Pacing Group Activities With Focusable

A few weeks ago I ran a workshop in which I changed up the way that I paced the session. What I've almost always done is give a little instruction then time to try and complete a little practice activity. Then I'll hold a little debrief before moving onto the next activity. It's a pretty common format that I'm sure you also learned in one of the methods courses that you took at some point. 

What I did differently in my workshop a few weeks ago was to use Focusable to pace the workshop. Specifically, I used Focusable to keep track of the blocks of work time. When the time was up I then had everyone follow along with the breathing exercise that Focusable suggested before we did the debrief. I then summarized the debrief in a video in Focusable before moving onto the next workshop activity. 

I found that having everyone participate in the Focusable breathing and recharge activities was a better way of getting everyone's attention than using the old method of saying something like, "okay, let's talk about this." Perhaps it was just the novelty of following along with the breathing exercise, but it worked well for refocusing the group for a short discussion. It's definitely something that I'll do again in future workshops. 

Speaking of workshops, I'd love to run a workshop at your school this summer. To learn more about that, please visit this page or send me an email at richard (at) byrne.media

Video - How to Use Focusable

How to Find Google Earth Files That Aren't in the Google Earth Gallery

Yesterday, during my workshop on Google Earth and Google Maps someone asked me if I knew of any files about Rome. I did know about a couple, but I couldn't find them in the Google Earth gallery. So I turned to Google and did a search by file type. My search was refined to .KMZ files. Once I made that refinement I was able to find the files I was looking for. The directions for searching for Google Earth files through Google are included in the screenshots below (click the images to view them in full size).

Enter a search term. In this case I am looking for files related to World War II. You could also do a search for something like "Maine Seafood." You have to enter a search term and do the search before you will see the screen pictured below.

In the advanced search menu select "file type" then select KMZ or KML.

Alternatively, you can search by file type by entering filetype: KMZ after your search term.

To clarify, you will have to open the file in Google Earth to see its contents. This method is just for finding files to use in Google Earth.

Finding files in the Google Earth gallery:
Google Earth has a lot of great layers of information built in. Simply open the "layers" drop-down menu in Google Earth and select a layer to view it (remember, the more layers you select the slower Google Earth will run). You can also open the "Earth Gallery" in Google Earth to find and add more layers to your view of Google Earth.