering the question "Do specific applications of AI work in education, and if so, for whom and under what conditions?" We call upon researchers and their funders to prioritize investigations of how AI can address the long tail of learning variability and to seek advances in how AI can incorporate contextual considerations when detecting patterns and recommending options to students and teachers. Further, researchers should accelerate their attention to how to enhance trust and safety in AI-enabled systems for education.

Recommendation #7: Develop Education-Specific Guidelines and Guardrails

Data privacy regulation already covers educational technology; further, data security is already a priority of school educational technology leaders. Modifications and enhancements to the status quo will be required to address the new capabilities alongside the risks of AI. We call for involvement of all perspectives in the ecosystem to define a set of guidelines (such as voluntary disclosures and technology procurement checklists) and guardrails (such as enhancements to existing regulations or additional requirements) so that we can achieve safe and effective AI for education.

Listening Sessions

The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology, with support from Digital Promise, held listening sessions about Artificial Intelligence (AI). We connected with all constituents involved in making decisions about technology in education, including but not limited to teachers, educational leaders, students, parents, technologists, researchers, and policy makers.

The goal of these listening sessions were to gather input, ideas, and engage in conversations that will help the Department shape a vision for AI policy that is inclusive of cutting-edge research and practices while also informed by the opportunities and risks.

Blog Posts

Need More Info?

Contact ed.tech@ed.gov with questions.

Please Include "OET AI" in the Subject Line

For a print-out and summary of the Artificial Intelligence Initiative, please review our AI One-pager

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Artificial Intelligence - Office of Educational Technology

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OET is working to develop policies and supports focused on the effective, safe, and fair use of AI-enabled educational technology.

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https://www.education.pa.gov/Teachers%20-%20Administrators/Curriculum/ELA/Pages/TDA.aspx

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The purpose of this toolkit is to provide literacy resources related to Text Dependent Analysis instruction and assessment.

Text Dependent Analysis Research

Text Dependent Analysis Series

Learning Progressions

The Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) grade-span Learning Progressions (LPs) are designed to be used as an instructional tool. The TDA LPs are structured in grade spans (3-5 and 6-8) with four levels, Beginning, Emerging, Development, and Meeting. The levels describe the typical path we see in student responses as the student moves toward demonstrating more sophisticated understanding of analysis. The LPs include descriptions of student work which characterize each level from the beginning TDA writer to one who is meeting the expectations of text dependent analysis essay writing. The TDA LPs can be used by teachers to identify student strengths and needs based on what a student can do at a specific point in time. This informs the teacher's instructional decision-making about moving student comprehension, analysis and writing to the next level.

TDA Instructional Prompt Guides with Annotated Student Responses, Close Reading Lessons, and Replacement Units

The Text Dependent Analysis Instructional Prompt Guides contain the following sections: text complexity, instructional text-dependent analysis prompt, example proficient student response as written by the teacher, grade-level text, annotated student work, and possible instructional next steps. The guides should be used in conjunction with the Learning Progressions.

The Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) Close Reading Lessons are designed to be an example pathway for teaching comprehension and analysis of the reading elements. The Close Reading instructional plan guides teachers through the planning and teaching of each lesson, as well as modeling the response to a TDA prompt. The close reading lessons focus on the text excerpt and corresponding prompt in each grade-level Instructional Prompt Guide with Annotated Student Responses.

The Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) Replacement Units are intended to supplant units that do not move beyond superficial understandings, knowledge, and skills of English language arts. This is not to suggest that the selected texts in current units of instruction are not complex or appropriate. In fact, there are many high-quality texts in anthologies and other resources that are currently used in classes, schools, and districts. Replacement units provide teachers with a way to reshuffle the texts in order for students to dive deeply into comprehension and analysis of a small set of reading elements using a variety of texts, and to demonstrate the ability to respond to a TDA prompt.

The Pennsylvania Text Dependent Analysis Research & Toolkit was created in collaboration with the Center for Assessment.

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The purpose of this toolkit is to provide literacy resources related to Text Dependent Analysis instruction and assessment. The Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) grade-span Learning Progressions (LPs) are designed to be used as an instructional tool. The TDA LPs are structured in grade spans (3-5 and 6-8) with four levels, Beginning, Emerging, Development, and Meeting.

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Article on Personalized Learning, possible PD topic?

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Article on Personalized Learning, possible PD topic?

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https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2023/04/technology-supports-personalized-learning-k-12-schools-perfcon

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Technology Solutions That Drive Education

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One student project involves ankle covers that would prevent your legs from getting wet. Another centers on adding mirrors to glasses to prevent people from sneaking up on you. "It's silly stuff" that promotes open thinking and lets kids incorporate things that interest them, Komykoski says.

"With personalized learning, the focus is on the process and the thought process behind it," he says. "Each student goes through and views that process a little differently. That's how you can really personalize your classroom."

Other educational formats at the school include instructional modules that students can access via their laptops, as well as peer and group learning.

Shannon Alvarez is helping MHS students memorize topics covered in her introductory coding course by having them create a Microsoft Flipgrid presentation. Students must touch on one of the four areas they learned about in the unit in the presentation.

Personalized Evaluations Target Knowledge as an End Goal

To check students' understanding of a subject, MHS teachers can also distribute quizzes through the school's learning management system.

"In our robotics class, every time we get to the end of a section, they'll have a one- or two-question quiz to reinforce the concepts," Alvarez says. "We're able to see their results right away. Sometimes all of the students are struggling on a certain question, which enables us to revisit that topic and say, 'We recognize a lot of you didn't understand this; we're going to touch base on this one more time.'"
Explore four ways to teach students self-management skills.
After learning about electronics components in teacher Tony O'Neal's class, he administers a quiz with five to 10 questions. If students struggle, they can try again.

"I usually let my kids retake the test three times, and I keep the highest score," O'Neal says. "I just need them to know what the component is and how it works. I don't want to just shut them down after the first test and then they are behind constantly until the end."

Customized Class Time Can Help Multiple Grade Levels

While some of the more autonomous aspects of personalized learning may seem better suited for older students, the approach also benefits younger learners.

In Marissa Torchia's kindergarten class, students are split into groups based on their academic performance, which allows the New York City Public Schools teacher to tailor reading, writing and math instruction to meet each group's needs.

Students who might find hands-on work helpful for understanding math concepts, for example, will use manipulatives to solve problems.

Torchia says the approach can be particularly effective at her grade level because kindergarten is often a child's first exposure to a structured learning environment.

"Many students enter kindergarten with clean slates," she says. "Often, some fall behind because they do not learn the same way as others. Without the opportunity for personalized instruction, these students aren't able to catch up to their peers. Starting personalized learning at a young age allows these students to have a strong academic base, as well as the opportunity to understand how they learn best."
KEEP READING: Lay the groundwork for esports in kindergarten.

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Technology Supports Personalized Learning in K-12 Schools

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Children learn at different paces and in different ways; personalized learning optimizes that. Here's the tech behind personalized learning and how it works in K-12.

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https://writingcooperative.com/what-is-your-tone-of-writing-7d232d181651

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If you're on Medium, there's an 83% probability that you write often. If you do, I have a question for you:

How do you control the tone of your writing?

The reason why I'm asking is because at some point, I've noticed that I kinda suck at controlling my own tone. You see, the larger portion of my writing experience stems from the buzzword-infested absurdity that some people call B2B copywriting. Yeah, that kind of copywriting where you talk about overcoming the silo mentality and launching 360-degree campaigns (not necessarily this exact wording, but you get the idea).

B2B copywriters be like

Don't get me wrong, business-oriented copy can be good. In fact, there's a lot of talking about how brands need to sound like people, and many marketers act on this.

However, this doesn't seem to concern the folks from smaller B2B companies. For some reason, they always expect that you stick to a particular tone of writing - too positive, far too safe, and so overconfident it doesn't even sound real.

If you use this tone for too long, it becomes a part of your own. At some point, you notice that your texts sound like a mixture of Hillary Clinton's Twitter and car dealer commercials from the 90s. What's worse, you only notice this in retrospective.

I know I'm not the only one who has faced this problem.

Chances are you're like me, and you're growing conscious about your tone. Maybe, you also think that you suck at controlling it. If so, here's the good news:

Yes, I've just quoted a magic dog from a cartoon, but it makes sense if you think about it. Every profession and activity requires practice, and writing is no exception. You always suck at it first, but the more you write, the better you get.

Besides, there are dozens of small things that can help you improve. For instance, what if you need a quick feedback on your tone of writing? Allow me to give in to the habit of using marketing clichés and say the following:

There is an app for that.

A web app, actually. You've probably heard about the Hemingway Editor, and I'm sure you know this isn't the only tool of this type. The app I'm going to tell you about is pretty similar to the Hemingway Editor, but it analyzes your writing tone instead of readability.

This app is called Tone Analyzer. It's still in beta, and it's a part of the IBM Watson project:

The great thing about this app is that everyone can use it. What I mean is it's not just for writers, copywriters, bloggers, or journalist. You can use it for customer service chats, announcements, and emails (both the ones written by you and the ones you get from other people):

The Tone Analyzer enables you to check your own content, or analyze the stuff written by other writers and bloggers. The second route provides you with an awesome opportunity to learn from other people.

So what exactly does the Tone Analyzer do? For starters, it gives you feedback on the three aspects of your writing tone:

First, there is a summary for the five basic emotions that your text communicates. This includes anger, disgust, fear, joy, and sadness.

Second, there is the language style summary that tells you how analytical, confident, or tentative you sound.

Finally, there is the social summary indicating the degree of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and the emotional range of the text.

Here's what the whole thing looks like:

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If you're on Medium, there's an 83% probability that you write often. If you do, I have a question for you: How do you control the tone of your writing? The reason why I'm asking is because at some point, I've noticed that I kinda suck at controlling my own tone.

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This tutorial has a lot of great information about teaching adult learners that we could apply when leading/designing PD sessions.

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From the course: Instructional Design: Adult Learners

Welcome

- Hi, my name is Jeff Toister. Welcome to Adult Learners, part of the Instructional Design Essentials series. In this course we'll explore the fundamental principles of adult learning. I'll show you how to use these principles to design impactful training programs. The adult learning principles we'll cover are based on industry standards, proven best practices, and my own experience as a certified learning and performance professional who has spent more than 20 years designing training programs. This course has three major focus areas. First, I'll introduce you to a set of adult learning principles that are widely used by instructional designers. Next, I'll show you how to apply these principles to create an active learning experience. Finally, I'll share some common learning barriers and show you how an understanding of adult learners can help you overcome these challenges. As an instructional designer, I've always found the process of learning to be fascinating. It's a lot of fun to find ways to make learning happen faster and better than ever before. My hope is that this course will help you discover ways to align your training programs with the needs of your adult learners.

Practice while you learn with exercise files

Download the files the instructor uses to teach the course. Follow along and learn by watching, listening and practicing.

Download courses and learn on the go

Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.

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Welcome - Instructional Design: Adult Learners Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

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From the course: Instructional Design: Adult Learners - Hi, my name is Jeff Toister. Welcome to Adult Learners, part of the Instructional Design Essentials series. In this course we'll explore the fundamental principles of adult learning.

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For our PD on "Utilizing Data to Drive Instruction"

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For our PD on "Utilizing Data to Drive Instruction"

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This material is dated (2009) but it's a lot of info and it at least gives us a place to start.

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This practice guide was prepared for the WWC by Mathematica under contract ED-07-CO-0062.

The following research staff contributed to the guide: Cassie Pickens Jewell, Emily Sama-Miller, and Sarah Wissel.

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data-driven decision making data driven decision making educational data system data warehouse assessment data distributed leadership modify instruction teacher professional development student data use data system cycle of inquiry common assessment data data culture data literacy summative assessment interim assessment triangulation

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WWC | Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making

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This guide offers five recommendations to help educators effectively use data to monitor students' academic progress and evaluate instructional practices.

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Institute of Educational Science "What Works Clearinghouse"

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Institute of Educational Science "What Works Clearinghouse"

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A practice guide is a publication that presents recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. They are based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts.

To search by Topic or Keyword, use the Practice Guide Search.

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A practice guide is a publication that presents recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. They are based on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts. To search by Topic or Keyword, use the Practice Guide Search.

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When teaching adult learners, how can we move away from a traditional pedagogy to an approach that embraces components of andragogy and heutagogy?

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A brief history and explanation of andragogy

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A brief history and explanation of andragogy

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We use cookies in order to personalize your experience, display relevant advertising, offer social media sharing capabilities and analyze our website's performance.
Read all about it in our cookie policy.

Stay up to date on the latest eLearning news, articles, and free resources sent straight to your inbox!

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The Adult Learning Theory - Andragogy - Infographic - e-Learning Infographics

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We use cookies in order to personalize your experience, display relevant advertising, offer social media sharing capabilities and analyze our website's performance. Read all about it in our cookie policy. Stay up to date on the latest eLearning news, articles, and free resources sent straight to your inbox!

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Presentation Idea: Pwp as Virtual Background

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Presentation Idea: Pwp as Virtual Background

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Zoom:  How to Use Powerpoint Slides as Virtual Background - Powerpoint Presenter View Quick Tutorial

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This 7 min video gives a few ideas on how to use Zoom chat in meetings. His philosophy on the chat feature is interesting!

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interesting ways to use zoom chat feature - Google Search

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Heutagogy Defined: Self-Determined Learning. Many of the new PD trends focus on embracing heutagogy and empowering the learner.

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As an instructional designer, you want to create courses that make a difference in your audience's lives. You want to create experiences that inspire them, change mindsets and drive performance. In short, you want to create courses that resonate with them and hit the mark, every time.

Now here's the challenge. Your learners are adults with previous knowledge and fixed ideas about what works for them. They are busy and stressed-out folks who hate wasting time. They want learning experiences that help them meet their needs and achieve their goals.

This said you MUST understand how adults learn best. When creating your next eLearning course, it is essential to base the design on a good understanding of adult learning theory.

The phrase "adult learning theory" is much bandied about in corporate training circles. But, do you know what it actually means?

First, a myth-buster. There is NO one adult learning theory. There are several prevalent theories that all explain- from different perspectives-how adults learn.

In this article specifically, we will address: 1) andragogy, 2) experiential learning, and 3) transformational learning. There are many other theories though! However, all of them have one main goal: they help you create effective learning experiences for the adult corporate learner.

Adult learning theories are not just a collection of jargon, concepts, and ideas about how adults learn. These theories help you plan your course during conception, development, and execution, in a way that will facilitate the learning process.

Here're four reasons why instructional designers MUST get acquainted with these theories:

To create relevance by mapping courses with perceived learner needs

To devise instructional strategies in alignment with real learning contexts

To choose the technology that best supports the instructional strategy

To plan instructional strategies relevant to digital-age and on-the-go learners

This theory taps into the main characteristics of adult learners and how they bring in their experiences to guide them along the journey of learning. This theory was developed by Malcolm Shepherd Knowles in the 1970s, and it's still relevant today.

According to Knowles, adult learners differ from children in the following six ways:

1. Need for Knowledge: Adults need to know "why" they should learn.

2. Motivation: Adults are driven by internal motives. They will learn if they want to learn. For instance, a compelling answer to the "what's-in-it-for-me" question is a powerful internal motivation.

3. Willingness: For adults, the willingness or readiness to learn comes from perceiving the relevance of the knowledge. They want to know how learning will help them better their lives, and they learn best when they know that the knowledge has immediate value for them.

4. Foundation or Experience: Adults bring with them rich reserves of experiences that form the foundation of their learning. They analyze, rationalize, synthesize, and develop new ideas or tweak old ones through the filter of their experiences. As an instructional designer, you should tap into their well of experiences to help them make connections, perceived relevance, and derive inspiration.

5. Self-Direction: Adults are self-directed individuals who want to take charge of the learning journey. They are independent beings who want to feel in control.

6. Orientation to Learning: Adults learn best when they "do." They find relevance in task-oriented learning, which they can align with their workplace realities. Besides, task-oriented learning exercises their problem-solving ability which in turn, gives them the confidence that they can conquer their challenges with their newly-acquired knowledge.

We have all experienced aha moments.

Flashes of inspiration have led us to see reality in new ways. Nuggets of wisdom that have radically changed our mindsets. Deep insights that have busted through long-held beliefs and conventions.

These are transformative experiences that shift our consciousness. As an instructional designer, you should strive to create such learning experiences. Such experiences rouse the mind, stir powerful emotions, and leave lasting impressions. Many such events trigger radical changes in thoughts, perspectives, attitudes, and behavioral patterns-the "transformations."

Transformational learning theory explains how adults learn through such aha moments. The theory is rooted in the belief that learning occurs when a new meaning is imparted to an earlier experience (Mezirow, 1990) or an old meaning is reinterpreted and seen in a new light.

In the Transformational Learning Theory there are three stages of learning:

1. Identification of a Dilemma or a Crisis: The realization that we had all along been holding on to wrong beliefs or that we don't know what we should know is often a trigger to dig in and unearth information or review our mindsets and thought patterns. Not knowing or realizing that we have the wrong information is a crisis that is deeply upsetting to all of us. You have to point out to your learners what they don't know to make them curious about your course.

2. Establishment of Personal Relevance: This is the context or the answer to the eternal "what's-in-it-for-me" question that inspires people and drives learning. The context can be personal, professional, or social, and you should establish it right at the beginning of the course to spike interest and reiterate it often to keep learners hooked. Adult learners are motivated to learn when they can envision the results of their efforts.

3. Critical Thinking: Your learners are sensible, rational people with minds of their own. So you should create opportunities for critical reflection (premise reflection) to encourage them to re-examine their beliefs and attitudes. When you let them sort through their feelings and thoughts and realize on their own what they need to shed or tweak, they will be more willing to accept and imbibe the learning.

This post outlines ways in which you can create opportunities for transformative learning in an online learning environment.
Chinese philosopher Confucius said, "Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand."
As human beings, we are shaped by our experiences. For adults, no amount of textbook learning can take the place of knowledge, clarity, and wisdom that come from experience.

The Experiential Learning Theory states that the essence of adult learning is making sense of experiences. Adults learn best when they learn by doing. They learn best when they are directly involved with-"experiencing"-the learning instead of memorizing numbers and definitions from books.

Kolb reveals the cyclical nature of experiential learning by explaining how it takes place in four stages:

1. Concrete Experience (CE): Adults learn best when the learning experience goes beyond the chalk-and-talk routine. Kinesthetic learning or learning by encouraging physical actions (simulations) and learning that evokes strong emotional responses (realistic scenarios that reveal cause-effect relationships) create powerful experiences that are not forgotten easily.

2. Reflective Observation (RO): Adults need to engage with and reflect on their experiences to glean insights and acquire knowledge. So it is critical to not only create opportunities for experience-based learning but also provide time and space to encourage reflection. Create opportunities for "watching" the action unfold before the eyes (demonstrations) and "analyzing" processes and procedures (scenario-driven activities, case studies).

3. Abstract Conceptualization (AC): The success of experiential learning lies in the learner being able to decode abstract concepts from their reflections, generalize these ideas, and realize the relevance to their reality. Designs assessments to encourage learners to exercise their "critical thinking" abilities, so they can formulate concepts and procedures.

4. Active Experimentation (AE): Role-playing activities, internships, and other hands-on tasks let learners apply the learning and thus truly "learn by doing." Active experimentation leads to concrete experiences, and the cycle of experiential learning resumes.

Additional reads:

Create Life-Long Learners with Experiential eLearning

Learner Experience Mapping: Building Personalized "Learner-centric" Experiences

Adult learning theories help you step into the shoes of your learners and understand how their minds work. Your message has the greatest chance of hitting its mark if it is framed and presented in a language that your learners understand best.

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Adult Learning Theories Every Instructional Designer Must Know - Shift E-learning

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As an instructional designer, you want to create courses that make a difference in your audience's lives. You want to create experiences that inspire them, change mindsets and drive performance. In short, you want to create courses that resonate with them and hit the mark, every time. Now here's the challenge.

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Main themes found in research:
Targeted (Meeting the specific needs of the teachers); Engaging (Offering a variety of collaborative/engaging/thought-provoking activities); Ongoing (No more of the "one and done" PD model. Teachers need ongoing support and coaching to make a lasting change). Questions to ask: how can we make our PD more targeted to the specific teachers we work with? How can we make the sessions more engaging? How can we offer ongoing support?

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If you are interested in doing your own research, check out this awesome AI research assistant. You can ask it questions and even compare articles!

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How might these questions influence the way we do course demos for potential customers? Is there any one area that you tend to focus on more often?  

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Questions that adopters ask when making an educational change...

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Questions that adopters ask when making an educational change...

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8 PD Strategies to Guide Teachers from Reluctant to Rocking by Casey Swift

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8 PD Strategies to Guide Teachers from Reluctant to Rocking by Casey Swift

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Paying attention to the possible adopter categories of the teachers in our PD sessions can help us understand how to help them move forward.

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2023Educational Change  Adopter Categories_ FlexPointRaquelK

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What are the main differences between andragogy and pedagogy? Paying attention to the needs of adult learners can help improve the overall success of a PD session.

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Blog Andragogy Adult Learning Theory - andragogy vs pedagogy