JobQuest: 5-minute Teaching Sample

[athelind]

Next month, I have an all-day Interview event with the Oakland Teaching Fellows. As part of the process, I have to prepare and present a five-minute "teaching sample": I have to present a topic, explain it, and take questions, all in five minutes' time

Comments

[dewhitton]

Vinegar and baking soda is a chemical reaction, but Mentos and diet soda is *nucleation*! Explain that one, Mr Non-Teacher!

[foofers]

1) Visit the Exploratorium some time and see how the Explainers do it (or, occasionally, need to work at it). griffinwolf used to be an Explainer and might have some pointers. If it helps, it appears the next Free Day at the Exploratorium is March 3rd.

2) Lightning Talks (see links) and Noisebridge's Five Minutes of Fame talks might be good to see (unfortunately missed the latter, last night in San Fran).

3) Watch some TED talks. It's an opportunity to goof around on the net while actually learning some cool stuff!

4) Watch the masters at work. James Burke (Connections), Carl Sagan (Cosmos), Tim Hunkin (The Secret Life of Machines). You'll find endless clips on YouTube. Another great time sink!

[foofers]

I'm reminded also of something I recall reading about the "demo or die" principle at MIT's Media Lab: they would practice presentations with their hands behind their backs or in pockets in order to avoid the nearly uncontrollable impulse of "hand waving" when explaining abstract concepts. If you can't get your point across clearly in words alone and need all kinds of flailing body language, you're not communicating clearly. When actually giving the final presentation they were free to hand-wave all they wanted, with the catch of staying close to the verbal plan they'd previously developed and practiced...the body language is then an enhancement rather than a crutch.

Moar Five Minute Talks

[foofers]

Ignite Week starts Monday.

Their format is pretty different - 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds - but watching the videos might provide some insight into how to structure a five minute presentation.

[velvetpage]

You're talking high school science, right? At least, that's what you'd be applying for

[athelind]

Middle school/elementary school, actually. And I didn't follow ANY of that, particularly "constructivist".

[velvetpage]

The dominant psycho-educational theory at the moment is called constructivist. It means that humans construct their own mental models of new knowledge based on three main factors: their experiences, their prior knowledge, and their social interactions. A teacher's job is to figure out where their knowledge stops on a certain topic, and present them with an opportunity to experience the knew knowledge he wants them to have. Then the teacher should give the students opportunities to work through the experience in conjunction with their peers. The last step is a debriefing in which teacher and students look at, not just the answer and the new knowledge, but the strategies used to get there. Many ways of doing the same thing can be celebrated as right. In math, the goal is to move students from inefficient strategies towards more efficient ones, but only after they've figured out that the inefficient strategies do in fact work to solve the problem

[toob]

I think your best bet, honestly, instead of picking something that you think is impressive or easily demonstrated, is to pick something you're excited about, think of a simple way to explain it, and let your natural enthusiasm show.

Seriously, if you can let people see how amped you can get about topics, if you show them that, they're gonna see how you can be a great teacher.

[hafoc]

If you want to demonstrate seismic waves you might bring a slinky and a box of marbles. This will show how P waves-- primus = primary = "push" or "pressure"- will go through a liquid or a bag of marbles, while secondus = secondary = "shear" or "shake" won't. But will go through the slinky.