Another week of battling with technology, however I do feel like I’m making headway, albeit more slowly than I would have hoped. I watched again the TED Talk on How to Avoid Death by Power Point.

I clearly hadn’t remembered all the advice from the first time I watched it. I redid the presentation on Engaging Diverse Learners and have now split it into two videos, the first of which is below. I also ‘got bold’ and decided to do it without notes – I’ve read and tweaked them so many times now, and normally when I do a live session I barely look at my notes. I think this version comes across much better and I’m certainly less wooden. Gosh this is a learning curve! 

It was super helpful looking at the four iterations of a handout to see what ‘good’ looks like and to be able to identify how I can work on visual representation. I’m aware I am such a WORDS person,  and I have to be constantly vigilant in remembering to present ideas on paper in more visually diverse ways. Again, I struggle less in a live session or class because I know we all receive and engage in ideas in different ways. I’m still learning how to do this in a virtual space. I enjoy the challenge though, I’m just frustrated that everything seems to take me so long. And I know it’s a matter of practice. In any event, thanks to good advice and support (thank you Liesel!), I think this version of my  Engaging With Diverse Learners Handout is much easier to read because of the extra white space, the use of icons to signal different sections, as well as including ‘Step’ headings that I also refer to in the video presentations. As suggested, I’ve chosen an icon that I’ll use consistently for intercultural resources and another for ones I’m working on that relate to Group Work, Three sillouettes of headssuch as this Power Point Presentation (which is on my list to record as a video), on Deciding Whether To Use Group Work

Beyond all the tech work it’s been exciting getting started with the conversations for the Intercultural Environmental Scan. I had five conversations this week, each one ran way over the time planned as we were having such a fruitful conversation. It’s always so interesting to me that you can ask five people the same question and they each come up with, not only different answers (that I would have expected), but approach the question differently in each case. One point that stands out so far is the value of an international experience. Above all else, those experiences are pivotal in learning intercultural fluency and in developing the sense of curiosity and willingness to move through the discomfort of being in situations where one’s very sense of self may come into question. I keep coming back to wondering how much we can replicate those experiences for those unable to engage in study abroad or exchanges. In reality, every time we communicate with someone new and particularly someone who we perceive is different from ourselves, we travel across cultures. How do we help people who are unused to looking with fresh eyes and listening differently, to open up with that necessary curiosity the bridges cultures and promotes empathy? Through these conversations I’m gaining some insights and ideas. As Hinssen says in his TED Talk, Rethinking Education for the Never Normal, we need to be teaching students to be, “passionately curious, endlessly open-minded, forcefully resilient, and vigorously creative.”