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.
Spiro Bolos
Social Studies Teacher, Copyright and Fair Use, and Education Technology presenter
"TV Tokenism": CASE Conference
"Writing Out Loud": CASE Conference
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.
Making Thinking Visible with the Shared Presentation
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):
- 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.
- 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!
The First Day of School
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.
Using Bloom's to Reflect
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.
A Presentation About Presentations
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.
The Cognitive Case for Multimedia Learning
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.
Jigsaw: the Shared Presentation
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.
The Power of Cartograms
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.
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 @ Wilmette Junior High
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.
The Battle Over Cell Phones
Image by In Veritas Lux via Flickr
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:- K-12 Cellphone Projects (wiki)
- Cellphones in Learning (tools)
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?
How to integrate technology successfully ?
Evaluating a K-12 Technology Integration program: IMPACTing Students and Teachers
The IMPACT model includes tech integration, professional development, and "differentiated support" for teachers.
- 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?
The Effectiveness of Technology Integration Professional Development: A Meta-Analysis
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.
The World Digital Library
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.
Time and Persistence
Image via Wikipedia
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.Bring back the MixTape!
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!
PowerPoint KILLS — The Presentation
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:
- “PowerPoint is Evil” (Edward Tufte)
- Interview with Dr. Richard Mayer (cognitive psychologist)
- FlickrSTORM
- FlickrSTORM tutorial
- CompFight
- Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
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!
Blogging for the Classroom
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:
Rip A DVD, Educate a Student
Image via Wikipedia
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.- 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.