Circle of Thought

We did a Wizbangers workshop on the weekend and out of it came this activity. It is an idea that is fun and lively and gets things started off on an energentic foot.

Each partipant gets a piece of paper and a felt pen and draws a large circle in the middle of the paper then writes in it the theme of the workshop. For example - you might write in Leadership, or Communication or Attitude. Whatever works. Now ask each person to create six spokes coming from the main circle and write a word at the end of each spoke; a word that relates to the theme.

For example: Leadership - military, guidance, listener, age, caring, vision.
Then divide the group into small groups of three or four. Have each person take a turn and guess a word they think will be on the page of the person to their right. Repeat around and around the circle until you have worked through all the words.

Afterwards you can discuss which words were common to many groups, and which words stood alone. This is an exciting way to get people's ideas and opnions on the table and to find out how many are shared.

Shiny Coppers

Here is a fun thing to try.
Take a bunch of old, grimy 1 cent pieces, pennies or coppers and give one out to each participant.
Ask them to get to know their penny.
Examine the penny for design, date and general condition.
Then have them work in groups of four.
Give each group a small plastic dish and pour in a couple of spoons of the "Magic Liquid". (white vinegar)
Add a teaspoon of salt and stir the liquid.
Now have each of the four people bid goodbye to his or her penny and pop it in the liquid.
Wait ten minutes to see what happens.
Take the pennies out, rinse them and dry them.
They will be hardly recognizable, all shiny and new.

What is basically happen is the vinegar (being an acid) is just stripping the coating off the pennies. They all started out shiny and new, but over time their coats became dull and lost lustre. The vinegar and salt together bring the pennies back to their former glory.

How could you use this? Lots of ways. This could represent the skills of the participants; they were always there, but they needed a little spit and polish. How about the pennies representing lost values that have been reclaimed or regained?

Now I know you will get lots of your own ideas, but I need you to do something. Don't take my word about this experiment, go and try it and let them sit while you do some work on the computer. When you see the pennies all lovely and shiny I think you will be even more encouraged to come up with your own metaphors and ideas.

Floating Egg

When you perform a trick, so often it is the patter that makes the difference and connects to the key point. Look at the following trick and see if you can adapt the patter to make your key learning point.

The audience sees three identical glasses of water set up on the table. You also have three eggs on the table.
Ask for three volunteers. Have each of them hold an egg. While they are holding the egg ask each person to direct his or her thoughts to the egg. Person 1 - Think about something else that is neutral, not happy, not sad.
Person 2 - Think negative thoughts. Person 3 - think really positive thoughts.

When they have been thinking for a minute or so, ask each person to put his or her egg into a glass. (you show them which glass)

Person 1 egg will hover in the middle.
Person 2 egg will sink to the bottom
Person 3 egg will rise to the top.

Make your key learning point.
So, wanna know how to do it? It's all in the water in the glass. The sinking egg is in a glass full of plain water. That's easy enough. The rising egg is in a glass that is super-saturated with salt water (test it out). The hovering egg is the tricky one. Fill the glass half full with salt water. Then tilt the glass and slowly pour in plain water. Be careful not to mix the waters. Test this one out until you have it.

So, see how you can adapt this trick? What if the main point was that someone or something was always sitting on the fence, then you would emphasize the neutral egg part. Just think of all the options around creating this trick into something that works for you.

Blind Man and the Elephant

We all know the story about the blind men examining the elephant.
Each man examined only one part of the elephant, but not being able to see the rest of the elephant, declared the elephant to be entirely of this nature. Example: This animal is large and tree like. (having examined the leg)

Nidhi Kaila in India uses this story in an interesting way:

Nidhi writes:

"Whenever I’m doing a session heavy on theory, I start the session by telling the participants that theories, by themselves, are the 6 blind men of Hindustan, who went to see the elephant (we all know the story). A theory gives us a perspective to the concept, but no theory, by itself, gives us the whole concept.

If we put all the theories together, we might get a more wholesome idea of the whole concept, but this wholesome idea may or may not be accurate.

Exercise: Imagine that the 6 men of Hindustan realized that they were exploring different parts of an elephant, and decided to put their wits together and try and imagine the WHOLE elephant, because they know the description of each part.

Divide people into groups of 6 or fewer, and ask them to pretend that the blind men have decided to get together and figure out what the whole elephant looks like. Give them 10 minutes to do this activity. Then ask each team to present. Usually, you should find that people are either biased because they have seen a real elephant, or that they will not be able to describe a real elephant in total. That is what theory is like"

Driving at a Brick Wall

In an interview with David Suzuki, writer and journalist had this to say about global warming, better known as global climate change:

'It's like being in a huge car driving at a brick wall at 100 miles an hour and most of the people in the car are arguing about where they want to sit' (Jagodzinski, 1997).

I love this quote, because I love this picture. Images do so much to explain concepts to us. This concept of global warming seems very complex to most and the author puts our roles in it so well in that quote.

What types of ideas can you get across to your audiences in better fashion by creating words and images that they can hang on to?

And about this arguing where to sit in the car.... I still want to sit in the back.

Wordsearch Puzzle

Now here is a really smart idea. You want to make a word search challenge or game for your group, but your brain is tired. This guy (or gal) has got some software that will do it for you. I made one and got 11 words hidden in my puzzle that were 11 letters or less. There are lots of variations.

So you make the puzzle and then if you want to print it out, you make a paypal donation of any amount. Go figger. That is smart. I mean even if all the people using the puzzle are only paying a small amount, it has to add up.

Why didn't I think of this first?? Oh yeah, I am technically challenged, that is why.
So, give it whirl and tell me what you think.


www.worldvillage.com/wv/gamezone/puzzlegen

Look at all the other goodies you can get too at the home page.

http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/gamezone/p

Newsprint Comes Alive

From time to time I find other gems on some of the training message boards I belong to. This one comes from Karen Distler of Missouri

She writes, "For my business writing class, I begin with this icebreaker:

Find generic words in newspapers or magazines such as "sports," "holiday,"
"Sunday," etc. Highlight the word so it stands out from other words around it.
Cut up the pieces of newsprint and place the words in a big envelope--one
envelope per group of 5 participants. Ask each participant to reach in the
envelope without looking and pull out a piece of paper. Then ask the
participants to share something about themselves that is not work related using
the newsprint word in their sentence. Give an example: word is "shopping" "I
enjoy shopping at Wal-Mart." Or "My wife enjoys shopping but I don't."

For groups under 20, you can have each participant share with the entire group.
With a bigger group, you could do the same activity, but have them share with
their group members. Ask follow up questions to get to know your participants
better. For example: "Why Wal-Mart?" Or "What do you enjoy doing while your
wife is shopping?"

I think this sounds like fun, and the newspaper pieces are so much more visual than just using index cards. I was thinking about how I would adapt this icebreaker, and just imagine the possibilities. You could select words that could create certain reactions or move the discussion in a particular way.

Thank you Karen.