Blog Entry #7: Multimedia Presentations

This week's module sure got me thinking about how I present information to my students. I definitely need to make my presentations more appealing and exciting for them. I like all of the options we took a look at this week for creating multimedia presentations, such as Focusky, Glogster, etc. Both of these sites in particular got me thinking about how I could not only use them to create my own presentations to up the engagement factor in my classroom, but how I could have students use them to create their own to show understanding/application of the content at hand. I think they would have a lot of fun using both.

I decided to use Popplet (I love it!) to create a multimedia presentation on The Great Depression. It includes text, photos, and videos. I couldn't figure out how to embed it here, so I attached it to the inbox email I sent out to everyone instead. I choose the topic of The Great Depression because I teach Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck to my sophomores, which takes place during that era. I thought it might be a more interesting/interactive way for my students to learn about the period prior to diving into the text. Usually, I just show them a brief PowerPoint and they take notes. So, this certainly seems like a more exciting way to meet the same end goal.

In the past, I have used multimedia presentations with my students occasionally. I have always created them using Prezi. For me, Prezi was a bit tricky to work with at first, but now I have the hang of it. I love how easy it is to incorporate images, videos, and audio, in addition to text, to explain background on a particular time period, author, or piece of text in general. I now realize you can do this on PowerPoint, as well, but I have never tried before. I guess I tend to use PowerPoint for basic presentations and Prezi for more interactive ones, which is interesting now that I think about it. Although, I suppose Prezi is more interactive by nature, so that could be why. My students have created numerous multimedia presentations in the past, however. For instance, nearing the end of my short story unit with my freshman, I put them in groups and hand them each a different short story (of the last few we have). I tell them that it is their turn to teach the class about that specific story, which should include a discussion about the significant symbols, themes, figurative language, and elements. Most of them choose to use PowerPoint or Prezi and include lots of audio, videos, photos, graphics, and of course text without me even asking them to do so. It's one of my favorite project/presentations all year! Such quality work, overall.

As stated before, I envision a lot of possibilities for using multimedia presentations both as a teaching and assessment tool. It is an engaging way for students to view/learn about content, but maybe an even better way to demonstrate mastery of content later on, as well, which is what my freshman already do for me at the end of our short story unit. However, I don't think I have my sophomores or seniors do anything like this. So, I need to change that as soon as possible. I was thinking that I could have my sophomores use Glogster to create an interactive multimedia poster to turn into me, along with their final research paper, that houses all of their sources. I think I may have mentioned this idea in my previous post, actually, as it was one of the digital apps mentioned in the article we viewed. Lastly, I could have seniors create a cool multimedia presentation using Focusky to show the events in the Hero Cycle for the story Beowulf we study in our opening unit in British Literature.

The only concern I have about creating.using multimedia presentations and assignments for my students are the lack of microphones for PowerPoint for incorporating narration to their slides and finding sites that are free to use. Money is obviously always an issue when you are a teacher. I haven't had a moment to find out if Glogster and Focusky are free or not, yet, but I sure hope so!