I truly love teaching adults. I love teaching expecting families, I love teaching new childbirth educators, new doulas, nurses, midwives, doctors and others. I am delighted to do advanced trainings, present at conferences and hold workshops. It is so much fun. What makes it so much fun is that I try and be as interactive as possible. Facilitating learning by offering fun, engaging participant-led activities that encourage learning. Today I would like to share some of my favorite sources for finding suitable active learning activities that I adapt and modify to work with the childbearing year topics that I cover with a variety of audiences.

Free Technology for Teachers

I have been reading Richard Byrne's blog for years. He typically focuses on activities and items for K-12 learners but I find many, many useful things here. From resources for royalty free images to tips and tricks for creating games, quizzes using on online resources and more, this website is jam-packed with ideas I can apply to adult learners. I also follow along on Practical Ed Tech, Richard's other site that also helps me be a better educator.

Cult of Pedagogy

My friend and colleague Angela Garvin, LCCE, first told me about this website and I have found it very useful for many creative classroom activities. This site can be a bit overwhelming, so take what you need and leave the rest. The activities are thoughtful, engaging and well-designed. They can easily be adapted to childbirth education and you will enjoy reading through the past posts.

Sharon Bowman

Sharon Bowman is most well known for her bestselling book, "Training from the Back of the Room" that provides numerous resources for creating learning opportunities that engage participants. She has developed a whole training program and many other books and resources too. While I have some of her books and enjoy them, I find a lot of new, fresh information on her blog. I think her mind is simply amazing and am happy to take what I can use from her ideas that she shares on her blog.

There is a free webinar being held by Sharon Bowman on February 1st that you can sign up for if you want to get a taste of her methods. "Brain-Based Presenting: Getting the Brain to Pay Attention" might be interesting for you, so consider registering.

Faculty Focus

This website is the only one of the four listed here that is geared strictly for adults, mostly college-aged young people. I find many suggestions for small group work and flipped classroom activities on this site. About a year ago, the model changed on this website and some of the articles are behind a firewall and require membership in their premium program, while others remain free. I have chosen not to pay for this premium feature, but still find plenty of useful tools and ideas from the free postings.

Conclusion

None of these websites are geared for childbirth educators or pregnancy, birth, and parenting topics, but I find them all useful for offering ideas that I can modify, change or adapt for my purposes. Where do you like to go for teaching ideas and activities that might be helpful for those of us teaching childbirth and parenting classes? Please drop us a note in the comments section below.

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