Thanks to everyone who attended our session. I will upload the entire slidedeck as well as links to the apps and websites mentioned.

• Steller
• VoiceThread
• Yogile

Please make sure you contribute a photo to our "Making the Mundane Beautiful" #atwarwiththeobvious social slideshow HERE.

For now, here is the original slidedeck as presented to my American Studies students:

Thank you for attending our session today at the NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) Conference in New Orleans. Please feel free to contact either of us:

• Spiro Bolos (Teacher, New Trier High School)
• Tom Kucharski (Instructional Supervisor, Glenbrook South High School)

Below is an unabridged version of our presentation that you can use in the classroom. It includes strategies for talking to students about race, as well as a full array of statistics on mass incarceration.



For classroom materials and embedded links to multimedia, please click on the image below:

Dan Lawler and I participated in a presentation/panel discussion called, "Inclusive Schools and Education Equity" in which the following questions were posed:

1. What does it mean to be a welcoming school district within the constraints of segregated housing patterns? 
2. What can suburban residents do to effect change in a metropolitan system that sanctions separate and unequal educational opportunities? 
3. Does diversity in schools create a net gain for all?

GUEST PANELISTS:

• Dan Lawler and Spiro Bolos, New Trier's Metropolitan Community Project
• Steve Bogira, The Chicago Reader
• Kourtney Cockrell, Student Enrichment Services at Northwestern University

Thank you for participating in today's session. Below is an embedded slideshare of the presentation.

Based on Cariou v. Prince, _ F.3d _ (2d Cir. 2013).

Patrick Cariou published a book of photographs of Rastafarians and landscapes taken in Jamaica. Richard Prince utilized portions of and entire images from Cariou’s photographs in 28 paintings, many of which were shown in the Gagosian Gallery.

Slides are numbered for classroom or workshop: each participant can use the critical reasoning process to make a fair use determination. NOTE: some content may be deemed NSFW. For a detailed analysis, please visit Rebecca Tushnet's "Transformativeness doesn't require commentary on original" as well as Kenneth Crews' analysis of the "Four Factors" at Columbia University (quoted above).


NOTE: click the four expanding arrows on the presentation in order to view full-screen.

UPDATE: the five photos sent back to the lower court were recently the subject of a settlement. Terms were not disclosed.

This presentation was given at the NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) Conference in Seattle, WA, and at the CASE (Council on American Studies Education) Conference at the Art Institute in Chicago by Thomas E. Kucharski and Spiro Bolos, both of New Trier High School.

Using US History, Michelle Alexander's recently published book, The New Jim Crow, and 20th century African-American responses to racism, we will examine strategies for our students' social/political engagement with racism.

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Our slides:
 

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Our handout: 
 

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Prison Industrial Complex links and video:

The Prison Industrial Complex from Spiro Bolos on Vimeo.

NOTE: to play the video fullscreen, click on the "expand" icon in the lower right-hand corner of the video box (while playing). If you are using a PC, hit "F11" to minimize the browser. 
 
Downloadable PDF of Zine illustrated and designed by Billy Dee. Music by Loscil.

For my visit to Smiley and West's The Poverty Tour 2.0 in Alexandria, Virginia, I wanted to document the event for my students and others by using Twitter to broadcast and archive memorable quotes from the hosts and guest speakers.

But finding a site that allowed tweets to be viewed in chronological order proved to be a major challenge until I stumbled upon this function within Storify. For now, the quotes alone will suffice, but I want to learn how to add different forms of media to enrich this "presentation". Check it out below:

Thanks to my wonderful sophomore students, I had an opportunity to present, discuss, and solicit feedback regarding my take on Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Because in the future I am only allotted 50 minutes to present and respond to questions, I've taken my students' feedback and eliminated about 1/3 of the slides. Below appears the unabridged slide deck, including the 2 videos I played when I presented. Enjoy.

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1. "An American Studies": co-authored with John S. O'Connor, my English teaching partner. It features links to all (40+) of our students' individual blogs.
2. "Modern World History": a class I taught in the past which used a different blogging platform called Posthaven, somewhat similar to Tumblr. It allows you to post just about anything via email.
3. "US History": a class I currently teach in an experimental classroom, it also uses the Posthaven platform instead of Blogger, my traditional favorite.

• Fair Use Music Videos
• Fair Use Case Studies
• Even more resources at the Media Education Lab, including a link to Renee Hobb's book, Copyright Clarity.

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If you are interested in this timely topic and might not be able to attend the national (ed-tech) ISTE Conference this year, two free webinars (online conference sessions) are scheduled soon:

1. "Copyright Clarity" on learncentral, presented by Kristin Hokanson and myself. Created by Gwyneth Jones, this is a free Elluminate web event, sponsored by Blackboard. It is intended for ISTE SIGMS members (library/media specialists), but anyone is welcome to attend. If you have a computer with a microphone, you should be able to participate on Monday, March 14, 2011 at 7:00 pm, CDT. Join us now by clicking on this link.
2. "Copyright Clarity and Fair Use for Digital Learning", presented by Renee Hobbs, author of Copyright Clarity, Kristin Hokanson and myself. It is intended for ISTE SIGTC members (technology coordinators), but anyone is welcome to attend. Sign up here to attend online on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 7:00 pm CDT.

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As promised, these are the presentation slides from the 2011 CASE Conference at the Chicago History Museum, co-presented with John S. O'Connor. Our classroom blog is called An American Studies, and can be found at www.anamericanstudies.com.

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As promised, these are the presentation slides from the 2011 CASE Conference at the Chicago History Museum, co-presented with John S. O'Connor. Our classroom blog is called An American Studies, and can be found at www.anamericanstudies.com.

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There's nothing quite so intimidating to students as delivering an oral presentation in front of their peers. And unfortunately, many students use the opportunity to turn their slides into text-heavy TelePrompTer screens. This might be due to the fact that the students are merely imitating what they see daily in the classroom: how many of us have subjected our classes to bullet point after bullet point, in an attempt to convey as much content as possible in the shortest period of time?

What I have tried to do is provide my students with training on how to communicate effectively, both orally and visually. But I also want to lower their performance anxiety. This is accomplished by sharing the presentation duties: one slide, one student, in a co-created Google Docs presentation. An added bonus was that the students could see each other's work during the creation process, thus upping the overall quality.

Finally, my greatest hope was that they would critically examine the choices they  made, in what and how they communicated. Ron Ritchhart, in his Intellectual Character, emphasizes the need for "Routines for Discussing and Exploring Ideas" in establishing an intellectual environment (94). One example is "The Why Routine". In the assignment featured below, students were asked to provide the following for a historical mock trial (on the subject of the Boston Massacre):

1. Find an image that you believe represents your witness or their testimony in some way. You should be creative here as long as YOU can explain why you think it is representative of your witness.
2. Choose ONE quote that either helps or hurts the Defendant, depending on whether your witness is on the side of the Prosecution or the Defense. Why is it the best quote?
   

Although the above finished product lacks student voices, the key to this activity was the oral presentation itself. Each time a student presented their individual slide, I asked them WHY they made the particular choices. It was illuminating as they were "making thinking visible": everyone else in the classroom understood the importance of providing a rationale for choices of images and quotes. As you can see, some ideas worked better than others!

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Although I try to re-examine what I teach every year, I always begin the school year in the same way in my history courses. To briefly summarize, I fake my own death (with a wink and a nod), in order to introduce the students to the discipline of history. The students are asked to write a biography of their "dead" teacher, using personal artifacts, interviews, and other sources.
As our district focuses specifically on inquiry this year, I am reminded of Ron Ritchhart's Intellectual Character, and his chapter entitled, "First Days, First Steps: Initiating a Culture of Thinking". Here he asks these critical questions:

"What messages [do] teachers convey when they plunge students right in to a big subject matter issue?" (62)

How do the "first days of school...establish norms of interaction between students and teachers?" (69-70)

Below is a VoiceThread (narrated presentation) describing the specifics of the activity. NOTE: this was recorded for a group of 1st Year teachers who were in an orientation session the week before school started:






How do you begin the school year with your students? To see another possibility, listen and watch this radio piece (set to images) by English teacher John S. O'Connor.







Written by John O'Connor — English Teacher, New Trier High School. John O'Connor reflects on what teachers face on the first day of school. O’Connor is the author of Wordplaygrounds: Reading, Writing and Performing Poetry in the English Classroom (National Council of Teachers of English, 2004). Originally aired on WBEZ 91.5 Chicago.

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There's been a lot of hype over the zooming presentation tool, Prezi, which allows the creator to design the presentation in a non-linear way. I have to say I've been reluctant to embrace this particular design method because it seems to have a relatively steep learning curve (at least 15 minutes), especially when compared to something like VoiceThread, which can literally be taught to another person in a couple minutes or so.

Once you learn the basic principles of Prezi, I find that one then spends an inordinate amount of time tweaking the layout just so its amazing twists! turns! and zooms! work in the most aesthetically pleasing way. It doesn't seem to me to be a tool that emphasizes the all-important goal of clarity of communication over bells and whistles. Though it's arguably an engaging tool, I haven't seen how using it as a PowerPoint substitute makes it a transformational tool — yet.

However, that doesn't mean there aren't decent examples of Prezi out there. Check out this short presentation by Peter Pappas, who takes a great idea — reflecting on every level of Bloom's Taxonomy — and augments it with clear, concise examples and embedded videos in order to provide a model of professional development for schools.

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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 effective technology usage can only be achieved via sound 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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For those of you who attended my talk on designing more effective PowerPoint presentations, here is a copy of the slides, recently featured on the homepage of SlideShare.net:

"You are a Presentation SuperStar on SlideShare!

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday."

I've also included (below) many links to the sites mentioned during the session:

If you happened to attend the ICE (Illinois Computing Educators) Conference on Thursday, or could not attend, here is an online version of my presentation on educational blogging:

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