Thing #5

The article that interested me most came from the TechLearning feed. It was about the 10 "no-nos" of teaching with a projector and whiteboard. Mesquite must have read the article or one like it because it said that a slate was just as good as a white board and much less expensive. He also said that the position of my projector is probably wrong. My setup has me at the back of the room and the writer's advice is to set up at the front of the room so we are speaking to the front of the class and not the back of their heads.

Another good tip was to leave the lights on. He says we should never teach in a dark room--it makes some people sleepy to turn the lights off. He says turning a bank of lights off in front of the screen is acceptable but not all the lights.

He also said to use a pointer (I'm assuming he means the lighted pointer) when getting the students to focus on a particular part of the presentation.

Lastly, he suggests that the projector should not run the entire period. If we're leaving the projector on just for instructions, he suggests copying those and handing them out to save the very expensive bulb.