The Game of Sabotage

As for the second workshop I conducted just last Friday, the objective was to create awareness of the different types of audience one can encounter when giving a presentation and how he or she can handle them. Faced with only a 30 to 45 minute timeslot, I decided to keep the workshop simple and incorporate as much elements into a single activity as possible.

For the purposes of their understanding, I limited the audience-type to 4 broad categories (Hostile, Hijacker, Heckler, Impatient). I began the lesson at a relatively fast pace and started with the activity first. I asked the students to 'sabo' 2 of their classmates to read out a passage (incidentally about having enthusiasm in presentation). Once this was done, I passed around Index Cards (my favourite tool) to all the students with 4 of them having instructions to roleplay the 4 audience types and the rest being blank cards to keep the 2 readers unaware.

I asked the reading of the passage to begin and as it progressed the audience 'reacted' according to their roles. The readers managed to complete their task successfully and I asked them to point out the interfering audience members and the corresponding type that they were. I then asked these 4 roleplaying members of the audience to read out the justification for their behaviour (all plausible explanations of redeeming value) that were indicated on their index cards and asked the 2 readers if they felt as strongly about these disruptive individuals. Unsurprisingly, they were not as annoyed (albeit in a light-hearted manner) having known the reason behind the behaviour.

I then proceeded to the second round of the exercise which entailed inviting the 2 'sabo-ed' students to nominate one of their classmates to re-read the passage. The students once again had a fun time selecting the next 'victim' who duly took up his position. The students were again passed around index cards but this time, the instruction was targetted at all the students in order for them to act as a group.

Once the student began reading, I signalled from behind the reader for the class to either go "OHHH!" or start applauding. Although the student reading was caught off-guard by the reaction of the audience, he nevertheless maintained his composure and completed the task. I talked to the reader and confirmed with him that although he was expecting some interruptions as in the previous round, he did not quite expect the whole class to react.

I then proceeded to explain to the class the value of awareness, preparedness and focusing on the positives when identifying various audience-types. Finally, to reiterate the learning objectives as well as to assess their level of awareness, I furnished a simple worksheet to them in which they were to offer reasons that could explain the behaviour of the 4 audience types that were identified earlier. Each student was asked to complete the worksheet individually and all were collected. It was apparent that the students had been put in the right frame of mind and the following is a snapshot of one student's response that represents the class'.


Although this was hardly an in-depth workshop (limited due to the short amount of time), the essence of the lesson was communicated quite effectively and the students enjoyed their time in spite of it all being rushed (completed in 35 minutes).

In any case, I will be following up this workshop with another supplementary one in January for the same class, so this will give an excellent platform to extend the subject matter in detail.

The Analogy Exercise

Well I conducted another 2 workshops at Singapore Polytechnic over the last 2 weeks and thought of sharing the lesson approach as several of my readers mentioned that they benefitted from the description of the previous workshop (Index Card Lesson) that I conducted.

As most of you might already know, I engineer creative lessons which get the students engaged in a fun activity, and these 2 latest workshops were no different. For the second workshop in the series (the next one after the Index Card Lesson), the objective was to inculcate the awareness and importance of structure when preparing presentations for clients.

The students needed to understand that not everything in the documentation ends up in the presentation and consequently also needed practice in sieving out the vital information to be presented as well.

After some thought, I came up with a simple idea that could help the students assess their projects in a different perspective whilst addressing the above needs. I created an activity in which the students would explain their project using an analogy. The basic premise was that the students would need to consider their project details and extract the key points to be translated into a description of a sport.

The analogy would limit the amount of info that could be brought over from the project specifications into the sport elements and it would also give the students an opportunity to visualise their projects in a different context.

I scaffolded the task, giving a structured example for their understanding of what was to be done and then allowed their creativity and sense of adventure take over. The students did not disappoint and the following are the analogies as presented by the 5 groups of students (click on image to read the students' work).


The students had a good time preparing the analogies and then the fun experience of sharing their analogies (lots of laughs here). And as can be clearly seen from the descriptions, they were able to think out of the box and produce quite interesting analogies overall.

Excuse Me, Are You Deceased?

I subscribe to a survey portal called AIP Online Surveys where I do a few surveys occasionally when I am invited to, after which they give me some reward (using a points system). Well, I have encountered quite a number of errors - of grammar, language, and even logic at times - over the years but today's is the most hilarious that I've come across - so far.

A survey about 'Lifestyle', the questionnaire asked general questions on how often I travelled, my age (2 times - ??) , and familiarity with brands of cars, among other things. However, the question that really blew me away was the following, which I can only assume was asking if I was a widower. But before I arrived at this conclusion, the first thing that popped into my mind was - "how can a deceased person be taking this survey?"...

The 'Index Card' Creativity Lesson

I conducted a workshop at Singapore Polytechnic today on incorporating visuals into presentation and, as part of the workshop, I produced an activity to get the students to create visual representations of issues close to their hearts. As the activity was well received, I thought it would be useful to share the idea with everyone.

Basically, the concept was inspired by a blog I read fairly regularly entitled Indexed. Adapting that idea of reducing various issues onto index card visuals, I got the students to group together and come up with the visuals on index cards supplied to them. After a bit of hesitation, the students really got going and came up with the following visuals...

Group 1 (above) included students who were quite lateral thinking (front row is an indicator perhaps?) and they used rulers to draw their graphs. The Venn Diagram (Enjoy Life) was interesting and the second visual was quite straightforward (age/maturity) - which I suggested could be turned into a bell curve to suggest that after a certain age, you become less mature (senile). The first visual above (trouble/women) was indeed humorous but as we discussed, all of us realised that it could be interpreted as (a) more women would translate into more problems, and as (b) when there is more trouble, you'd need more women to solve it!

Group 2 (above) included 3 quiet male students and they came up with pretty straightforward visuals on the facts of life (hair mass, drug addicition, travelling time, saying the wrong things).

Group 3 (above) comprised good-natured students who were more extroverted and naturally, their visuals reflected their off-beat humour. Interestingly, the trouble/teacher visual was similar to the trouble/women visual of the earlier group. Likewise, the interpretation that more teachers would be required when there was more trouble was suggested as an alternative here as well.

Group 4 (above) obviously explored the depth of the task and produced some creative visuals that told stories. Although the first visual seems abstract and arbitrary, the student was able to justify his creation by suggesting that it represented himself exorcising the evil elements of society. As for the other 2 visuals, the level of frustration and meaning was evident in their detail.

Group 5 (above) was relatively enthusiastic about the exercise and asked a few questions before embarking on their preparation. Notably, the theme was to communicate to the teacher/tutor the difficulties in getting to class (first visual - crowded train, 8pm timing) and to preferably keep lessons short (second visual - attention span/length of lecture). The final visual was an interesting play of using equations to 'logically' suggest that studying would lead to failure!


All in all, the students enjoyed the exercise and watching one another's creations being showcased (a Visualiser was used to flash the index cards on-screen). At the same time, the overall class response as each visual was flashed showed the students how some of the visuals did not create the intended impact, others were open to interpretation, and a few were remarkably funny, poignant and meaningful.

After everyone had a hearty laugh at the series of index cards, I linked back the lesson to the fundamentals of selecting visuals which had been discussed before the activity was conducted. Thus, the students were able to appreciate how these points came into play through the process of the activity.

I find that this activity can also be used to elicit thoughts, frustrations, opinions and ideas as it forces students to think of the relationships involved in various issues. Although this exercise was conducted in relation to a topic involving the use of visuals in presentation, it can just as easily be used as a means to generate content for a specific issue or agenda.

A point to note though is that for lower level students who may not understand how to reduce issues into such visual relationships, there might be a need to do 2 iterations of this exercise - a first round where they will learn how to create this type of visuals (by making mistakes and learning the process), and then the second round proper where they can incorporate creativity and purpose into the exercise to produce meaningful visuals.

Well, have fun using this little exercise and do leave a note here to let me know how it went for you, cheers!

Halimah Gets Featured In Sunday Times

I was meaning to include a note about my wife's appearance in the Sunday Lifestyle a couple of weeks ago (on a good friend's birthday, in fact) and so here it is. Well, she was featured in the section Singapore Cooks for her Vegan Briyani recipe and the report included quite a large picture of her as well. Needless to say, I am extremely proud of her.

More lovely pictures of her culinary works of art are available on her blog, and if you like, you could also support her online vegan bakery (as good as the real thing, by the way).