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ictenglish - Re: [ICTs in English] Weekly Update - So who loves data projectors and e-presentations then?

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Re: [ICTs in English] Weekly Update - So who loves data projectors and e-presentations then?


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Karl Lee <karlleerulz AT gmail.com>
  • To: ictenglish AT lists.tki.org.nz
  • Subject: Re: [ICTs in English] Weekly Update - So who loves data projectors and e-presentations then?
  • Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 08:34:43 +1300

Hi all

Hopefully the link works; here's a prezi I put together for V for Vendetta. http://prezi.com/drpmkaqnxa29/v-for-vendetta-heroic-journey/

Karl Lee 

On 9 November 2012 17:17, Hamish Chalmers <hchalmers AT ashs.school.nz> wrote:
Death by powerpoint! As much as I love this guy’s standup on it and I totally understand the pain of sitting through badly constructed e-presentations, technology for visualising stuff offers all teachers some pretty awesome advantages. One of the difficulties with ICTs though (that we see examples of over and over again) is how easy it is to bring our old frames of reference, based on older technology to bear on the new. Obviously this makes it harder to properly identify potential teaching and learning advantages but in some cases it also contributes to us using technology rather ineffectively.

As English teachers, e-presentations and data projectors offer us a heap of advantages around engagement and the effective communication of complex ideas, structures and relationships. Prezi is fantastic for illustrating relationships between ideas with animations, layout and zooming. It’s also constantly being improved themes and interface-wise. So far I’ve seen people using it mostly for the wow-factor but would love to see some examples of how teachers have used it to show relationships for example, between characters and ideas in a text study.

Even if death by powerpoint accusations don’t recognise the difficulties we have in identifying old mental models, they’re still very valid in a number of ways. Powerpoint and impress (linear electronic presentation tools) - with far too much written content delivered way to fast for anyone to read, much less understand, not only confuse audiences and students but also detract from the engagement factor of the speaker themselves. This seems, in part, to stem from the transference of our thinking about blackboards and whiteboards and is also around outdated modes of delivery like ‘chalk and talk.’ It would be a mistake to think however, that badly constructed e-presentations illustrate an inherent limitation of the technology itself. While there were a few teachers I remember from my school days who used the blackboard or whiteboard for all kinds of interesting diagrams and drawings, for many they were primarily tools for delivering skews of written content. If we make the mistake of viewing presentation-based electronic tools with this old lens, we’ll continue to underestimate their potential at best and at worst use them in a horribly boring manner.

It still surprises me how much feedback we’re willing to give students about using e-presentations badly (ie: too much written content) but how often we make the same mistakes ourselves. Of course, it’s often the time pressure thing which leads us to this place. When I have limited time and make that age-old mistake of thinking I can cram lots of stuff into students’ heads in a limited (and usually rapidly dwindling) amount of time, I’ve often been guilty of using e-presentations in a foolish attempt to deliver too much content.

So in some kind of attempt to summarise the do and don’t of electronic presentations, here’s my following list for English teachers of their uses and not-uses.

Things e-presentations are awesome for showing:
  • cool images and diagrams that (metaphorically and/or literally) communicate a concept.
  • concise text that reinforces what we’re saying
  • learning task instructions and requirements - giving students access to these whenever they need them.
  • LI/LOs and success criteria - giving students access to these across a whole lesson.
  • relationships between ideas - illustrating these with non-linear tools like prezi through the layout/placement of blocks of text, images and video and tactical placement of headings. Animating between these areas to show how they relate to each other.

Things e-presentations are totally average (and shouldn’t be used for IMO):
  • showing irrelevant images for the sake of it. Or, just as commonly in my case, obscurely connected through some joke (usually A-Team related) or other that makes no sense to students.
  • communicating large amounts of text about ANYTHING!
  • showing written text for students to copy down.
  • any quotes that the audience don’t get time to read and think about themselves.
  • showing more than two(ish?) slides of anything without a learning activity!

So here’s my challenge for term four when we hopefully have a little more time on our hands. If you have any e-presentations that breach any of the above 5 bullet points (or your own set of rules) then fix them before using them in class! It would also be great to hear from anyone who totally disagrees with any of this or has anything to add. Or even better, email out an awesome prezi that communicates some complex ideas from a film or novel.

Hamish Chalmers
Facilitator: ICTs in English
http://englishonline.tki.org.nz/




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