Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Back from Georgia, more to come

I just got back from Georgia and have some great pictures to share when I get a moment. I had a pretty good experience overall doing a guest lecture for my sister's colleague, though I had a weird teacher moment when I think I might have been a bit too in-your-face for the kids. I told one class that I was in town specifically to do the lecture for this professor, and if it weren't for this class, I'd be back in Denver working on hospital designs. I meant that because I heard that this particular class had a few in-class texters, and I wanted to make it clear that I was here for their benefit and had come a long way to do this (usually the prof does this. but she had to step out briefly during the time that she usually did my intro). However, I think I kinda freaked them out a little bit--instead of getting them involved and excited about having a guest speaker, I think I made it sound like I would rather have been in Denver. However, it was the right-after-lunch class, so maybe they were in a carb stupor or something. (I'd be interested if anyone's had experience with this...) At least the morning class was exciting and interested and interactive.

Anyway, photos of interesting old houses and bad details coming soon!

2 comments:

CivilGuy_DC said...

Haha!
Yea, I think each class is different.
Last fall I was invited as a guest to speak to senior level civil engineering students about sustainability for the first time. I was blown away by the amount of people brazenly browsing the web on computers! Zero feedback, and seemingly little interest. (Of course part of that may have been my presentation...)
I'm not an old-timer, I graduated in 2004, but at least we used to be discreet about browsing/texting during a lecture!

This spring when I gave the same presentation - this time the class was held in a lecture hall without computer access - I was blown away by the feedback, questions, and high level of interest.

I suppose part of it may be the setting, and part of it may just be each group of students is different.

Miss Kitty said...

Some classes are great, while others are duds. Nothing you can do about it...although it IS frustrating when you finally realize (whether it's after 15 minutes of a guest lecture, or 15 class periods) that they enjoy sitting in class like so many proverbial bumps on logs.

Once I realize that with a dud class, I generally feel a lot better. Students generally fail to realize that THEY, not the speaker/teacher, are 90% of what makes the class successful or boring as hell.