LInks to digital projects

I spent quite a lot of time this morning viewing past digital project submissions.  Wow, lots of great work and fantastic presentations.  This allowed me to start generating some of my own ideas for the digital project that I will have to soon submit.  There were numerous projects that I loved.  Due to my own time constraints today I will share two of them: Andrea's Think - Pair - Share activity and Carmen's Role Playing activity.

Think-Pair-Share

In order to break up lecture and keep students engaged I frequently have students get into pairs and come up with explanations to scenarios, discuss a question posed to the class and/or do a two minute google break to find an answer. 

This particular activity although simple and straightforward and something that could be done on the spur of the moment is a bit more polished than what I have done.  It provides the opportunity for students that are less outspoken to reflect and come up with ideas instead of immediately having to find a partner.  I really like this.  I also like how there is a reference sheet so that answers can be recorded as groups generate ideas, and then as each group shares, answers can be jotted down as well. 

I especially love how the activity can be prefaced by saying that questions will be generated from this activity for upcoming testing purposes.

I will definitely use this in upcoming classes.

 Role Playing 

I have been teaching in a health care technology program and it is quite lab heavy.  This is not surprising as students not only must learn theory but also must practice and be comfortable with the doing or hands on part of their future career.  Where I work the lab is more formal and structured.

 I can definitely see a practical application to role playing in the classroom.  Allowing students the opportunity to participate and interact with each other in various role playing scenarios while learning how to collaborate with different “patient” types to get a good x-ray for example, would be extremely valuable.  The theory behind how best to use different levels of language with patients of different ages could be learned by examples or skits given by students bringing theory to life

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In my program I can see how putting students in a real life situation before they go into their clinical practicums would give them the valuable opportunity to practice their verbal skills for one, and hopefully make their interactions with real patients in the future more natural.