WebJunction

I think a good training session is like a good movie. You know it went well if you make people laugh, make people cry, and make them think, too. (OK, maybe not make them cry. ;) )

Have you seen the Laughing Librarian web site? [url http://www.laughinglibrarian.com/lafnlink.htm ]http://www.laughinglibrarian.com/lafnlink.htm[/url]

Brenda

Hey!! I love incorporating humor in my sessions. I don't have any specific jokes that I use over and over. For certain classes, I have standards that I use, but they usually come into being after teaching that same workshop at least once or so. Then I pull things out and make them funny. One example of this: I have been teaching classes on Filtering lately and I show the participants the worksheets on ALA's CIPA site. I tell them that the excel spreadsheets which are there have the cells pre-programmed with equations so there is no adding/subtracting/dividing that they have to do. I usually say to the participants "Now, I had a librarian, not in YOUR state, call me up and say that she printed out the forms and didn't understand why after she started filling it out, that they form didn't add up the tally for her." Now, this usually makes them laugh incredulously like - "no way. That didn't happen", but it also lightens the mood. So perhaps it's bizarre humor, but they seem to like it. So, hopefully they don't read this because now they will know that I told a white lie to make them laugh.

Yeah, that's part of the trick. Make them understand that they really do know how to do things, they just don't know they do!!