For a unit 2 classroom assessment, 8th grade language arts teacher Di Ander found the learning outcomes for her students to be incredibly successful after giving students the reigns to control their learning experience. The students are given an assessment known as a Real World Experience in which they had to persuade others to support their Not for Profit organization financially. All kids received 5,000 fake dollars to donate to a charity of their choice and present their ideas to their peers. The students were all about integrating technology to have a more powerful 1-2 minute presentation and were very curious of their options on what they could use.
The current teaching and learning shift we are experiencing that places the role of the student at the center of the learning experience is reshaping relationships between teachers and students. Something that we all accept as a known fact is that the person who does the work does the learning. Today's students need to be given an opportunity that takes their own work a step further. True ownership in learning goes beyond just "doing the work". Let your students do more learning by providing them with the tools and steps they need to take to be successful, but find a way to honor their choice at the same time. Choice in note-taking strategy. Choice in collaboration/communication outlet. Choice in presentation tool.
"Students need to become contributors to their work. Shift from the teacher at the center of curriculum, designing tests, to the network of children who are helping one another learn" (Alan November).Set your vision, set your goals and parameters, give the students a learning target, and allow them the opportunity to discover how they can accomplish it. Allow students to seek out their own learning.
Di Ander's class at work.
Communicating Effectively: Less is more
Although the style/tool used for student presentations were open to allow for student choice, the vision that Di had in place for the format of presenting was clear. The students were to follow Pechu Kucha 20x20 - a "simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images" (http://www.pechakucha.org/), or in Di's students' case, 10 images for 20 seconds a piece. Popular tech-tool students chose for their outlet of accomplishing this included Google Presentation, Prezi, and the newly launched (but still in Beta format) Haiku Deck.
Even though full-class presentations for the most part are becoming less mandatory after an inquiry project than before, it all still depends on what you want students to get out of their learning experience. In the case of Di's class, not only were they set to master a set of skills/specific standards, they also were coaching one another on how to present information in an effective and engaging matter. In a sense, they needed to learn how to present to get audience members to care - to see why something they care about matters.
There's a great article called the Latest Annoying PowerPoint Survey Results that details how presentations become annoying, uneffective, and pretty much and overall bore for audience members. Here's a few take-away items they found:
- The speaker read the slides to us
- Text so small I couldn't read it
- Full sentences instead of bullet points
- Overly complex diagrams
- Poor color choice
- No clear purpose
- No flow of ideas
Catherine Carr of Haiku Deck created the following presentation on how PowerPoints go bad
I implore you all to check out Haiku Deck. It'll change your world AND
forever change the way you present information!
Share the awesome learning
If you're doing some awesome learning and you're not sharing, it's selfish. Share your #eduwins with fellow educators in your building or share the wins on social media. Increase traffic to student-centered posts on Twitter by adding #comment4kids. Either way, share the successes (and share failures... you'd be so surprised to see the amount of incredible educator-strangers that will come to your rescue on Twitter if you ask for help!). Imagine the learning experience for the student who not only just presented on a topic they were passionate about in a way that makes sense for them, but then add on that educators can learn from the experiences of that student online.
Here's an example of Di sharing her eduwins with the outside world. Note that the student chose to present without notecards and instead used his cell phone as his springboard for notes!
Happy learning!
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