Whew – What a Ride!

My First Time as an Elluminate Facilitator

Today was my first time as the lead facilitator in an Elluminate session, and it turned out to be quite an experience!
The topic was “Teaching to the Test, or Teaching to the Students’ Needs”. The buzz on twitter before the event indicated that it would be well attended, and it was.
I was very fortunate in having both Shelly Terrell (blog, twitter) and Jo Hart (blog, twitter) as co-moderators in the room with me: they dealt extremely capably with many issues for me.

The Participants

The participants came from around the world, and came from a wide range of educational systems. The richness of backgrounds added greatly to the value of the session. The text chat was very lively, and the whiteboards were well used by the participants. The end-of-session review was very positive.

The Preparations

I prepared 12 slides for the main body of the session, and I was wondering if that was the right number. As it happened, the timing worked perfectly. I added two slides at the start and four slides at the end, kindly supplied by Jo Hart.
For most of the blank whiteboards, I allowed 2 minutes for participants to add their comments (I did wonder if I was allowing too much time, but it turned out to be appropriate), except for the last one, for which I allowed three minutes, to give participants more time to collect their thoughts on a more difficult question.

The Facilitation

At the start of the session, I was able to focus on both the content of what people were saying and on the process of running the session. As the session became busier, I found that I was less able to focus on the content, and towards the end of the session I was focussing entirely on the process, leaving both Shelly and Jo to pick up on the content that I was missing.
I found the session both exhilarating and exhausting, no different to when running a class with a group of highly motivated and extremely intelligent students.

The Session Recording

If you are interested in seeing the recording this link will take you there.

The Next Session

Jo tells me it gets easier with practice. I expect that she is right, and I am looking forward to my next “solo” session.