Teaching withOUT technology

What is the best teaching moment you've had without the aid of a single technological device? To be honest, I was just thinking about a fun memory I wanted to share here, and then backtracked to figure out a blog prompt that was semi-appropriate for this class. Still, I think it's a valid question and would love to hear other people's stories.

One of my favorite "teaching moments" happened about 5 years ago when I helped in the Outreach department at the Savannah River Ecology Lab in South Carolina. The basic program we gave focused on teaching elementary or middle school classes about the ecology and conservation of reptiles and amphibians in the southeast. We used a little powerpoint to cover some concepts, but the majority of the program relied on one thing to engage even the ADD-est kid: live animals. There was always a continuum of interest among the students during the powerpoint, some were almost asleep while others couldn't be more excited. But bringing out live snapping turtles, indigo snakes, and alligators usually shifted that balance. It's always great seeing someone get really excited about something you care about enough to study for a living, and the best example of this came when we gave a talk to a particular group of 3rd graders. We were discussing some of the adaptations of turtles and told the kids that softshell turtles' necks are actually much longer than you think, and they use this trait to breathe air while the majority of their body can lay flat in a creek/river. Anyway, to demonstrate this, we told the kids to watch as we flipped a softshell on its back. For whatever reason, the kids would always get silent immediately and put all their focus into what was about to happen, like a magic trick. In this class, there were two boys in the front row, who I'll describe as future-scientist-types (aka, kinda nerdy). The turtle stretched out its neck (about the length of its entire body), and used its nose to flip itself right-side up. The room exploded. Most of the kids were laughing or making some sort of exclamation, but the two boys in the front row were so ecstatic with what they just witnessed that they both yelled "YES!" and gave each other a solid high five to celebrate the moment. Quite simply, it made my day. And whenever we did that program again and the kids were being rowdy or I was feeling tired or worn out, I would usually think about how excited those kids got and start to feel pretty good about the opportunities I was having to teach kids about these awesome creatures. What are some other teaching without technology stories that people have? Thanks for reading and until next time.