Honestly to me one of the most important things is that people need to be interested in what they are being taught in order to learn. I know for me when someone is teaching about something that is not important to me that I do not pay attention as much as I would if it was something I cared about. I just recently went to a canning class and I really enjoyed it and learned a lot, but I needed to learn it for work. I have to be able to teach it so it was important for me to learn (plus the teacher was very down to earth and taught very well). The instructor did a good job at explaining things, and it was also hands on. For many people learning something that is hands on is easier when you get to be hands on in the classroom.
Like the lesson says knowing your audience is really important when it comes to teaching and whether people learn or not. Many times it is important to ask in the beginning of class what people are expecting to get out of it. I taught a class once where it was suppose to be on communication. When I asked why people came, the said they wanted to know how to communicate with their supervisors better. In order to help them we focused on that topic of communications so they got what they needed and actually learned something.

The article link caught me in a loop, but I was able to find it here:
https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/jhse/vol3/iss2/6/
Factors Impacting Program Delivery: The Importance of Implementation Research in Extension Ryan J. Gagnon, Nancy Franz, Barry A. Garst, & Matthew F. Bumpus.

Hope that helps anyone else that might hit a security hiccup!

I think of teaching and learning as two sides of the same process. Teaching is the act of sharing knowledge and learning is integrating knowledge. That being said, I think there are a lot of variables related to learning: interest in the subject, learning style (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc.), and teaching methods all impact how much information is absorbed by the learner. I think information is integrated most readily by a lot of people (adults and children) when there is an interactive component to a lesson. This allows for deeper thought and experiential participation, which probably also leads to the integration of new information into the framework of what is already known. I know for me personally, this is how I remember new information - by making connections to things that I already know. I think it is important that an educational program be designed in a way that allows for people with different learning styles to process information in a way that works for them. For instance, a program with auditory, visual and kinesthetic components could allow for all types of learners to benefit. For me hands-on is always good because I tend to remember what I participate in more than what they just listen to.  When I was in massage school, I feel like everyone had an easy time of learning anatomy etc. because they allowed us to choose how we'd like to participate.  Do you want to color this image of the muscle system and label muscles? Do you want to feel where muscles are on a real person?  Are you all set after listening to this lecture? 

As many of you already stated, teaching and learning do go hand in hand. Also, with that fact, just because someone is very knowledgeable on a subject doesn't mean they will be a good teacher to others on the same subject. There are different learning types, visual, auditory, and hands on, etc.. so how do we become a "better teacher" and allow our audience a chance to learn new information and retain the knowledge? From my personal experiences as a student, and player (athlete) and then as a coach and now educator, it does benefit more participants when there is a combination of teaching techniques. In addition, having someone that is passionate and knowledgeable on the topic is very important. When participants can listen to the educators' words, while visually seeing words on a power point or a live demonstration that follows along, and then they also have a chance to carry out the task with a hands-on experience, they are much more likely to retain the information and be inspired by the presentation. When you only have one teaching technique in a presentation, you may lose the other participants that require another type of learning. My classroom lessons usually involve speaking to the class with visual aids, and then I end the lesson with a hands-on experience that incorporates the subject matter and helps them to understand the process by building the gap between concept and reality. I recently, was asked to only do a talk about composting for a youth program that was outside. I was out of my normal routine as I only had paper and an easel as tools. The students were not interested in the subject, and I could tell that I was losing their focus. Unfortunately, I didn't have any visual aids and I didn't have an interactive component. I was unable to recover and gain the engagement of the entire group and only had about 5 students participating in the interactive questions or dialogue of my presentation. From here, I definitely need to come up with a better plan for a lecture style presentation and try to incorporate the teaching techniques for a more engaging lesson. I think it is important for an educator to reflect on their teaching style and program to see what they need to adapt and make changes to for different audiences.

I think this is a similar concept of listening and hearing. One may hear you, but does not retain what you said and vice versa. To learn, you need to have an understanding/comprehension of what is being taught to you. For instance, a third grader may have a basic math concept, but breaking out calculus is not going to be successfully taught or learned.
I have a tendency to think people are on the same wavelength as me. That just because I have a good understanding of something, they will understand what I am trying to teach them. I work hard to break down to a level that is appropriate for the group I am working for.
One example is teaching a prayer at religious education. You can teach someone how to recite words, but do they understand what it means.
For the "Our Father", I broke each line down and gave one line to each student. I had them reflect and explain what they think it means, and then discuss their thoughts. Not only did they learn what I was teaching, I learned as well.

The things that make learning experiences most memorable and enjoyable for me are learning something new and the shared experience. Whether I am going with someone that I know or I meet people in the space, you are in it together. 4-H is the perfect fit for me because the experiential type of learning is what I am most drawn to. I want to walk away with a product. I want to be able to replicate it. I want to share the knowledge. I can still remember a birds of prey program I did 30 years ago because they made things relational. Owl eyes are comparable to softballs in our heads. That's a great visual! But I was just speaking with a staff member yesterday who explained she cannot visualize things. Graphs, pictorial charts, visualization lessons are not effective tools for her. So, we need to be adaptive to different types of learning. She prefers a lecture type setting. How do we best balance those needs?

During college, I was in a class called "Africa: Myths and Realities", during which we had to remember the names of all the countries in Africa and be able to label a map without the aid of a computer/map, etc. I called my mom and we brainstormed a song together that incorporated all of the names at the time, in an organized, methodical way. When the time came, I got 100% because I was able to think of the song in my head as I went through. To this day (over 10 years later) I still remember most of the song.

Since college, I knew my career goal was to create and foster life long learners. I thought that meant being a public school teacher - spoiler alert, it wasn't. I fell out of love with the school system after seeing what it did to kids. They learned to hate going to school and associated that with not wanting to learn. The goal seemed to be teaching for test taking, not for true learning. I have such a deep love and respect for teachers, but I couldn't see myself spending the rest of my career doing that. Not long after, I fell in love with CCE and 4-H - such a perfect combination of connecting with youth, educating them but also empowering them to make the changes they want to see and truly fostering the love of being life long learning.

Being a certified special education teacher, I am well aware of different learning styles and teaching strategies. In my experience, 4-H does an excellent job with the hands on and interpersonal styles and the youth that come learn best in that style. Also in my experience, we could improve for needs of reading/writing/linguistic learners. Luckily for those learners, the school system focuses heavily on that style.

My most recent memorable experience as a participant was at a 4-H Wild Edibles training. I appreciated how all learning styles were touched upon. After being out in the field with someone with a wealth of knowledge, I know I will never look at the ground the same again. We stopped and were asked to identify a plant (for all I knew before the training I would say it was grass) and we went in depth about plantain, variations, its history, the nutritional content, what it has been known for medical purposes historically and so much more. Everywhere I go now I notice all these different plants and know their nutritional value. It's like a personal scavenger hunt anytime I walk somewhere new now and I love being able to challenge what I know, and I can't wait to become more comfortable with the content so I can teach others.

While I learned best being out in the field, identifying and harvesting the plants and later preparing, cooking and eating the food, I know others benefited more from the lecture, PowerPoint and print material we received and I'm sure others found the teach backs and conversations most meaningful. It was really wonderful to see all different learning styles incorporated into a training knowing everyone that attended got something valuable from the training.

This questions resonates well with me. My father recently retired as an educator. He was the program head of his department which was a specialized agricultural department in a high school in the middle of Queens. Watching him teach throughout the years and now doing some educational work myself I find having an educator that is passionate, engaging, and entertaining is almost essential for audience engagement. You could have an audience that wants to be there and wants to learn but if the person who is delivering the program or class isn’t enthusiastic and/or engaging then the audience could lose some interest. I think we all remember being in school and having some teachers that just hit it home for you and others that made you day dream even if it was an interesting topic. Having an enthusiastic audience definitely aids in the energy of the entire event but again I find a lot of it will fall on the educator. There are other times where you just don’t have an exciting audience and that’s okay too. I’ve again found if you kept up the passion, interest, and excitement even if the audience isn’t engaging you can be confident that they should take home something from what you’re trying to teach.

When I was in grad school, one of my advisors always emphasized the need for a story when presenting and/or teaching. A person can have the most fascinating topic to talk about, but is not engaging because the overall message of the presentation is lost due to lack cohesion. I was definitely guilty of this in the past. When I make presentation now, I try to start with an outline that structures my presentation like a story. I also will provide an outline throughout the presentation that shows the audience we are essentially moving on to the next chapter. I find that structuring my presentations as a story also helps me stay passionate throughout, which keeps the audience emotionally involved. Presenting data is boring to most, but making part of the fabric of a story can make it fun. I love the feeling when I get excited while doing a talk and make eye contact with the members and see them smiling and nodding as well. I feel like it keeps the audience involved. On that note though, I have done interactive presentations where one or two audience members decide they just want to be heard, and it becomes very distracting, and often times visually annoying (body language) to other audience members. The first time this happened, I was a little flustered, and my presentation struggled for a minute because my "story" was ruined. Now, if an audience member asks a question mid-presentation that I intend to answer later in my story, I say something like "Great question. You'll appreciate the next slide." or "Great insight. We'll have to wait an see what comes next". I appreciate interactions during a presentation, but I often find most of these questions I am about to answer and the person just needs to be patient. I think most audiences I present to want to just listen and actually get annoyed by interuptions. FYI, most of my presentations are at conferences, where questions are encouraged at the end. If I was a teacher, obviously I would encourage questions during a lesson to make sure I am being clear in my teachings.

My time in the classroom has been tough, my classes have been mostly rote memorization, reading and writing from a board without further discussion, demonstration. Only 15% of pyramid learning.

I went with my Niece to the Crayola experience in Orlando, they had an attraction where they taught the audience how crayons are made, starting from wax molding all the way into coloring, labeling, and packing crayons for distribution. There was also an animated story in between to engage younger viewers. I want to try and take that same experience and emulate the teaching environment in 3D Print Recycling.

I am hoping to use my shortcomings to deliver a Demonstration seminar with the 3D print recycler, encouraging discussion and providing pamphlets to teach others and spread the word.

What is important to always keep in mind when teaching is awareness of the various learning styles. As educators we know that each student has a different learning style and the more engaged/invested a participant is in learning , the more likely to take away knowledge and skills. While is it important to be aware of different learning styles ( visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners, etc), the best teachers adjust and cater to each student's strengths to insure both the desire and ability to learn.
Quite a number of years ago, I took a class where we were required to take a learning type "quiz" and then plot the outcome on a grid. I found the results very interesting and it really clicked for me how very differently people learn and why and ultimately how to make modifications in the classroom setting. It helped me to better handle and address learning disabilities in my own home.