New Trier Curricular Technology

I was lucky to travel west to present at the largest educational technology conference (west of the Mississippi) in Palm Springs. It's called CUE (Computer-Using Educators). While I had rehearsed and near-obsessively sweated the details of my session room, it was affirming to see that I was not the only one who put in such thought into presenting in front of others. Mark Standley, an author and Alaskan educator, gave a remarkable talk entitled "The Art of Digital Presentations", in which he skillfully measured and then responded to the energy level of his audience in real-time. It was fun but a little unnerving to observe the "meta" aspect of delivering a presentation about what makes a great presentation.

Standley correctly stated the danger of (mis-)using PowerPoint: "Too often the technology becomes the presentation and the speaker's voice, message, and ideas are secondary." Though many of his ideas were deceptively simple and seemingly subtle, I would argue that these small pieces of advice (selection featured below) add up to a much more engaging and enriching experience for both presenter and audience.

• Provide handouts. Because half of your audience will be uncomfortable without them.
• Remember that adults like to talk to each other. Provide opportunities for that to happen.
• The average "wait-time" is about 4 seconds. But the average wait-time should be 11 seconds.
• Choose two "anchor-points" on the floor when speaking in front of an audience. Avoid mimicking the "caged tiger" on a stage and don't hesitate to join your audience physically as a fellow learner.

There were many other ideas offered which you can see on his website, but I found the most surprising part of his talk was about credibility: according to Standley, the most believed piece of information is from an overheard conversation. If that's true, it might explain why so many commercials feature "hidden camera" testimonials! Most importantly, it should give presenters a more realistic sense of the challenge of being the sole "expert" of the room. Don't be afraid to tap the knowledge of your audience.

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Having used a great deal of interactive media in every course I teach, it was an appealing challenge to create a presentation justifying the use of multimedia in the classroom. Recently, my school's Technology Planning Committee (TPC) shifted its focus (thankfully) to showcasing thoughtful uses of technology by classroom teachers. I was asked to gather exemplars and provide a rationale.

To be honest, I hadn't really thought too deeply about why multimedia is so effective -- instinctively, I just felt it had to be. Text with pictures and sounds must be better than text alone. But was I confusing simple engagement with meaningful learning?

Thankfully, there is a wealth of research as well as a generous number of individual teachers in my school. After consulting Richard E. Mayer's The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, I was able to provide a research-backed framework for my fellow teachers to exhibit their exemplary lessons. We all came to the simple realization that good technology usage can only be achieved via good pedagogy:

"It's not the specific media that creates learning, it's the educational design that creates learning" (Mayer)

Below is a slide share of the presentation we delivered for the TPC. Beyond the research cited, clearly the most affecting portion of the meeting were the student voices featured, some of them amazingly confessional or deeply perceptive.

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One of the most powerful classroom activities I have recently rediscovered is the jigsaw. Here is an example of where technology can make something better than it was in the past. As my students are able to view each others' work -- in progress -- the overall quality of the final product (as a sum of the individual parts) inevitably increases.

For example, I recently had my Modern World History students redesign an old PowerPoint (link to assignment) I made using VoiceThread as the collaboration tool. Here's what the old PowerPoint presentation looked like:



Using the "Lessig Method" of design (minimal text, symbolic images), students were responsible for redesigning a portion of the PPT (PowerPoint), and then annotating (either with speech balloons or their actual voices) the new slides with the words used by the speaker. Although my students were frustrated with the lack of design control in VoiceThread, I believe the project was an overall success. My students better absorbed the content, but also learned how to clearly communicate in the visual realm. Here's what the revised presentation looks like, collaboratively designed by 26 sophomores:



In the future, I would have the students first design their slides using Google Presentations, then upload the completed PPT into VoiceThread for annotation purposes. Having now used both tools, my students preferred the design flexibility of the former.

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We have all seen cartograms in the past: the last election showed us the true voting power of each state relative to its respective electoral college representation.

But the web has opened access to even more of these distorted maps, as more and more reliable statistics have informed their creations. Take for example the cartogram of nuclear power plants in the USA (click on the "Resize" arrow above).

There are so many other choices from around the world and more are added on a regular basis. From the poignant ("Iraq War Deaths") to the absurd ("Bigfoot Sightings"), each cartogram can be shared as an animation (see above) or a static image (see right). All of the featured maps are taken from SHOW: A New Way to Look at the World.

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danah boyd (yes, there are legally no caps in her name), social media researcher, is coming to speak to parents and the rest of the community at Wilmette Junior High School on Wednesday, October 7th at 7pm. See http://fan-ntts.ntnow.org/

I've used her work in my own teaching and as a way to engage students at the intersection of their lives and course content. For example, in my Integrated Psychology/Sociology course, we embarked upon an entire unit focused around social class in America. Reading about boyd's research on class differences between MySpace and Facebook users proved to be a fascinating way to start the often difficult conversation.

Inspired by this, my students, who also had to learn dry social science research terminology, accomplished this by designing their own Facebook research project. Students "played the whole game" by choosing random/representative samples, and discussing the generalizability of their findings.

Finally, my Modern World History students are bucking what boyd identified as the teen trend of avoiding Twitter by experimenting with this social media application each and every Friday of class. We'll see if the students can translate this tool from a purely social/community-building application to something more research-based.

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