Debriefing: Attempt to Educate

The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat.

If you’ve ever attempted to “teach” to any audience, you know the mixed emotions that the end of class (or another presentation) brings you.

Yesterday I experienced both, with perhaps a tad greater victory than defeat. For my own part, I felt better than usual with how the mechanics of the program worked.

I used Prezi for the first–but not the last– time, and as a visual speaker’s prompt it was exceptional, partly because the very visual-spatial arrangement of the main points (versus Powerpoints flat linear progression) was much easier for me to remember in advance of projecting each “page.”

The animated transitions–in small doses– are also more stimulating that a simple fade-in or dissolve, and the students have grown used to this kind of animation, each of them having been responsible for creating their own projects in Prezi. My 12 year old granddaughter yawned when I offered to teach her a new whiz-bang trick on the computer. Been there, done that.

Also in the victory side of the ledger, there was student engagement with the issues. I should qualify that: with some of the students with some of the issues in one of the two classes. We’ll call it faint success.

On the other hand, one of two failures was distressing as it may account for the following:

No hands went up when I asked if any had heard of Richard Louv, Bill McKibben or others I had hoped would be at least familiar if not well known to them. Nope, not even near the horizon.

No hands went up when I asked if any had ever heard the term Anthropocene. None had ever watched the Story of Stuff. And so on.

The first failure could be explained by sheer ignorance or indifference to the issues that would bring these personalities, movements and terms into the student’s reality.

The second possible failure is that some few might have answered by raising their hands, but there is the predominant attitude of non-participation, of passive education, or of fear to be seen as a nerd or to have their opinions known and disapproved. What are your thoughts?

At any rate, they can’t say now that they never knew about the role they will play–or will choose not to play–in the Anthropocene.