by via How can I make my online delivery more engaging?
I just took part in this fab webinar today by the folks at Teaching and Learning Conversation #TLCwebinars – Matthew Thorpe @mattthorpey86 and Steve Williams @ste_3po – really, really enjoyed it… there is always something new to learn isn’t there!
Really happy to see some familiar names on the participant list and its always good to make some new friends .. Matthew and Steve did such a good job of facilitating the session with about 60 participants … it used Adobe Connect which is something I have used before but not used the breakout group function so it was really helpful. I loved the slides that they used – sort of reminded me of comic book super hero type stuff ….
Use of External Tools within the Webinar
Matt and Steve used Mentimeter to get us to contribute to producing a word cloud of words that indicate how useful webinars can be. I’ve seen Mentimeter before but in a conference and workshop setting – I thought it was so cool to use it in a webinar format. I shall be trying that out! They also used the screen share facility to show Tweetdeck of the #tlcwebinar tweets so that was a really useful tip.
The participants also shared loads of good ideas in the chat so hopefully, that will be captured too – I will go back through it when it is released and see if I can pick out one or two ideas to share more widely in case people don’t have the time to watch the whole webinar …
Breakout Group Activity
The breakout group activity we were given split us randomly into groups and then we had to draw an animal and then guess what it was and then share this back to the main group for everyone to guess. 
Unfortunately, I didn’t read the instructions properly and just got carried away with scribbling … (seemingly others actually managed to do the task properly though )
Funnily enough this served as a useful reminder that you need to be really clear when giving instructions ( as mentioned by Rod) and that it might be a good idea to keep the instructions in view when you move into groups – just in case people like me try and ignore them in over excitement to start using the whiteboard !
There were some great artistic fishes, cats, mice and cows being shared and quite a few combinations of animals … I can lay claim to the weird looking Bumble Bee and the Grumpy Cat …
I loved some of the descriptions that people came up with – I think my favourites were ‘Dwabbit’ from Lee Fallin and ‘Confused Bunny’ from Kate W … well it made me laugh anyway …
I’m really interested in how to use breakout group facilities as it’s something I have only dabbled with briefly so always on the lookout for more info! We are about to pilot Blackboard Collaborate at Swansea so am on the hunt for best practice … If you have used breakout groups using webinar software please do get in touch!
Update : Webinar Recording
Here is the link to the webinar recording
Contribute to a TLC Conversation
Oh and I seemed to have volunteered myself and the lovely Emma Gillespie to do a future TLC Webinar – maybe using Flipgrid which I am super keen to experiment with … how cool is that !
Great #TLCwebinars with @MattThorpey86 @ste_3po even got myself roped into hosting another one with the fabulous @debbaff 🙂 https://t.co/QhFRZoqDoc
— Emma Gillaspy (@egillaspy) October 16, 2018
If you want to contribute to a TLC Conversation you can put forward an idea here …
Great summary Debbie thanks! I hadn’t used mentimeter before so will definitely look into that. Also, the experience of the breakout room was a new one for me. The webinars for my modules (on Big Blue Button) normally have a small audience so we tend to be able to do activity work in the main session. As the programme grows it’s likely that breakout sessions will be required 🤞. In November I will start preparing for my spring semester class and hope to introduce more flipped learning opportunities. Last year I experimented with Microsoft Forms for quizzes along with Edpuzzle and both were successful. I have just set up a Flipgrid account so happy to partner in experimentation to see if I can bring this into the classroom. also. Chat soon. S.
Aw glad you liked it … Im usually rubbish at blogging in a short time frame after things so this is probably a record for me ! I’ve not heard of Edpuzzle so thats one for me to take a look at – cheers for that ! I’ll be very interested to see how you get on with Flipgrid – if you want to join me and Emma in our experiments you’d be more than welcome I’m sure !