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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 were also tasked with learning the required but rather 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.
This summer, spending more time at home with my teenage daughter, I had to confront my ambivalence about how we use cell phones in our society. On the one hand, I've been intrigued by the possibility of liberating the cell phone in the classroom, which would entail a fundamental shift in how many of us teach students -- a switch from a teacher-centered classroom to a project-based learning (PBL) environment. Here are some possibilities others are exploring:
But as much as I want to embrace this innovative, perhaps inevitable way of student learning, I am troubled by how cell phone use "causes" us to interact with others. I put the word, "causes" in quotes because I clearly feel that we have a choice: we don't have to respond to every bleep and blip emitted by this device, but it seems to me that the school-age culture doesn't share my view.
An example is how many teens equate texting with "talking"; i.e., that the message which has just appeared on the handheld screen is just as important as the conversation in front of them, or, just as important as the person in front of them with whom they may or may not be conversing. The New York Times published a tongue-in-cheek guide for parents and children called "Cellphone Etiquette for Kids", which did list some important implications of this explosion of technology. It advises kids to:
Look them [people around you] in the eyes. The technical term for it is “interpersonal communication” — and it’s such a big deal that the educational psychologist Howard Gardner counts it as a multiple intelligence. You don’t develop these skills if you’re glued to a screen.
I frequently text friends and family but I draw lines when I am in the presence of others. But maybe I'm being too old-fashioned and "counter-cultural": if this is the way things are headed, shouldn't we simply embrace this phenomenon of divided attention and 24/7 connection to one's social network?
Mixing things up at NECC, I decided to attend the presentation of two research papers regarding technology integration. Although the schools described below differ significantly from New Trier (eg., mandating attendance), I still wonder what lessons our institution can take from these successful programs?
Professional development had to be exciting, dynamic, "differentiated", and not structured as a "sit-n-get". It also needed to be up front, meaning that it would be provided during the summer. This North Carolina school district trained 215 during the summer.
Vanguard Team: a reliance on teacher-leaders who could help out during the regular school year
"Naysayers" buy-in: these teachers, often respected but reluctant to use technology, were given advance training so that they could legitimize the program for their respective departments.
Strong Leadership: all administrators attended a 3-day workshop on how to lead people in a movement for change
Clear expectations: the technology in the classroom WILL be used, even if it was for 5 minutes a day in order to build confidence.
A conversation between teachers and administrators regarding what student engagement looks like?
Lawless and Pelligrino (2007) reviewed the literature on how effective technology staff development has been, and this paper focused on doing a meta-analysis of these studies. Unfortunately, the number of studies studied ended up at 10 total. And the presenter had little to share in terms of a definitive conclusion. A bit of a waste of time, though I learned what "effect size" means for statisticians.
While attending NECC, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all of the vendors trying to sell you their latest wares. Last night, I wandered aimlessly through the din of this corporate carnival.
That's what so refreshing about the World Digital Library (WDL), relatively new site, sponsored by both the Library of Congress and UNESCO, and various private contributors. The WDL is a collection of primary sources, curated by professional scholars and translated into six languages (Arabic, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese), which might be perfect for the cultural units of foreign language teachers. You can browse these items by place, time, topic, type of item (books, journals, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photos, sounds), or hosting institution.
Though currently there are no prepackaged teacher resources as you might see at the Library of Congress, the website curators instead want to establish a social network for educators to create and share lesson plans across the globe. Lastly, all of the resources are freely downloadable in high resolution formats to allow for closer analysis.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of such books as The Tipping Point, Blink, and, most recently, Outliers, gave the keynote speech at the opening of NECC (National Education Computing Conference). I always enjoy these speakers because they don't tout the latest tools we all hear so much about already.
Instead, Gladwell, like others before him, focused on what makes learners successful, and his examples tend to be unexpected (eg., Fleetwood Mac, Mozart, and various chessmasters), and his solutions, counter-intuitive. Gladwell simply emphasizes the importance of 2 factors: time and persistence. According to his research, it takes approximately 10 years of working 4 hours a day in order to master cognitively complex skills.
Perhaps Gladwell's ideas could be critiqued on the basis of the "hindsight bias". After all, what of all the people who put their time in, without giving up, and never became successful? And what defines success in his examples? Wealth? Fame? High test scores? Regardless, his explanation of the math score differences between Asian and Western students seems to be compelling in terms of how these young people attribute their respective outcomes (Asian > Western).
Recently, it seems that quite a few teachers want to have their students use popular music for class assignments. In the past, students would create a "mixtape" on an analog cassette (back in the day) or, more recently, they would burn a CD of songs, which would leave the teacher with a stack of media that might never be used again. What a waste.
More recently, the challenge that teachers and tech staff encounter is that either students want to take tracks from their iPods or CDs and put them on the Web. Obviously, this is fraught with all kinds of technological and copyright-related issues. Well, here's a possible solution, as described in depth by Wired magazine.
MixTape.me is a website that acts like an online version of iTunes, without the need to purchase anything. Students (and teachers) can search for many popular songs and then create their own playlist(s) to share with others. Below is an example, which I was able to create and embed in this blog in under 5 minutes. Think then of the possibilities: students could create a custom playlist and then add their own comments, as well as pictures to the "jukebox". HINT: just double-click on a song title to play the music!
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."
And finally, here is an outstanding example of a student presentation from Julia Barrow, who worked with me on an independent study project. Using the techniques outlined above, Julia designed these slides and recorded a voice-over synced with the images. Wow!
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:
For those of you that attended my recent session on "Copyright and Fair Use for Educators and their Students", the appeal to the Librarian of Congress is due on Monday, February 2nd at 5 pm EST. Remember, if successful, it will create an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for educators using "ripped" DVD clips to teach media literacy.
Here is the pertinent information you would need to submit, quoted from Eric Ford and Azizi Jones, student attorneys at the Intellectual Property Clinic at American University Washington College of Law. Specifically, they need you to submit:
Concrete examples from your own work showing how the inability to lawfully circumvent the technological access controls on DVDs has created educational hardships or interfered with your teaching goals,
Explanation of how the proposed exemption would help you and your students
Information about school and other institutional policies that prohibit the circumvention of DVD copy-protection technology; and
Your own beliefs about why media literacy and digital media in education is such an essential part of our students’ future.
BONUS: for those of you who attended the Copyright and Fair Use session, here is a video that I simply didn't have time to include. The message is right on the mark, though the delivery might not appeal to everyone. It's sort of Schoolhouse Rocks meets Flight of the Conchords...
When the financial crisis first hit, I found myself grappling as much as my students were with the complexities of our economic system. Though I am a homeowner and realized that many of the problems stemmed from so-called "mortgage-backed securities", I honestly could not figure out my own place in this meltdown.
That was until I heard the economic terms contextualized in narrative form on a public radio program, This American Life, entitled, "The Giant Pool of Money". I'm sure some of it is oversimplified, but what I enjoyed about the show (in free podcast form) was that the hosts never took for granted that the audience understood what those "creative" financial instruments like CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligation) were!
Knowing that my American Studies students could benefit from this explanation in the midst of a unit called "Stories and Histories", my teaching partner, John O'Connor, and I designed an activity which harnessed the power of our 42 students to our collective advantage.
We assigned each student a portion of the radio transcript to visually represent as a single slide. In order to make this a truly collaborative effort, we dropped the students into 2 adjacent computer labs, and had them all simultaneously edit a shared presentation via Google Docs.
It was an amazing endeavor to observe, as students got up from their computer terminals in order to negotiate with their peers the transitions and shared metaphors from slide to slide. Check it out:
In terms of copyright and fair use considerations, each student was required to cite and link back to every image they re-purposed in the shared presentation. Once the project was completed by the students, I organized the slides and then matched it to the original radio audio on another website, SlideShare.
I wanted to model permission-seeking to my students by making a formal request to National Public Radio. Unfortunately, after a few friendly emails back and forth, This American Life refused my request. Therefore what you see above is somewhat limited in that it lacks the soundtrack. I'm still pursuing other avenues as I post this. What do you think? Was our class project an example of "fair use" or did we take it too far by wanting to share it with a wider audience?
UPDATE (5/22/09): I've decided that I will publish the completed presentation on the web after all. After a school year of sharing this project with private audiences, I posted my dilemma to a wiki dedicated to ending copyright confusion. Here is a portion of the response I received from Renee Hobbs of Temple University:
What a creative way to incorporate media literacy into the social studies curriculum! As I look at the piece, it seems that your students have demonstrated their understanding of the content by transforming the "This American Life" segment into a new work through their imaginative multimedia slides. The educational value of this assignment is based, in fact, on the careful relationship between the audio and the images....[W]here you have asked permission and been refused, your decision about distribution rests completely on your comfort level about whether this use indeed a fair use....I think it's a great example of how, sometimes, we use a whole piece of media in our work with students -- and for the specific learning objective, we need to use the whole piece.
Designing a new presentation? Need raw material for student research? For a treasure trove of (mostly unpublished) images, try the new Life Photo Archive hosted by Google. LIFE magazine's catalogued images number in the millions and easily reach all the way back to the 1750s.
The image below actually contains live links. Click on any decade to see a sampling of images, which will show up as a Google image search tagged with a green LIFE keyword.
Just released. I will comment further once I've digested this document from the Center for Social Media of American University and the Media Education Lab of Temple University.
UPDATE: Here is an edited version of a presentation I gave at the NICE (Northern Illinois Computing Educators) Conferencein February, 2009. More recently, I have presented this material at the IETC (Illinois Education and Technology Conference) in November, 2009, and at both ICE (Illinois Computing Educators) and CUE (Computer-Using Educators) conferences in February and March, 2010, respectively.
Image via WikipediaAt least at our school, one of the teacher tools that was prohibited last year was the extracting of short DVD clips for classroom use. I think we all know what advantages this process offers, especially within the confines of the 40-minute period (or, as I like to refer to it, "the 40-minute fury"!). Excerpting clips instead of fumbling with the menus and previews of an actual DVD was the fulfillment of the early promises of DVD technology. Instead, I see teachers running around with old and degraded VHS tapes, laboriously cued and re-cued up to the scene they wish to use in class.
Although the DVD clipping process is clearly illegalaccording to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), we now have an opportunity to apply for an exemption to the law. The Librarian of Congress (LOC) is about to revisit the law for the first time since 2006 and could grant us the same rights given to film studies professors at the post-secondary level.
If you are at all interested in crafting a "comment" (petition) to the LOC, please let me know. Just to give you some perspective: in 2006, nationwide, only 74 petitions were posted. These were made by various organizations as well as by private citizens. Each and every request was reviewed and ruled upon by the LOC. A successful "comment" by New Trier would certainly be consistent with our "Lighthouse District" reputation, and might also be a relevant tie-in to our ECGC initiatives. If you are from another school and wish to join me in this effort, please contact me here. The due date is December 2, 2008.
Image via CrunchBaseHave you or your students ever created slideshows with music? Usually, we are limited to computer-based programs like iMovie, iPhoto, Windows Movie Maker or Photo Story. But now there is an amazing online creation tool called ANIMOTO, which is Japanese for "ANIMOTO". It completely automates the process and syncs the images to the structure and sound of the music provided either by you or the website. You can even embed the finished video in another web page. And best of all, it's FREE.
The free version is limited to 30 seconds and doesn't allow any videos to be downloaded. BUT, if you are a teacher, you can request an educational account for you and your students as long as you promise to share what your classes are doing with the tool. The educational version is UNLIMITED and allows you and your students to DOWNLOAD the videos to a computer.
Here's a "get-to-know me" video I created for my students. All of the images came from my online Picasa account. You can also get images from your computer or websites like facebook, flickr, or photobucket.
This past summer at the Google Teacher Academy, I learned of an efficient way to collect student info or even create quick surveys. It's all via Google Docs, specifically the Spreadsheet function. My own knowledge of spreadsheets is woefully inadequate, since I am math-challenged. But this is just populating lists and cells, which I actually do understand! Here's how to create a web-based form from a spreadsheet:
So here's how I use a Google Docs form in my classroom. At the beginning of the year, I need the following information from my students:
Name (i.e., what they prefer to be called, NOT what the computer spits out)
Email address (i.e., an email address they actually prefer to use to contact a teacher)
Blog address (because each one of my students has his/her own Blogger weblog)
The beauty of this form is that because it is online, any link in an individual cell becomes "live", meaning, I can click on the web address next to my student's name and it will take me to the student's blog.
And here's what my form looks like (scroll to see the input fields):
Although this blog is authored by New Trier High School (NTHS) staff, the audience is global and the views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of NTHS as an institution.
Copyright and Fair Use
This site contains images and excerpts the use of which have not been pre-authorized. This material is made available for the purpose of analysis and critique, as well as to advance the understanding of technology in education.
The ‘fair use’ of such material is provided for under U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with U.S. Code Title 17, Section 107, material on this site (along with credit links and/or attributions to original sources) is viewable for educational and intellectual purposes.
If you are interested in using any copyrighted material from this site for any reason that goes beyond ‘fair use,’ you must first obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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