Transcripts
1. Welcome: Okay, here we go. Your hands can't touch each other. What percentage of communication do you think is non-verbal? I got a question for you. When was the last time you were in any kind of virtual meeting or presentation or classroom and you weren't board. Right? Here's the thing. My friends. Virtual communication, virtual meetings and presentations aren't just the present. They are going to be part of the future. So why not become good at them? I designed this course to give you a bunch of different tactics that you can start using right away to keep people interested, engaged, to get them to talk and interact with each other. To make your next presentation or class or meeting memorable. You're going to have a variety of information. You're going to have video lectures where I sit and explain ideas. But then you're actually going to have other sessions where I'm applying the ideas I'm demonstrating and giving you real life examples. So you get the theory and the tactics. You get the idea. And the examples. My friends, I am on a mission to end boring and boring conversations and boring presentations and boring classes. Imagine if the next time you had to do a presentation or teach something online, you could keep people interested. You knew that people were paying attention. You knew that they were going to remember what you said. Now how cool would that be?
2. Uncertainty for Virtual Engagement: Uncertainty equals interest. If I know that, all I'm going to be doing is reviewing slides. If you're, if my teacher is going to be recapping information, then I can tune the information out. Because I will look at the slides later. I will have that idea of, oh, why am I even here if we're just going to be reviewing and recapping slides, I don't even know why I'm here. Or I'll watch the video on my old time later. I'll just record it and I can watch it whenever. But for attendance, I have to be here. So I'm going to mute and open up Facebook or look on my phone, or watch a TV show at the same time. But if I don't know what's coming next, I have to pay attention. If I don't know what that next slide is going to bring, or if it's even going to be a slide, or if I'm going to have to be doing some sort of interaction, I have to pay attention because if I don't know where we're going, I gotta make sure I have to make sure I'm paying attention in case I get called upon. So uncertainty equals interest. Also, when you're not sure what's coming up next, you might be more interested. You might start getting curious because uncertainty also breeds curiosity. Where are we going? What does this mean? Why are you showing me this? Does anyone else understand this? Uncertainty equals interest.
3. Uncertainty Examples: Do you like omens. There's a little part of your brain right here on the sign on each side called area 47. And it looks like a little omen resting on the top of your brain. And there's a book called The organized mine. It was written by a guy named John Lovett tin. And in the book he talks about area 47. An area of 47 does two things. Number one, it tries to predict what is going to happen next. And number two, it regulates dopamine. You know what dopamine does? Doi cocaine. Cocaine essentially pretends to be dopamine in the brain. It overloads the neurotransmitter sites for dopamine. And dopamine makes you feel good. And in the book they talk about this phenomenon when every 47 is most active, is when it's trying to figure out what is going to happen next, we're like, What does this mean? What's the connection between this and that? It's pumping of dopamine to keep you attentive and engaged. And one of the best ways to engage area 47 to create that uncertainty because if I'm unsure what's happening. Here we have 47 is activated, is by questions that seem unrelated at first to your topic and then you make the relationship. Just like when I asked you about omens or vocal keying, you're like, What what what does that have to do? And then I explained it. Let me show you another example. This is from a TED talk and the title of this presentation was, sleep is a superpower. So you know what the presentation is about, It's about sleep. And this is the first thing he said. Thank you very much. Well, I would like to stop with testicles. I'm sorry. What good, sir. What does this have to do with sleep? Watch how he relates it. Men who sleep five hours a night of significantly smaller test to goals than those who sleep seven hours or more. And boom, explanation has been created. So the first way to create uncertainty is to ask a question or make a statement that seems unrelated to your topic and then make the relationship. The other thing you can do is show them an image. I like to introduce a concept called psychological reactants in my workshops. But when I do it, instead of saying Now I want to talk about psychological reaction on instead I say, how many people here like to watch professional wrestling. And over the course of the next minute or two, I explain how professional wrestling teaches us about psychological reactants. So I can say a question or make a statement or show an image that seems unrelated to my topic. And then use the next minute or two to create that relationship. I create that uncertainty. I activate area of 47. It starts pumping out dopamine. And then once I made that create the connection, everyone's like, Oh, I get it. And that is how uncertainty creates interests by activating area 47. Are there other ways to do this? Yes. There's a million other ways. And let me show you one more before we end this module. This is a presentation by Chris Foss. It's available on YouTube. Everything I'm using is on YouTube and I'll make sure to put the links for the videos I've been showing you. He just got introduced. Any asked everyone to stand up and watch what he does, watch or we create uncertainty with an activity. You're in this meeting where you're here to learn about negotiation because that's his specialty. And you're expecting like Hello everybody Today I want to talk about negotiation, but instead he starts with this. Why? I was asking was a complicated he's starting to make the relationship between the activity activating your report is seven and the topic he's about to do, see what he's doing. Just like the activity, which is what he does. He starts off with uncertainty, creates a relationship with the topic and everyone's like, Oh, I get it. So you see how it works. You can use uncertainty to engage your audience and create interests. And it doesn't just have to be at the beginning. It could be through a presentation. So if you want to get people interested, if you want to keep them watching, create uncertainty to make curiosity and interest.
4. Accountability for Virtual Engagement: If we were in a real classroom and I said, Can everyone please raise your hands if blink. Ok. Now raise your hands. If not blank. You could call it the people that didn't participate. Because you can see now, how do you do that online? How do you make sure people interact online? You have to make sure that if you ask for something, everyone participates. And that means if you ask everyone to say something in the chat, you call out those people who haven't yet. You don't have to be specific with their names, but you can say y is only 60 people. Replied there are a 100 people in this room. I need to see everyone, please. And you wait, you hold them accountable. So not only do I have to pay attention in case I might be called upon, Oh my gosh, this person is actually paying attention if I'm not participating as a group, okay. Hey everybody, I wanted to move into this virtual session to show you exactly how I would try to hold people accountable. So first example, let's suppose we're going to pull, this is literally what I would say. All right, buddy, The poll is up. You have three choices and let's get those answers in. Okay, got 14 people, 15, okay, waiting on a few more. There's 25 people in the class. I need to see 25 answers, please. Here we go. Alright, 23 to more people please. And there we go. And here are the results, everybody. So you see what I did there. I tried to hold people accountable, not specifically, but through general numbers. All right. We got 13 people. We need, we need four more, five more. Now suppose there's just one or two people that you know are not there. Do you wait for them? No. No one else is going to know. You can wait till you get almost everybody. But the fact that you're waiting and that you're holding people accountable will start to set that expectation. So if you do a poll again, you're going to get the responses again. And if you do again, all right, Come on everyone. I need three more people to answer. The more you do it, the more you set the expectation that more people are going to be engaged. And because you're holding them accountable, they know that they all have to do things. Now suppose I'm not using a poll, I don't have polls. I just maybe I used the chat. A 100 people in the room. How are you going to count? You don't have to, but you can kind of communicate the same concept. Can everyone give me a yes or no in the chat, please? A yes or no in the chat. All right. The yeses, a couple of yeses, nos nose and I start calling on people as they're answering. And then when it slows down, if I think it's been roughly 50, but I know there's a 100 people like Come on everybody. That's only about a third of you here. I'm going to wait for everyone to answer, please. And I pretend like I'm counting. Again, this is what's going to happen. There's going to be someone with a microphone and camera off like this. And you're going to be oh, you want me to actually, they're actually paying attention. The other way I could do it is I can make everyone turn their cameras on and I could literally say, can everyone give me a thumbs up if you understand? Everybody, please. If you don't understand, give me a thumbs down, but if you do understand, please give me a thumbs up. And if there's a 100 people, of course I can't see everyone. And maybe even after that, I still not everyone will be like this. However, the bunch of people who weren't engaged and will be now. So those are some ways that you can hold people accountable in your virtual session and create the expectation that you will be asking them, they will have to participate.
5. Variation for Virtual Engagement: And the last one is variation. In a classroom. Because of group pressure, we can get away with giving one format because no one wants to be like, put their feet up, those terrible hold on, I'm just going to go pee. Nobody wants to really do that, right? When that does happen, it's always very like specific and Strategic, right? You're not going to get up 56 times in the middle of a one hour lecture, but you will when it's online. If it's just a straight up lecture. But if you are constantly varying tasks and I don't know what's coming next, and I'm not sure if it's going to be a time that I listened or it's going to be a time that I do. And I'm actually I have to either do this or do this or to make it. If there's lots of things to do within that one hour, that variation will help to keep me attentive. Because now another way that we create variation is in what we do within that time, we have all our students together. So the first two, you kind of know, right? Lecturing, you can guess, show them the slides and what have you put them into group work. We'll talk about that later in the class. Individual tasks is something that we don't always do, but it can't be another way to vary up the interaction on the virtual session. And that is you literally tell everyone, turn their, turn off your cameras and microphones. You're all going to have five minutes when you come back. I want you to show me blank. I want you to answer this question and you can let them do individual work. And the reason you turn off the camera and microphone is it gives it a change of pace. It gives them at some time. Yeah, they go to the bathroom, whatever. But because you're going to say, I'm going to ask you all to show me something. You create that uncertainty by saying I'm going to pick random people. They'll have to do something because they won't know who's going to get called upon. What are some more examples of individual work? It can't be that they have to find a certain link. It can be they have to redesign some sort of slide. It can be they have to be able to answer this question in 30 seconds to a minute. It's completely up to you. The same things you can get people do in a group. You can also get them to do individually. And if you have both of those throughout the class, variation. As I've done in previous sessions, you could also share something and people could watch something together. And that's ads variation again, just a little note on that. Keep it to a couple of minutes max. Because if you're watching something very quickly, I think to myself, I could just be watching this on YouTube on my own. So what am I doing this for? And one of the other elements that I'd like to you, and this is not an exhaustive list. These are just some of the ones that I like to use is I like to do a show-and-tell where I literally tell people to go find something online or find something in the real world, come back and show it to me. So sometimes it can be, can anyone find me an example of a really good LinkedIn page? I'm gonna give you five minutes and individual task. Turn off the camera and microphone, or I can put them in a group. And they have to do it together, but they have to come back and either show everyone's something or put a link in the chat. And that's another really great way to vary up what they're doing in the session. Typically. And I do teach I teach allied virtual class, had been doing so for years. I will try and have all of these in a two hour session. Do you have to have all of these in your sessions? No. But the more of these that you do, the more you vary it up between lecture and show and tell and then a little lecture and then we want something, a little lecture group work, the more engaging your virtual session will be. There is a fundamental evolutionary reason why this is important. There's a book called Brain Rules. It was written by a gentleman named John Medina, who's a neuroscientist. And he talked about how the brain has evolved to process information. And one of the things he talks about is that the brain needs exercise, like physical exercise to reinvigorate like hormone transmission, blood flow, et cetera. But how do you do that when you're sitting in front of a computer? By making people do things like, oh, which one is that? This little bit of movement? Oh, okay. Is enough to wake people up for a minute. And if I never know what type of response I'm going to get, or if I have to verbally talked or if I have to just do an audio clip or I have to do a poll, that variation can help to keep me attentive combined with the uncertainty because I never know what kind of variation I'm going to do. And if I don't do it, I know that the teacher would be like, Why hasn't everyone Dennis, I'm like, Oh, I better do this right? And I know exactly what to do. Those four elements combined can create a dynamic, interesting, interactive live online session.
6. Specificity for Virtual Engagement: Specificity, specific thickness. Specify my comics. Especially when we are online and we are dealing with technology, we have to be very clear about what we want people to do. Memorize this term. In a moment. You will. If you tell everyone to do something, they're going to go right into it as you're explaining. So you have to, in a moment we will blink. And then you have to really be specific about what you want them to do. It's not enough to say in a moment, I'm going to ask you all a question. And I'd like you all to answer because we will. What kind of answer? I mean, if we were in a classroom, we would know you'd, you'd want us to talk. But when there's 50 people in a live session, how are we supposed to be answering is the question your learners have. So we have to be very specific with what we want. Those four elements combined can create a dynamic, interesting, interactive live online session. So now we know the principles. The next question is, how do we apply them?
7. What to do before the official start: I want you to imagine you're in an elevator. But instead of, you know, everyone looking at the numbers, everyone is in a circle staring at each other and awkward silence. Just feel that for a minute. That is what the first few minutes ON was. Every virtual session is like you let people in and it's just kinda, people kinda hang out awkwardly to what do I do right away. It's boring or an awkward. Sometimes there's people talking, but usually it's dominated by one or two people, or it's a bunch of small talk or you try and talk to one person, you run our stuff to say and they like, so how about you? How are you know, in an elegant been great. And so right off the bat, you start with, so what can we do instead your learner? Here's the kind of things that I like to do. All right, everybody. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you, everybody. I see everybody is typing. Make sure before you begin in the chat, right? Being your first name and all the languages you speak. And I get everybody. I see about a half of us have done this. So everybody, can you please make sure you keep a little below in the chat? There we go. I see some more people come in. So what do we do? First of all, I like to wait until maybe a minute beforehand. I send messages. If there's a waiting room when people are waiting, I send messages to the way from saying we're going to start momentarily. Most people log in like right at the end you got one or two people that log in 10 minutes early and then everyone else comes in at like if you'd starts at 10 AM, they're there at 959 and thirty-seconds. Cool. You let everyone in with about a minute, minute and have some music going on in the background, not elevator music. Because that's not fun. Something upbeat, something fun, maybe some like mellow beats. And then here's the magic. Use the whip cream. They're going to come in, they're going to hear the music and the big O and make it a song that they know. Make it either cheesy or song that everyone knows, but then give them some fun tasks. So while the music is playing, that energizes them. But then in the couple of minutes before we begin, because using we always start a few minutes late to accommodate for people who show up late. Give them a task or activity, or a variety of tasks or activities. So imagine they see a slide and the slide says, please rename yourself. So what's your first name only? And here's how you do it. And then your mic is on and you're saying, Hey everybody, please check out the slide, make sure to rename yourselves. Or you have instructions that say, Please tell us where in the world. Where in the world you are. Say hello in a language that isn't English. And then as things start popping up in the chat, you comment on them to show that you're paying attention. Hey, so and so oh, how did, how do you even pronounce that? Oh, you're in so you're in this place, That's great zones, zones in the house. What is this doing? One, it is killing time that isn't awkward. It is buying time, doing fun activities. That's making energy. And it's not awkward waiting. But here's the other thing it's doing. It's creating engagement and interaction in a low stakes way. Writing things in the chat, getting people loosened up a little bit. So and so how do you pronounce that? Can you just turn on your mic and let me know real quick? And the last thing it's doing, it's allowing people to interact with the technology. So you can identify people who are having problems with technology. So for example, by getting people to write stuff in the chat as the music is playing, you'll figure out people be like, Where's the chat? And they'll have to figure it out. Versus you starting to talk or ten minutes into the things in the chat. Can you do this? And someone's like, where's the Jot and derailing the conversation. As people are coming on the instruction could say, turn on your cameras and wave and then turn your camera back off. So as people come in, you're like, Hey, see you, David? I see assume are nice. You can turn your cameras off now. I just want to make sure the cameras were working great. So make sure your gender your cameras on just for a minute and give you a little wave hello to make sure the cameras are working. Low stakes way to interact with technology that won't interfere. And the best part is if you do this your workshops such a 10, you do this for my 1002, 1003. Laypeople are coming in. They're not missing out. You don't have to wait for them. People are having fun, the music is playing. They're figuring out any problems they have with the technology. And they're also interacting and the energy is going up. And that is how you start a virtual session.
8. How to be visually interesting: So how much communication is supposed to be non-verbal? If you were to go right now, what great. Now take can take your phone or something. You can pause this video, go and look it up. Just go and look it up. But no matter what you find, you're going to see numbers like 50, 60, 70, 80, and whether or not you agree with the exact number, here's the thing. Most of us will agree that a big chunk of communication is nonverbal. Therefore, how much communication are you losing when you're like this or like this, right? Or if you're just going to be a talking head like this, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. How much communication is non-verbal? Right? Here's the thing. When we are communicating online, we are competing. How many tabs you have open right now? Yeah. Grab your phone. Grab your phone. It's right there. You are competing against these things, these things that other people are looking at. Therefore, we have to become visually interesting because that's what we're competing against. Now, forget about me. I'm just some dude on the Internet who are the best people at communicating and being engaging, sitting in their bedroom alone. Who is better than YouTube celebs? If you think about it, who was better than them at speaking alone in a room by themselves and being engaging. So let's look, look. This is name attain. She's got like 2.5, almost 3 million followers on YouTube. This is Philip the Franco. He's got like 6.5 million followers on YouTube. This is xo, Ala, and Zola's got like 5.5 million followers on YouTube. And this is Mark, he's Bradley, is the biggest tech reviewer. He's got like almost 12 million followers on YouTube. What do they have in common? Look? Yes, you can say they're all dynamic, they're all interesting. They're all using their hands, but how, what is it that makes them look so interesting, so dynamic. And once you see this, you're always going to see this number 1. No YouTube, Scilab rest their arms. See most of you are here, these tables in front of us, right? But here's the thing. Most YouTube celebrities don't miss their arms. In fact, they're usually like this. They're talking like this. Which brings me to the second most juseu to labs are not a close up. They're not This. In fact, almost all of them are a mid body shot. Why? So you can see their hands moving. But how are their hands moving? It's something I like to call the CSR. And here's how the seesaw works. You talk on one side and then you top on the other side, just like a seesaw. Sometimes with both hands. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Sometimes you can do one hand and then the other hand, sometimes one side, sometimes both, sometimes moving. And the idea is this, there's no one right way. And if we were all hanging out and we were just having like a cup of coffee or hanging out having a beer or something. We wouldn't be doing this without thinking about it. It's only when we are presenting online that we become this thing. And we start talking like this, where we start talking like this and we become a talking head. And very quickly the urge to look at something else arrives. So let's do YouTube, celebrity nonverbal communication, speaking with both hands or with one hand on one side and then switching it to the other side. It doesn't matter how often. The only reason people think that you might have too much movement is when you do repetitive gestures is when you just do the same thing over and over and over. But if you use a seesaw and you're just varying it up as you're speaking. You're going to start looking very confident and very charismatic and very dynamic. Just like YouTube celebrities. And remember, presentations are not things you listened to and they're not things you read, your things you watch. So we have to be interesting to watch.
9. Making Talking Slides: Do you know how to read? Well, of course you do. Of course. Of course everybody knows how to read, right? When was the last time you read a slide deck? I'm not saying looked at a slide deck. I'm saying sat down and read a slide deck. Chances are if you're going to school, you might have looked at a lot of them but you didn't stop and read them. In fact, you probably skim them. Now, grab your phone. I'm going to do something. No one's ever told you to go and open up Instagram and look at it for like 30 seconds. Pause the video or Tiktok or Facebook. Pause the video. Go ahead. You're back. If you're like me, this is how you look through information on Instagram. You went like this because that's the way we're working nowadays. We scroll through information. So the first strategy of using slide decks when you are trying to be engaging and when you're trying to communicate virtually is to make slide decks that can be scrolled through. Well, how do we do that, Yvonne, I'm glad you asked. What we need to do is we need to forget the paradigm, the idea that you can only have a certain number of slides or bulletins lines. That's fine, but that's also the old way. What we have to do instead is think, instead of having like 20 slides, have like 60 or 70 slides that someone can go like this to see, here's the thing I'm going to show you is let's look at some typical slides. So let's look at a slide like this. You see you got a slide like this. And this is not even that much information, right? You have a slide like this and you might be in a class and this is what the class looks like. It's someone in the corner like this. And then of course it's like some information and you're talking through the information. But let's be honest for many here, Let's be a little reflective here for a minute. Probably none of you have even read this slide yet. In fact, you're probably staring at it because it is almost impossible. Impossible to listen to me, absorb what I'm saying, but also read this slide at the same time. Try and read the slide right now. Think about it right now, try to read it. It is really hard to read the slide because I won't shut up. And it the thing is, the more I'm talking, you have to stop ignoring what I'm saying. You have to start ignoring everything I say in order to concentrate on the slides and still you haven't read them all. So what can we do about it? Dear learner? We have to transition between slides that are meant to be read and slides that talk to the viewer. Slides at that kind of mimic a conversation, talking slides. And here's what I mean. So here's a slide deck. It's right from slideshare, I'll put the link down below if you want to check it out. It's a fun little slide deck. It's got over a 100 slides in it. But here's the thing. When we go through this slide deck, what you will notice is that it becomes very easy to scroll through it because the slides aren't here to give you a bunch of information to be read. The slides are talking to you. Look, Let's make the information a little more distinct. You see that? Do you see how it's talking to you? It's showing you things. I you see it's talking to you. If you had a chance, you could scroll through Look, I'm scrolling through quite quickly, but you're still getting the gist of a lot of things. There are things that are popping out at you because there's a lot of slides, but not a lot of information on the slides. And that information is talking to you. And that is how you make your slides deck a bit more engaging when you are communicating virtually. But here's the thing. When should you use them? We'll talk about that in the next video.
10. When to use Talking Slides: So we know how to make talking slides, but that was just one quick example. Before I get into some other examples, let me talk about a strategy. Here's the thing. What is the point of being in class? What's the point of being here? How often have you asked yourself that question when you've been in a meeting or listened to a presentation or been in a class, and you're like, I could read this information. This is all in the book. This is on the slide that why are we here? And that's the first Mindshift we need to have, is our time together virtually is not about reviewing information. It is about applying it. When we are in a virtual session, in a virtual classroom, in a virtual presentation, we are not here to review information, we are here to apply it and the time for review is in advance. But if you send a traditional slide deck, if you send a slide deck with lots of bullets and information and lots of big ones sentences. People are gonna skim it and they're not really going to absorb the information. But if you send a slide that talks to the reader that they can scroll through quickly, the likelihood that they'll go through it and they'll absorb more increases. And then when we come together in our class, it's all about applying the information. With all that being said, here's the kind of stuff you could send to people in advance. So here's another slide deck. And again, I'll put the link down below. Notice that this slide deck is trying to talk to you. There's not a lot of information on these slides, but they are trying to talk to you with a lot of big words, but also very little information so that you can go through them quickly. Versus a traditional slide deck that has a bunch of bullets with a lot of like sentence structure into them, right? And you look at this, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't even want to read this stuff and it's a lot, it's very wordy. Chances are if you skim it, you still have no idea what's on this stuff because you're looking at not individual bullets, but a slide as a whole, as a whole picture. And usually if you're like me, you're looking at this and be like, I'll read this later. You didn't read that last slide. I was on the lungs. You didn't read it. You see you look at this stuff. You might go like this and skim through it quickly and be like I'll just read all this stuff later. So that's what we gotta do. We gotta make slides that talk to our audience. Stuff that they can scroll through as if they were on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook. And if you send those in advance, and then when they come to class, all you do is refer to the information. Right away. You're going to have a more engaging class. But I know what you're thinking, you're thinking Yvonne, sometimes I need to show things in the class. I want to show things in the class. I can't just be here talking. It's not conducive to what I do. Fine. Then you slides. But how can you use, whether it's a traditional slide that has a bunch of information or a newer talking slide. How am I supposed to do that in the virtual classroom, in the virtual presentation? Is there a way that I can use them effectively to keep people engaged? Yes. And we'll talk about it in the next video.
11. Converting from traditional to Talking Slides: So we understand how to meet talking slides and how to use slides. Bet it's best to always send them in advance so that you apply. But we also have a couple of strategies for when someone shows up in class and we need to show them slides. Just because we want to be seen in this video. I just want to give you an example. How would you convert from traditional to talking slides? So let's go back to this Heineken slide. All I'm going to do is I want to take this traditional slide with bullets and lots of information on it and try and convert it into a talking slide. And here's the thing. I'm gonna make this one slide into a bunch of slides, but I'm doing it so that it's easy to understand and someone can scroll through it. And even if I use this in class, not just in advance in my virtual presentation, it'll also be easier for people to listen to me because there's way less information to absorb. And again, my friends notice you weren't reading any of that information. You are staring at it. So instead of fighting it, let's use that concept to our advantage. Here's that same slide, that same site. You can rewind it if you want to see it. And I took that one slide and I made it into this, a slide that talks to my audience so they don't need me to be there, but I'm going to walk you through it anyway. So I just whatever random cradle. But notice right off the bat, I'm asking the audience, talking to you, asking you a question. This is the most information you'll see on any of the slides and a talking sign, like one kind of sentence, but it's talking to you. And every time that there's a lot of information, it goes back to a simple thing. So you see that is all that information in the traditional slide. That is what I took this one slide with a bunch of information that's boring and hard to read. And I converted it into a talking slide, a slide that you can scroll through and absorb information very quickly. And yes, it is a lot more slides. Who cares? That's not the moral of the story. The moral of the story is, one is easier to read and it talks to you. And you are more likely not just to read all of it, but to absorb it.
12. From eye contact to eye movement: So in this video, we're going to talk about how you can use slides within a virtual session. If you have to use slides in your virtual session because you need to review information or for whatever reason, is there a way that we can use them in the session that's going to keep people engaged so that people aren't just checking their phones, are looking at something else while we're talking. Yes. But first, a question, eye contact, good thing or bad thing. Good thing. But how are you supposed to make eye contact? Virtually, staring at the camera, whatever that doesn't actually work. If anyone has said that, they have no idea how the Internet works. Because here's the thing. Just because I'm staring at the camera doesn't mean that I'm looking at you because I could make my picture could be down here. It could be if you're going to be up there, just because you're looking at the camera doesn't mean that you're looking at me. Here's the thing. What's your answer to me looking at the camera like this and going talking or looking at myself the whole time. I could be looking at you for all you know. But the truth is, being virtual is like walking by a mirror. It is almost impossible for you not to stare at yourself. You've probably done it five or six times already. So instead of eye contact, let's think eye movement changing what I'm looking at. So here's a traditional, this is from slideshare. I'll put the link down below, but this is just a standard presentation, right? And if you look at this presentation, you'll see that it's just like an old school kind of style presentation. Lots of information, lots of bullet points, can't really skim through it. Lots of titles, all kinds of things like that, lots of full sentences. But suppose that you can't change the sides. You have to show slides. I guess you're like Yvonne. I know how to make talking slides, but I can't do it in this context, fine. In that case, what you do is you go back and forth. You go back and forth between your slides. You can show them something on your slides. You can introduce a new thing. You could review something here and then you come back to you. And the good, the best ratio that you can think of is what I like personally is I like to be 70 percent me, 30% my slides. Every time you put up your slides, if you think about it, it's roughly about maybe after about a minute or so, people be like me and you just stare at the slides. But every time the slight changes and you see me and you're like, Well, what happened? And then I'm talking and talking and talking. And as you start getting bored of me, maybe I'm using the seesaw and everything like that. And then this pops up and you like, oh, the visual changed again. And then I talk and maybe go into my next slide, I introduce some new ideas and I stop and I go back to me. And so instead of eye contact, I changed the visual so you have ion movement. The second way you can create ion movement is if I, again, if I go back to this traditional slide and I say, and I tell you what to look at. And when I say connected to me, if you ever can you please look at the bottom bullet, the last bullet on this page. And you all did. I show you a slide like this and you don't even know what to look at. But I say could everyone please just look at inbound logistics? And then I talk about inbound logistics. And I talked and I said Now, let's jump over to marketing and sales. If you can find marketing and sales, it's just on the right-hand side. There we go. You will see that Heineken is the fifth most recognized brand of beer in the world. That's the big thing we have to think about with marketing and sales. That's all you need to know. Notice that I am telling you what to look at and when, and then I change the visual. So every time the visual changes you wake up and every time I tell you to find something this little Were there, okay? Those are both moments of engagement and that's how you can use your slides strategically in a virtual session to keep people engaged, going back and forth and telling them what to look at and when.
13. Intro to Icebreakers: What's the most underrated part of the learning? It's fun. For some reason. We think professionalism can't be fun. But when you look at the research, when you incorporate fun into any activity or to any tasks, people retain information better. They apply knowledge better, the more willingly do the tasks. Now when we are physically separated from one another, we can't see or hear each other. It's even more important that you can incorporate fun into your learning environment. And that starts with some fun, easy icebreakers. And in this video, I want to talk about some fun icebreakers you can use in your next virtual learning environment to get people having fun and break the ice with people so that they can interact with each other later on. This will also help to establish the rules of learning. And now the question is, well, exactly what kind of icebreakers can we have virtually? Let's go back to the previous modules when we talk about some of the best practices, the principles we need to have to be engaging online. There's uncertainty. There's variation, right? Specificity and accountability. So when we think about that, those applied, why are our icebreakers? Here's the thing. I can use, chat, audio or video. But within each, I can also vary it up. So for example, the best thing to do would be like to have some form of engagement using the chat and then get something on video and then get something that audio. But suppose you only use one, you vary it within that one medium. So different things in the chat. Let me give you some examples. First, with all the mediums, I could run something in the chat. Can everyone please tell me what they had for breakfast? All right. On the video, breakfast thumbs up or thumbs down. Do you eat breakfast? Do not eat breakfast. Alright, we're gonna go through the list here. We've got 10 people here. And I'm gonna go so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so and so-and-so. Did you have coffee this morning? I've turned on their bikes, just the four people I mentioned. All right. Person won the job coffee, person to to Jeff coffee. So what I'm doing is I'm trying to have interaction. I'm trying to do some fun little things, but I'm varying up the medium. Now suppose you don't feel comfortable doing that and maybe you're only using a chat function. People don't turn on the cameras or audio, vary it up within the chat. So one of them can be a complete the sentence. Another one could be, you can ask people to choose a or B. Another one can be, you can make people go and find the link and share it in the chat. There's a variety of things you do. You can tell people to say yes or no. Do you agree or disagree? And then the next time that you want an agree or disagree, yes or no, instead of saying that same Smiley face or frowny face in the chat go. Because if I'm about to type yes or no Smiley face, oh, which one is? That little moment of searching is a moment of re-engagement. Because here's the thing. If I only say yes or no, if I only use one medium in the exact same way, every time I use it, it becomes less engaging. So therefore, I need to vary up my interaction and very up my icebreakers. So you can have chat, video or audio icebreakers. And I have a link that I've attached in the extra resources. With examples of a bunch of different ones you can use.
14. Icebreaker: Two Truths and a Lie: And here we are on Zoom and we're here because I want to run you through how I would play my favorite icebreaker, two truths and a line. And instead of explaining it, I'm just going to do it. Let's pretend there's like 30 people in some sort of presentation. This is right before the presentation starts. This is right after I'd been introduced. All right, everybody. Before we begin, I want you to get to know me a little bit more. So in a minute, I'm going to tell you three hard to believe things about myself. Two are true, and one is a lie. We're going to see how good of a liar I am, because you're going to vote, you're going to see a little poll and you're going to vote to tell me which one is the lie. So here are the number 1. I've met Leonardo DiCaprio. Number 2, I've been to every continent except Antarctica. Number three, I could do head spin. So which one is the line? Okay, at this point I'm speaking to you learner. The poll pops up and I get people to vote. And here's one of the ways I hold people accountable. If there's 30 people in this session, I would say everybody a few more seconds. I see 24 people have voted. So there's about five more people that need to vote. So let's get those votes in command next. Five seconds, 5, 4. And I do that to get people in. Oh, he's actually looking. Now, the pole is done. Everyone has voted and they'll say something like this, all right, so the votes are in, and most of you don't believe that I met Leonardo DiCaprio? Well, guess what? My job in university was actually as a background extra. That was my part-time job. And I was in a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and I said hello and he shook hands. And so I have met in Leonardo DiCaprio. So I guess I'm a good liar. But here's the thing, my friends. Now, it's your turn. In a moment. You're all going to go into a breakout room. Three or four people. You're all going to play two truths and a lie. And when you come back, I'm going to pick some random people to do it in front of it, every one. And we're going to see how good of a liar you all are. Remember, three, hard to believe things about yourself. You're going to break our room. You're all going to play the game. You're all going to try and guess. And when we come back, I'm just going to pick some few random people to do it in front of everyone. Give me a thumbs up if you understand. All ready, Here we go. So at this point, learner their own the breakout rooms. I might go in and just play around and try and guess a few things. But notice how I said, I'm going to pick random people. I did that so that they don't know who's going to get chosen. Which means everyone has to participate. In other words, I used uncertainty to get people engaged. Now, let's see what happens when they come back. What am I gonna do with a comeback? Well, I'm going to get them to play the game, but then I'm going to relate it to how the rest of the session is going to run. All right, everybody, we are back, we're back, We are back. And as promised, I am now going to pick a random person. And at this point, imagine that one or two or three different people have presented. I put the poll up. They've all voted. And after two or three people are done, I'll say something like this. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Well done, well done, well done, well done. My friends. This is how this session is going to run. This is going to be an interactive session. So I'm going to teach you something. We're going to go into breakout rooms, we're going to discuss it. You're going to have to come back with something done. And then I'm going to pick random people to demonstrate it in front of everyone. Because today is about engagement and interaction. So notice what I've done. I've used the icebreaker as a fun way to set the expectations for the rest of the class. Now I know what you're thinking. What happens if we're not on Zoom, if we're using something else or if we don't have a poll, no problem. All you have to do is this. You say your two truths and a lie and you tell everyone. So in the chat, Can everyone push, everyone push 1, 2, or 3? Let me know which one you think is the lie. Everyone in the chat. Let me see 12 or three. Okay. All right. We've got about 24, 25 responses so far. Let's get the last few inquiries. And I see mainly 2's, couple of ones and almost no theory. So you see, I can still play the game even when I don't have a poll. Sometimes I'll do both. So I'll do the poll, the first two truths and a lie after they come back from the breakout rooms will be another poll. But then I'll say this time everyone. Let's go into chat. Tell me 12 or three in the chat. Another variation, I make everyone turn on the cameras by show of hands. Who thinks it's number one? Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. Who thinks there's number two? If your hands are cuter variation. So that my friends is my favorite icebreaker, two truths and a lie.
15. Using Icebreakers in the middle: Sometimes you need icebreakers in the middle. Sometimes you get tired in the middle of a session. What a beautiful place to add another icebreaker. Quick and dirty, super fast ones. And let me give you two examples. Complete the sentence and Poles. And I will give you some examples of complete the sentence, but you can find your own in It's even better if you can make them relevant. Suppose I'm doing a session on sales marketing, or I'm doing a session on bioinformatics. It doesn't matter. Find something fun. Please complete this sentence. This is just for fun, everybody. Oh no, watch out. It's and that's literally what you type in the chat and you get people to just write the response, oh no, watch out. It's Can everyone please write down what it is? Complete this sentence, please complete this sentence. And then you try and relate it back to what you were talking about. So in the sales thing I'd be like, oh no, watch out. It's a tough doctor to get to. If you're in pharmaceutical sales or like on a watch out, it's a huge hole in the ozone layer. And let's talk about the ozone layer. And then you use the icebreaker to have some fun and then transition into your next topic. The other really great icebreaker to have in the middle, that's really quick and fast that you can use to have fun, but also transition to topics, pulls. And the best type of poles are not just one. Here's the thing, Here's the whip cream. The best type of poles are like three pulls in a row. So for example, I'll do this. I will have three poles, and I will say, there are two types of people in this world. There are beer people and wind people. There are cat people and dog people. There are people who are good at their job and people who are bad at their job. And I won't even let that third pole finish. I'll just say, I know that it's an awkward question. So how can you talk about yourself when you want a promotion? How can you make yourself sound good when you want a promotion? How do you talk about yourself when you want to transition to a new job without sounding like I'm good or bad at my job. That's what we're going to talk about today. And I use it to transition into the topic. So using three pulls in a row. And if you're watching right now, I will make you this offer. If you have a specific situation where you want to use this tactic, but you can't think of the three poles. Contact me on social media, contact me on LinkedIn and I will give you advice. Because I know you're listening to this and you're saying that's a great idea, I'm going to use three pools, but what do I ask? The first two you got because there just for fun, it's that third one. That always gets you that third one to relate it to your topic. But just for fun, I'm going to think of something random right now. So let's say you're doing construction training, onsite safety training for construction, and you use there's two types of people in this world. People who love beards and people who love being clean shaven. Alright, there's two types of people in this world. People who cook and people who ordering. Okay, There's two types of people in this world. People who are going to live forever and people who are probably going to die in the next three years. I know right how you, who wants to answer that question? But ideally, I would love to see everyone just write live forever. Because I want to talk about safety today. And I want to talk about three different things that we can do to make sure that you don't get injured on the job site. And I transitioned into the topic. So those are two little icebreakers that you use in the middle of your sessions to re-energize people and transition to the next topic.
16. Using Icebreakers to set expectations: Hello dear learner. This is another infield example of how I use two truths and a lie, not just to have fun, but to set up the rules of interaction and the expectations of interaction for the whole course. I've pet at a tiger. Number two, I can do a head spin. Number three, I've met Leonardo DiCaprio. Which one is the lie? Go. A pet at a tiger, I can do a head spin. And I've met Leonardo DiCaprio. Which one is the lie? Let's see. So oh my God, really. So almost everybody it's like split down the middle between. I can do head spin. And I've met Leonardo DiCaprio and my friends. Those are the only ones that are true. I have never had a tiger nor will I ever pet a tiger. That's insane. But when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, I was in fact a break dancer. I was I don't know if you know the world, but be boy, I was a baby boy. And my Facebook, my Facebook page is actually me doing head spin on my Facebook profile. And my only job is anyone here from Quebec just out of curiosity, anybody know? So I went to meet Gil and for the first couple of years I've my friends was like non-existent because I'm originally from Vancouver. So the only job I could get was as a background in film and television. And I wasn't a movie. I was a background in the aviator in my third year at university. And there's this part actually make Leonardo DiCaprio and Gwen Stefani. So there's, what happened was there's like they're walking, they're playing, they're walking into a big film screening. And I'm like the shoulder in front of them. And so in-between takes. So here I am breaking down the game and just trying to connect with everybody in the audience. Now watch as I use my example to get them ready To do the exact same thing. Moment. I'm going to put you all into a breakout room with two or three people. You're all going to have to do the two truths and a line with each other. And when you come back, I'm going to pick a random person to do it in front of everyone and we're going to vote again. Notice how I set up on certainty as to who is going to be called upon. This is to assure that everyone participates in the activity games. Begin. Have fun. Hi everybody, welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. All right. So this is the part now where I'm going to pick a random person. And then here's what's going to happen. I'm going to pick a random person. Everyone is going to turn off their cameras except for that person. So I introduced the activity. I repeated right before they went into their rooms and now repeating again. And even still, I had questions on this session shoes. Now we're at the end and I'm translating the warm-up icebreaker into expectations for the rest of the session earn anything by just sitting in passively watching it. You know this already, if you've taken this has been your whole semester. So the way it's gonna work todays, this, I'm going to make you interact in chat and on camera. I'm going to give you tasks. I'm going to put you into a breakout room and you will not have enough time. And then I'm gonna put you on the spot in front of everybody, because the only way to learn is by doing it and experiencing it yourself. So just to recap everybody, we played two truths and a lie. I demonstrated it. Then I told everyone they would have to do it. I put them into breakout rooms and told them that I'm going to pick random people to create uncertainty. When they came back. I put, I picked random people. Then I use that game to say this is how the rest of the workshop is going to function. I'm going to give you activities, put you in breakout rooms, bring you back and pick random people. So the icebreaker established the rules and the expectations for the rest of the course.
17. Real-life examples of a variety of interaction tools: Once you've done that just in the camera, can you all give me a thumbs up? Just give me a thumbs up in the camera. Once you've done that, please. We got to get to know each other. Would you rather live in a cave for the rest of your life or live in a tree for the rest of your life. Let's see what kind of people we got here. So essentially, would you rather live in a condo or a basement sweep? The question is, would you rather be able to control fire or control water? One for you? So now, instead of filling out a poll, I want you all to look into chat. I want everyone to look into the chat and please complete this sentence. Lookout, it's a, boom, boom, boom. All right. A. B, that's a, that's a scarier one. I think I'd be more scared of the B, a hurricane, a cupcake. Watch out. It's a man. Deja on what lookout? It's a bomb, it's a crocodile. So Gang before we begin, I have a question for everybody. How many of you, and in this time just do it in the camera. How many of you just kind of give me a hands up. How many of you have a TAP card? Okay, great. If you understand, instead of on the video in the reactions, you'll see the reactions below. Give me a thumbs up. So not in the video in the reactions below because I want it to be familiar with the technology. Give me a little thumbs up. Thank you all. I love that. I love that. I love that. Great.
18. How to use breakout rooms effectively: What are you afraid of? I'll tell you what you're afraid of. Technology. So often in video conferencing, people just use the bare minimum of the functionality of their video conferencing and that's fine. But what I have noticed is that most people want to do little things, but they're afraid to try because they don't want anything to mess up. One of the easiest, most effective ways that we can use the functionality of almost any video conference chat is in the breakout rooms. When you put people in many groups. Pretty much every single video conferencing solution that I've seen has this option. And very rarely do people use it, or very rarely do they use it effectively. It is one of the best ways to get people to learn, instead of telling them something, asking them to figure it out on their own. In fact, there's a great researcher, his name is Sugata Mitra. He has found that the best and most effective way to get people to learn with almost 0 criteria, with almost 0 instruction is to put them in small groups with one information source. We can almost do that exactly in breakout rooms. So here's what happens. If I'm doing a presentation and I give people an example of a best practice, something that I want them to do. Instead of just moving on. I say Now, here's what's going to happen and here are the principles of breakout rooms. I say in a moment, you will be broken up into breakout rooms of two to 33 to four people. I try and keep it like five or less. I will give you two minutes to create your own examples of this best practice. And when we come back, I'm going to choose a random group to present to everyone. It can be everyone in the group that presents, or it can be one person that present. You can nominate them, or you can choose in the moment. But in a moment, you're going to go into your breakout rooms. You all have to create your own best practice. And when we come back, I'm going to randomly choose someone to tell us what their example was. Does anyone have any questions where we go into breakout rooms? They do you help try and answer them? And if they don't, you send them off into the breakout room. I gave them an unrealistic time constraint. There's uncertainty because they don't know who's going to speak. So what's going to happen is they're gonna go into breakout room then the big okay guys, we only have two minutes. Does anyone have any idea and they're going to work with each other? That is the most effective way to keep people energize and get them to actually learn. And it doesn't have to be for best-practice. Sometimes it can be an example, sometimes you can give them a slide. Here's one of my favorites. You give them one of your slides. And you say, I'm gonna give you five minutes. When we come back. I'm going to pick a group to teach this slide to everyone else. And you don't think they're going to be trying to figure out all the information on that slide. You don't think they're going to be absorbing because they might have to speak in front of everyone. It's one of the best ways to teach online, getting people to do things for you in breakout rooms. But let me add a little whip cream. Think about this. Yes, you put them in the breakout rooms. The task is up to you. You get them they have to teach whatever information you've get them in the breakout rooms. They have to figure out the solution. They have to give you three examples of something. These are all things they can do in the breakout room. But then here's the whip cream. Don't leave them alone. You go into the breakout rooms, jump in and work with them individually to see if you have questions, see if they're on the right track. That way, you're not just assuring that people are working. You're also giving people individual attention by putting people into breakout rooms, making sure they have a task, making sure they have a deliverable at the end of the task. And they don't know who has to deliver. And then you whip cream it. You go into the rooms and work with people individually. And that is how you can elevate and really use breakout rooms to maximize interaction and learning.
19. Using Google forms for engagement: In this video, I'm gonna show you how to use Google Forms and give you some strategy to use Google Forms when you are trying to teach remotely, virtually online in a live session. So first, if you've never used Google Forms before, all you have, if you have a Gmail account, you have a Google Forms account. Well, just type in Google Forms. And it'll probably one of the first things that pops up. You'll click on this and it'll take you to this page. All you have to do now is just open a form up. You can pick whatever kind you want and you can just start making questions. I'm gonna go back here because I've already made one just for fun these. And what happens is this. I put the student name in. In fact, let me do this. Another one just for fun. I'll go like this. I'll open up a new form up here. This is the student name. Here is the name of the form. So this can be like mid-term one. For example. This is going to become important that this up here will change, but this year will not. And you'll see what I mean in a moment. But let's go back. So here we have student name and student will pop up in a moment. Boom, there it is, student. Sometimes it takes like maybe four seconds or five seconds. I know it takes forever for seconds. But let's suppose I want to create a form. First, I'm going to show you some options you have. If I scroll down this little bar beside it moves with me. Add a new question. Scroll down over here as well, down over here. Perfect. Add a new question and one that scroll down here, add a new question. I can change these questions to all kinds of different things. I typically only used really two kinds of questions. By the way, if you want to delete it, it's pretty easy. All you have to do is push, delete, delete. I typically use two kinds of questions. One on a scale of one to three, on a scale of one to five. And then short answer questions. That's it. But let's keep these other ones just for fun. I'll go here, I'll click on it. Let's make this multiple, Let's make this checkboxes. Let's go here and let's make it I don't know, paragraphs. You can make whatever you want. Play with that. Now, suppose you do your Google form. For every student that you are going to be marking, what you do is you share a link to this form for every student, and I'll show you how to replicate it in a moment. But let's do a scenario. Suppose you are doing group presentations or individual presentations and the students are going to be marked on these presentations. Let's pretend we are in the class. Here's what I would do. I would say, all right, we're going to welcome our first presenter. After this presenter is done. I will share a link with all of you. And that link is to the rubric. You will each be required to fill out the rubric for that student. There are 24 people in this class. I need to see 24 responses. And let's suppose the student speaks. This is what I would do and I prepped these in advance. I would push, Send. I go over here to link, always shorten, it, just makes it easier. I copy this link done. That's it. The student is done speaking. Let's suppose we're using Blackboard or WebEx or Zoom In the chat, I would share that link. And this is what the student would see. It would just see the form. And they would fill out the rubric for the speaker in advance of the session. Here's the thing you need to do. Right beside the send button. There's a little more button. You need to push. Copy, make a copy. Copy of student name. Let's call it student name to OK. And there we are. Student named to make a copy. Student Name. Three. Sometimes I actually changed the student names in the moment if I'm asking for volunteers, but here's what we need to see. I'm going to go back, open up another form and I'm going to say Google forms, just to go back into my general account. So you can see this. And there you have it. Students student name, student named 3. Notice no matter which one I go into. Title of this form, the title of the exam midterm 2 stays the same. But I just changed the one up here. I can also do it up here. So suppose I go to do make a copy, shirt color copy of student name too. Okay. Done. Let's go back into the main thing and give it a second and it'll pop-up in a moment. See copy of students into. I can also just go up here and call it student school, student, student name for. That's it. You don't have to push Save or anything. You just have to tap out of it or click on something else and it'll just save it for you. That's it. Now, if you wanna go next level with all of this, my friends, Here's the thing. This is one tactic to keep students engaged. So even if they're a half paying attention, That's better than not paying attention. Because if they know they have to fill out the rubric, that means they have to sort of be engaged. They have to listen so they can intelligently fill out forms, especially if it's going to be things like short answer. Usually I will prep the students with what types of answers I want. The scale is whatever they'll fill it out 345 on a scale that you'll see here that in my version here, totally disagreed, completely agree. For the short answer. I will usually prep the students and I will say something like, It's not enough to say that was great, good job, nice engagement. It has to be specific. I like the question you used to transition between slide into that's the type of answers we need. This is just extra motivation and setting expectations, once again, to compel students to be engaged. Now if you wanna go next level, use two other strategies. This has nothing to do with the form. This all has to do with engagement. And here's how it works. Do tell the students. After the presenter, I will share a link and everyone will be required to fill out that rubric. You will all be giving marks to the presenter as well. But I will also randomly choose one other student to give verbal feedback. Lie. Why am I going to do that? One? Uncertainty. And to accountability. If none of the students know who's going to be called upon to verbally give feedback that is increasing the necessity to pay attention to stay engaged. And if I call them out and I say this is going to happen at the beginning, right away. They have to be 0. I guess I can't just turn this off. I have to listen now because what if he calls me? So you have 25 students. Once one student is speaking, one student ends up giving verbal feedback while they're giving that verbal feedback, the other 23 students are filling out this form. And you do that for every speaker or every group of speakers. And that is a way that you keep all of your students engaged. And after every speaker you pick another random person and everyone else fills out the form. So you're not only keeping everyone engaged, you're not having dead time. Because in the dead time when people would be filling out a form and it's all silent. You actually have some, another student giving verbal feedback. So that is how you use Google Forms to create engagement with your learners in your courses.
20. Private Messages for Accountability and Engagement: Greetings, dear learner. In a minute, we're going to transition into like an excerpt from a live session Iran, where I used a private message challenge. And I'm going to explain it at the end of the activity in the session so you can watch it there, but here's a little preview. One of the other ways I can hold people accountable. So if you're teaching a class or you want to make sure people are listening, is you ask them to send you a private message and then you comment. In the same way you do pulls. Thanks, so on. So almost try try again, you go. That's the answer right there. Thank you so much, Rebecca. Park deep. Exactly. That's what I'm going for. We see everyone, please. Can I see everybody, please? Private message from everyone. If I was to do it in the main chat. If I asked a question that I wanted people to answer in the main chat, one person would answer it, maybe two people, but then it's answered. But in the private chat, everybody has to do it. So in this video, you're going to see me do an activity. This is going to be a warm-up, a fun activity, but then I will explain the private message challenge again at the end. So here's your next challenge, my friends. This is going to be a private message challenge. So if you look into the chat in the corner, you should all have the ability in the chat function. You should see that it says And yes, the belly button you got I just saw your comment there. Yes. You will see that you have the option to write to everyone or you have the option to write to individuals. I want you to send me a message so that no one else sees it. Okay, in a moment you're all gonna send me a message so that no one else sees it. Here is the question you have to answer. Yet ready? Can someone tell me? And this is a race, by the way. This is a race. Top three. Top three. Can someone tell me what the hashtag symbol is actually called? You can look it up. It's erase and send it to me in a private chat. Send it to me not to everybody, but in a private chat, I want to see everybody's answers. You have 10 seconds. Go, go, go, go. What is this thing called? Note? No one has gotten any. Yes, no one has gotten to yet. He become NP becoming I want to see everybody. I want to see everybody. I met. I think you just took the whole dictionary and you put it in that message to me, right? So ladies and gentlemen, Google My friend is out of everyone to people got it. Two people got it. It was Kashmir was the first one. So ladies and gentlemen, the correct answer was often authority. I'm at, I think you've got this to octal. Thorpe is called an octet authority. Congratulations. If you get nothing else out of today, nothing else out of today. At least you can sound smart at parties. Now, notice what I've done. Sometimes when we are doing online training, there's going to be times when you're doing training and you need to engage your audience and you need to find out if people are doing stuff with. But if I had asked you to do this activity in the public chat where everyone saw it. Here's what would have happened. One or two people would have written the answer and then no one else would have participated. But by using the private chat and game of finding it so that no one knew when the answers came in and then calling you on it. I forced everyone to participate because no one knows who's answering. So that's one of the ways we can engage our audience yet again, by getting them to do things in the private message. In when I'm teaching classes. Always doing it, constantly doing private messages. Because that way I know who actually, because let's be very honest. Can we be very honest? That way you will find out who's actually paying attention and who just logged in, turned off their camera microphone and went and did something else.
21. A challenge and final thoughts: That's it. You did it. Congratulations. You are now going to become a more effective communicator, a more effective presenter, a more effective teacher, virtually. But my friends, I need you to remember something. At the beginning of this course in the intro video, I told you I'm on a mission to end boring, but I can't do that alone. You could watch this course and say, These are really good things and then never use them again. But I want to challenge you the next time you are going to be in a virtual class or a virtual session, or you have to do a virtual presentation even if it's just for a few minutes, tried to use some of these tactics and see what happens. Do the ones you like the best. Remember, you don't have to use all of them all the time, even if you just do a little ice-breaker, if you tried one little breakout room session, if you tried to keep people accountable with one question you asked and got everyone to do it, you will right away make more of an impact. So yes, I am on a mission to end boring, but I cannot do it alone. I need your help. So thank you for taking the class and welcome to team. Hashtag and boring.
Ivan Wanis Ruiz, I am on a mission to end boring!
