Teaching Tip #155

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #155

One of the books from my summer reading list a few years ago was Generation iY Tim Elmore.

In his book, Elmore clearly loves acronyms, which might just turn off every single teacher who reads his book, but if you can put up with them, they really are interesting and worth your time.

One of his acronyms that applies to this generation is “EPIC.”  Emore states that this is an EPIC generation in several ways.

Here is how that breaks down.  I’ll also look at how each term has implications for us as teachers.

I – Imagre rich.

Our students were raised on images.  They have been exposed to far more images than any generation in the history of the world.  In fact, today more images are shared than words. The days of letters are waning. Image is king.  

Now that doesn’t mean I’m anti letters and writing.  Not at all. I’m just trying to be hyper-aware that the vast majority of my students are visual learners.  So me putting up a slideshow with 250 words in 12 font on it is a terrible way to present information to them.

Here are a couple ways to tweak our presentations to make them more memorable.

PechaKucha.  This is a new way of presenting information.  Your slideshows contain 20 images ONLY. The catch is, though, that you can only talk about each image for 20 seconds.  That will make you really conscious of your word choice and what information you want to communicate. How is that a bad thing for either teacher or student?

Pechaflickr.  This site allows you or your students to practice their speaking and presentation skills.  You can select a topic. Then this site has several filters you can use. You can choose just 10 pictures related to your topic or 20.  You can also select how long you want each picture to be displayed, so you could talk about each picture for 10 seconds or 20 seconds or even one minute.

Meme Generators.  This site allows you to upload a picture and then create your own meme around it.  

And since using imagery also extends beyond just notes or slideshows, here is a great blog post on ways to create visual quizzes, tests, and worksheets.