CED0530 Week Three

Reading Chapter Six of Presentation Zen has made me aware of how much design thought is really put into Reynolds' presentations. Nothing is done by accident. I spend some time reflecting on the use of the big four principles within my current presentations.

1. Contrast- I've tried to use contrast between the background color and font color but that's really as far as it went.

2. Repetition - I've used repetition through choosing a background template. I hadn't considered using a unifying element such as the red note and paperclip in the example presentation.

3. Alignment - I've used alignment with text, either centered or right justified. Easy but boring.

4. Proximity - I believe that I've used good proximity, but I definitely wasn't thinking consciencely about it at the time.

My presentations could stand to have a lot of improvement.

CED 0530 Week 2

This week I went to a DPI meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to make us aware of new changes to the Individual Student Enrollment System (ISES) state reporting that is done every year by school districts in Wisconsin. There are four reports and it takes about 2 1/2 months to complete the reporting.

The presenter is an expert in the field and is well known by those who are responsible for this type of reporting. The presenter used Power Point to deliver her presentation. As I observed the presentation I considered all that I'm learning about Presentation Zen.

How could the presentation be more reflective of the principles proposed by the book? I have to admit that I'm skeptical that the presenter could do it anyway other way than she did. Her slides had 4-6 bullet points on each slide and there were certainly more than 6 words per slide on them although she did write her information with an "economy of words" as Ed Begley Jr. has said. The handouts were copies of the slides and there were no graphics. Although I do think that most of my presentations could greatly benefits from the Zen principals, I'm not convinced that these are easily applied to a technical discussion when state statute is sometimes referred to. I certainly cannot image choosing a graphic of an ocean view to enhance a slide about state discipline reporting.

I then turned my attention to the "stickiness" principals. Here is how I've related then to the state reporting presentation:

1. Simplicity - Hard to do when discussing state reporting. If the state required that it be reported on - then it's important.

2. Unexpectedness - My expectations were definitely violated. Always need to adjust to new requirements.

3. Concreteness - Natural speech was used as well as good humor.

4. Credibility - It's DPI therefore it's credible

5. Emotions - Many emotions came through me as I listened - I vacillated between bouts of despair, relief, and even hope.

6. Stories - the presenter did tell stories to accompany her presentation. They helped to give history and meaning to the presentation.

CED0530 Week 1

I could sit and look at the pictures in our Presentation Zen book for hours. I'm tried to pare down a lot of extraneous things in my life right now so this book really fits in well for me. It makes me think of that old adage of"'keep it simple stupid." I'm also rethinking how I put presentations together and the process that I use to create them. Reynolds encourages readers to "plan analog." I admit that I design my presentations right in the slideware. Next time I'll try Reynolds' suggestion and plan it on paper first.

I think many people design their presentations as documents like I do. I recently reviewed a presentation by a well known educational speaker that was more than 140 slides. Right off the bat I was a little put off. While the message was valuable, I'm not sure that that many slides were needed. Many of them were inspirational quotes. They were nice, but I'm not sure that the contributed enough to be vital to the communication.

The article "Research points the finger at PowerPoint" made an impression on me. I am interested in learning more about the cognitive load theory. Is this why people's eyes glaze over during presentations? What are the implications for how information is presented to students? I think it would be interesting to explore.

0525 Week Six Reflection

Having been out of the classroom for 10 years I really enjoyed reviewing the strategies during this course. I remember using the note taking and summarizing strategy in my classroom as well as the non-linguistic representation strategy. Having been a Science teacher, I also asked students to form a hypothesis and test it.

The aha moment that I had during the course was to reinforce effort. In my future classroom I will use this strategy to demonstrate to students the relationship between effort, learning and grades. I will also make much more use of cooperative learning in my classroom. I hope that my future school will be receptive to the practice of students collaborating on-line (assuming that it is appropriate to the grade level and learning targets.) I'd really like to see this strategy in action.

I come away from this class feeling more confident and incredibly excited to begin working with students and implementing all the strategies we discussed.

CED0525 Week Four Cooperative Learning and Feedback

The authors of our textbook recommend that teachers form student groups considering 5 elements:

• Positive interdependence
• Face to face promotive interaction (cheering each others efforts and accomplishments)
• Individual and group accountability
• Interpersonal and small group skills (communication skills, trust etc.)
• Group processing- reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better

I was happy for these suggestions and have been reflecting on them. Using cooperative learning groups presents many challenges, but also offers numerous benefits to students. Although it's third in the list, I've always been very concerned about 'individual and group accountability.' My husband tells tells a story of a high school group project that didn't go well when other group members didn't perform their parts of the project. When he discussed it with the teacher, the instructor told him to 'just make them do it.' Should the individual and group portions be weighted equally? Would this address a situation where one person just doesn't perform to the level of the rest of the group? Managing groups well contributes to how people perceive collaborating with others.

Group processing - the ability to reflect on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better is important. I think that this would be effective if done throughout a long term project. Hopefully it would prevent issues from arising. My only concern is how to model and coach students to do this in a manner than is productive and doesn't create a complaining session.

As I have already stated in our discussion forum, I never would have thought to actively demonstrate to students the connection of effort to results. In the past I've made statements to students like 'Try harder." Looking back at it-this wasn't very helpful. I liked our texts illustration of documenting effort and grades in a spreadsheet and then graphing the relationship. Eureka! I think I would perform an activity like this at the beginning of the year and maybe then again about half way through the year.

CED0525 Week Three Graphic Organizers

I enjoyed exploring bubbl.us, Education Oasis and Exploratree. bubbl.us had the ability to create organizers using a parent and child bubble hierarchy. I didn't see this approach in the other two tools. Relationships between bubbles are made by using directional lines in bubbl.us; lines and arrow graphics can also be made in Exploratree. In Exploratree the font style, color and size can be changed. While the color of the bubbles can be changed in bubbl.us, I didn't see the ability to change the style or color of the text.

Exploratree offered a wide variety of ready made organizers that could be completed on-line. I didn't see this option on bubbl.us. Both Exploratree and bubbl.us provided the opportunity to create custom organizers. Exploratree can accommodate the inclusion of JPEG files into the documents. I didn't see this as available on bubbl.us. I felt like this would really add to the interest of organizers and brings in the non-linguistic representations that help students make connections. I also liked Exploratree capability to lock elements so that they can't be changed by other users.

Both Exploratree and bubbl.us had the ability to share, print and e-mail the documents. In bubbl.us the code can be obtained so that the organizer can be included in blogs and other websites.

Education Oasis offered 58 free PDF organizers including the following types:

• cause and effect
• character and story
• compare and contrast
• sequence, cycle, timeline and chain of effects
• vocabulary development and concept organizers.

Some of the organizers can be completed on-line and then printed. Others can't. This site seems to primarily be a library of pre-made, unchangeable organizers. I think I would use it for basic organizers that I want students to complete by hand. I would use the other tools if I wanted to do a custom organizer or if creating an organizer was part of the learning task.

With all of these options it made me wonder why anyone would buy a graphic organizer book at the teacher supply store.

CED0525 Week TWO Student Response Systems

This week I began reviewing student response systems. This concept is wonderful. I'd love to see one of these systems in action. Instead of typing in a narrative, I've added my Word document by using scribd.com


Comparison of Student Response Systems