Professional nuggets of information

 

So why professional nuggets of information?  Well I'm all about information right now.  I've heard back from the curator of the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery and shared copies of my CV and Minifolio as requested, which is great.  I've also shared 5 minutes of information for a micro teach session in last my Practice and Placement session.

I chose to introduce a small group of people to a game that I play with my family called "Exploding Kittens".  It links into my placement because I've reinterpreted information on how to play into my own step by step guidance sheet.  I took the game to show to my group and shared handouts and squashum sweets as I explained the game.  The squashums were just a friendly icebreaker.

Wow.  5 minutes is tiny.  I was organised to literally talk through 5 minutes of instruction- alongside my prepared game and sheets, but I think I was a little ambitious with what you can fit into 5 minutes!   This wasn't "convey information to a room" for 5 minutes.  It was "engage a group".. a very different thing.  To sit with a group of people you need to factor in time for discussion and actual engagement.  To bounce from one micro teach immediately into the next, also gives you very little time to set your micro teach up.  

My feedback was good, including that I'd made it fun and no one had fell out; as sometimes happens when someone sets out the rules of a monopoly game.  My group appreciated the handout with colour coding.  Reading it back, I should have just kept to simply reading out the handout.  I could have gone through it step by step with my group instead of talking through the cards independently and then handing it out to take away.

The objective wasn't to play a game due to time restrictions but to invite people to share a game with me in the lead up to Christmas break while I kept the cards with me in the studios.  

I spent a fair chunk of time planning how to approach the session, and creating the guide sheet, and then taking down notes to evaluate.  Because I have experience of training, I thought I'd be well equipped to do this but actually, this was different to what I've done before.  It wasn't an instruction that couldn't be deviated from as training often is.  This was interaction.  Creating interest in someone else to learn something from you.  I got more out of this than I'd envisioned.  Initially I felt a bit disappointed with how it went after investing time to plan it out but it's been a really useful learning outcome.  

When I do my placement, I'll keep this at the back of my mind when I look at information.

I'm holding onto the sheets to try out with people to see if they do actually help people to learn a new game -  so we'll see if they're actually any good over the next few weeks.  I mean, I think they are.. but I'm biased.  You always understand your own notes don't you!