Come on, you can tell me. We’ve all been there. Whether you’re in education or some other profession. We’ve all been in those staff meeting where your attention is everywhere other than on the material at hand. Your eyes wander. You can hear your heartbeat. You stare at the ceiling. You resist the temptation to one of those people that stare at their phone all meeting. Time crawls. Minutes turn into hours. The clock seems to be going backward. You don’t want to be rude or seem inattentive, but you just can’t seem to pay attention. The presenter drolls on, pretending that everyone is hanging on every word. Come on, admit it, you’ve been in those meetings.
Don't let this happen at your meeting.
And now it’s payback. The chickens have come home to roost. It’s your turn to present in front of your colleagues. You don’t want the staff to feel the way you do at some of these meetings. What do you do? Well, lucky you, it’s the age of technology in the classroom! You’ve got a Chromebook, an iPad, or perhaps just a smartphone. You are ready to make your presentation interactive and engaging. But how do you do that? Let me share you with you a few apps that you can use to keep everyone’s attention by engaging your audience.
When it comes down to it, school staff are much like the kids they teach. In the same way, the students might get a bit fidgety when sitting in front of their teacher listening to the lecture for an hour, adults do the same thing when being asked to sit and listen to someone present information for a long period of time. Just like in your class where you want to engage your students and keep their attention throughout your teaching, you want to have the same impact with the teachers you’re talking to. And you know what, you don’t have to look far for the tools to help you because the apps used for your classroom can also be used in much the same way for a PD or presentation to your colleagues.
Socrative : Use the space feature to check for understanding or summarize the meeting. Create a Socrative quiz, then use it to summarize the meeting with a space race. If you’ve got more than 20 in your meeting, simply have people pair up. Give out a prize to the winner.
Kahoot: Use Kahoot to test the staff about the contents of the meeting. Again, like the Socrative space race, give out small prizes for first, second, and third.
Padlet: As you’re giving your presentation, ask the participants to participate by putting very brief summaries of what you’re saying on a Padlet board. Pause every so often to allow your fellow teachers to jot down a tiny summary of what you’re talking about.
PearDeck/Nearpod: I put these together because although they have differences, they’re kinda the same idea. You present your information, then, embed small exercises in your presentation, such as a drawing exercise, a multiple choice quiz, or a short answer question. The beauty of Nearpod and PearDeck is that you don’t have to leave your presentation to have your audience participate, it’s in the presentation. Another fun aspect of the two is that you can share participant answers and drawings with the rest of the audience.
Google Slides Q & A: If you’re using Google Slides to give your presentation, then using Google Slides Q & A is a must! Ask the audience to not only ask questions or comments, but make it interactive by posing certain sceneries that concern your topic and ask teachers to respond in the Q & A portion. For example, if you’re talking about classroom discipline, ask your audience how they would act in a certain situation.
