Beamer's Fulbright Blog: Pictures of Teaching and Finnish don't get knock-knock jokes (click here for more...)

Here are several picures of me teaching or in some recent classroom setting. I suppose mostly this post is just for my mom.

Here I am talking to a group of administrators and teachers at the Jyvyskyla University of Applied Sciences (JAMK). I was explaining the fulbright process to everyone from my point of view.
Kate took this picture and the next several pictures.

I am working on a new project with Ari and Perttu regarding games to train people for emergencies. The thought now is that the game would be about the Incident Command System and would be developed by Ari's students.

The next few pictures are of me teaching in Germany. I taught 2 classes at the Giessen Fachhochschule (Giessen University of Applied Sciences). I taught some civil engineers and architects about risk control and the OEHS students about our MS Risk Control program back at home. I REALLY enjoyed talking about to these classes. I was SO happy to be talking about something more familiar than logistics.

OK, at the Ikaalinen campus of TAMK, I was asked to talk for several lectures over 2 weeks about logistics. No problem. But when I got there, all of the students were sitting at the back of this auditorium. After I laughed at them and took the picture you see above, I made them move. The results you see below. They didn't move all the way to the front, but I could work with this. I told the class I would post the situation on my blog and show all my American students that the same things happen in Finland as in America (at least as far as sitting as far away as possible).

As close as I could get them to the front. I tried to break the ice with knock, knock jokes, but they didn't want to come any closer. Also Finnish people don't know how knock knock jokes work. For example:
Me: Knock knock.
Class: who is there?
Me: Boo
Class: laughs and gives me a knowing look.