Students and PowerPoint, Part 2

Part II - After the Lesson - April 3

Last week, I told you I was working with a history teacher on improving her students' PowerPoint presentations. This week, I was with them in the computer lab for a couple of days while they worked on them, and then sat in on about half the presentations in class. I'm going to send the teacher the links to these two articles so she can share them with her classes (if she likes), so this is both a recap for readers and a list of comments to the students:

1. First of all, I was very impressed with the majority of the PowerPoints. Students had taken it to heart that the slides don't need to be filled with text. Several of them used very vibrant images, and some included animations to help emphasize their points. For the most part, text found on the slides was the important text, and was not all of the text. Good job, guys!
2. What I felt was lacking - and this is no real fault of the students - was skill at presenting. Even though the presentations were fine, it was clear that the presenters were a little uncomfortable speaking in front of their peers, or didn't know or review the material. While, for the most part, they didn't read off of the PowerPoint slides (the worst of all presenter sins), many read directly from their notes (the next-worst).
   
   I completely understand the need to do this, though - very few people can be expected to become an expert on a topic in three days (plus a weekend), especially with six other classes to worry about - some of which may have been deemed by students to be more important than U.S. History. Perhaps what the teacher and I should've built into the lesson is how the students should prepare for the presentation itself -
• reviewing the material ahead of time;
• how to address the audience, not just the teacher (or the board);
• engage the audience - don't just talk to them, talk with them (even if it's only once)
• looking like you know what you're talking about;
• practice with your partner ahead of time (even just 5 minutes) so you know how your presentation will go.

These are just a few suggestions I'd like to pass on to the students. Overall, guys, I still think you did a very good job, and I appreciate you letting me come in to your classroom and work with you.
3. Personally, I think one really useful element to add would have been to video the students giving their presentations, and then let them watch and critique themselves. (The teacher and I actually discussed this, and it didn't work out because of the timing of the presentations and other class considerations. Maybe next time...)
4. What I'd really love is for you, the students in the class, to add your comments to this post, so that readers can hear what you thought about the overall lesson. Was it successful? Did it change how you thought about class presentations? Was it just the same old have-to-do-it assignment? Please share your honest thoughts with me. Use the link to this post, or look for this article in the April 2008 archives on the right side of http://techieteachr.blogspot.com. (Notice the missing "e".)

I happened to run into another teacher later in the day, and I was chatting with him about the project. He was very enthusiastic about it and wants me to come work with his classes, because he sees the same thing with his students. Between the two of us, we realized that this lesson is best placed at the beginning of the year, and delivered to students in such a way that they can keep these skills in mind as they give future presentations in class.

At this point, I'm thinking of trying to put together a series of lessons that teachers can use - either with my help or without - in order to help students improve their public speaking skills. If and when it materializes, look for it on the library section of techieteacher.org.

Students and PowerPoint

Part I - Before the Lesson - March 26

Tomorrow, I'm going into a US History teacher's class to help her introduce her students to an upcoming project. They are researching various aspects of early 20th century history, and must create a PowerPoint to accompany a presentation to the class.

Now, if you're like me, you've seen plenty of PowerPoints from students (and maybe from teachers, keynote speakers, business professionals,...) that have slides full of text which they proceed to read to the class. Or alternately, PowerPoints are turned in instead of reports, but the PowerPoints contain just as much text and information as the report would - same format, different application.

I'm taking it upon myself - with the full agreement and support of the teacher - to try to change how students approach using PowerPoint. I'm hoping to show them that a good PowerPoint only enhances what the speaker is saying, not replaces. They need to think more about the content than what animations or fonts they include.

I'm providing the students with a page they can use to storyboard their presentation, as well as some tips on effective PowerPoint design. I've also got a PowerPoint with some do's and don't's; I've uploaded it to Slideshare, although it's not much without narration or the animations. But in any case, here you go:

| View | Upload your own

(You can download the actual presentation from Slideshare here - maybe that way it'll make more sense...)

I'm in the classroom Thursday - when students are beginning their research - and Friday - when they're designing and creating their PowerPoints. I'm going to try to sit in on some of the presentations next week to see how things go. Stay tuned for Part II to see how things went.

Teaching 21st century skills - oh, the irony...

A colleague of mine earlier today sent out a link to the article A Taste of Web 2.0, as published by T.H.E. Journal. While the article spends eight pages discussing a variety of web-based tools - many of them free or with ad-free educator plans - that might be desirable to teachers and even school administrators, one thing that caught my attention was the short summary on the first page:

[E]ducators have concerns about risks for K-12 students and wasting time. Many are banning school use of the very applications (e.g., social networking, blogs, wikis, chat) integral to online learning systems[...]. Even without a ban, another contributing factor for avoiding Web 2.0 might be educator fears about changing their teaching methods to better engage learners. The International Society for Technology in Education [hyperlink added]...indicates that to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world, students should know and be able to use technology for creativity and innovation; communication and collaboration; research and information fluency; critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making; digital citizenship; and technology operations and concepts. Thus one might say such banning limits development of skills valued for the 21st century. [emphasis added]

Later in the article, Wikipedia is cited as an example of a Web 2.0 site that is addressing the need for "21st-century-skill instruction" - greater encouragement of citations in articles, encouraging contributors (read: students) to verify posted information. Thus, Wikipedia users are now given one more tool to help them think critically - not everything on the web can be taken at face value; what is the veracity, the "weight" of this particular piece you're reading? (Does this effort mean that Wikipedia is really Web 2.1?)

Emil, a teacher at my school who also received the email about the post - he teaches networking, robotics, and engineering - replied back with the teacher-in-the-trenches perspective:

I see the distraction factor daily. I think it is not so much a teacher’s risk or inability or fear to use the tools as it is “knowing” the tangents that kids will go off on that are not related to a given project. We all do it to a certain extent, but the kids go off with total abandonment. We have a sense of responsibility to get the job done, that we have NOT passed on to the kids. They would play games, blog, etc. all day every day with no focused purpose if we let them. We must show them a purpose to their exploration. THAT I have not found a way to do just yet, as there are no real consequences for anyone’s actions...except for the teacher of course. Any recommendations??

Sorry, Emil. The bad news is that I don't think it's a quick fix - we're talking about changing the fundamental way a lot of us (myself included, although less and less every day) think about education. How can we structure classroom learning that does impart some "weight" to what students are doing in the classroom? The irony is, I think that allowing students to use these tools - to start to produce learning products that are on the world's desktops, not just the teachers - can provide us with a venue for that kind of instruction, but until they get that kind of instruction, we can't trust them to use these tools.

The other disparity is that while the change is occuring within education - from one teacher to another, conversation by conversation - it is a slow change, like most in education. But the pace at which technology and its tools changes might find us prepared to use Web 2.0 in the classroom - and we look to find that we're now facing Web 3.0 (or 4.0, or...)

But when students do get a chance to use these tools, man, can they shine! I'll close with this additional anecdote that Emil shared:

...you should see the networking of my Robotic Club kids and their phones, texting other clubs in the robotics world when a new release is eminent. The providers are being “Hush Hush” just before the info is made public. Kids can connect and get the lowdown as fast as it is put out. Sometimes, before it hits the official websites. When they have a purpose, stand back and be amazed.

When [standardized tests] have questions/tasks that expect students to social network and engineer a solution to a problem instead of taking a multiple guess test, then maybe we will have a handle on it. I look forward to that day.

Me too, Emil. Me too.

Tracing a blog

Whether you're a blogger or a reader, this is an interesting interactive image - a blog road map, if you will - from Wired magazine. Trace the route of a blog from writer to reader - and everything in between. If you've ever wondered just what a text scrapper, ping server, or aggregator is, get a little explanation and see where they fit into the information superhighway.

I wonder how many of these elements student bloggers (or teacher bloggers) are aware of? How would their writing be affected by a greater understanding of this map? My initial reaction is that if students really knew that the online words they write would find their way to search engines, or that depending on the content their words might be seen by corporate representatives - for good or for ill - how much more care would they take in writing and proof-reading their own work and the work of their peers?

No limits - but when?

TechLearning had an article a couple of weeks ago sharing some examples of schools and school systems that are instituting 21st century classrooms, in which students are using collaborative networking tools. I couldn't help but notice that phrases used in the article like "give the new student-centered strategies a try" and "With the right support and leadership" indicate that, unfortunately, this is not the norm in classrooms.

I particularly like the description of the new kind of student, one who can choose what kind of tool or tools to use to collect and synthesize information. The 21st century classroom is not one in which students are expected to memorize or regurgitate raw information - it is one in which these students learn how to turn raw information into a useful schema of knowledge.

But how much will this replace traditional teaching? Of the whole of human knowledge, how much still needs to be delivered from teacher to student? So many teachers are used to covering "the curriculum" - the details that are considered important for students to learn. But how much of that information is essential - how much will be retained as those students become productive citizens? The teacher can serve as a “filter” to focus the students’ learning on the essential information – minutia can be gleaned from information on the web, in books, or whenever the need arises.

What are the new strategies that need to be present in the 21st century classroom? What percentage of classroom teaching needs to be on the “facts”, and what percentage needs to be on teaching students to work with the facts – critical thinking, analysis, source evaluation, synthesis, etc.? I'd like to think that the 21st century classroom is evaluated not on the "facts" - the teaching of facts becomes moot - but rather on what kinds of thinkers it produces.

Legal Ramifications of Blogging

I found this blogger's guide published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation discussing some of the legal ramifications about blogging. A couple of interesting points are raised:

1. "Common-man publishing" like blogs, wikis, and webpages do not provide any checks and balances that a professional writer, reporter, or journalist might have. Other than your own resources, you may not know if you're doing something wrong - illegal, defamatory, etc.
2. The legal system is always at least one step behind the cutting edge of society - while there might be laws in place to stop journalists from publishing certain material, but do those same laws apply to electronic media?
   

While some people blog to create online journals or stream-of-consciousness writings, those bloggers who write more informational articles should become more familiar with these guidelines. It makes a very good resource for teachers to use with students, as the behavior that the guide describes tends to start in school. How many students have "cut-and-pasted" a report together from the internet?

There is a separate page for concerns about student blogging - there, the issues get cloudier because of the fact that schools serve in loco parentis, and occasionally need to take additional action against students who publish improper material.