Monday, October 24, 2011

CEDO 530 Week 2



I hate writing and have always hated writing. I've gotten much better at it since I started out hating it. Practice makes perfect. Practice makes better. Perfect practice makes perfect. I haven't gotten to the perfect part yet. Though I'm excited about  digital storytelling, I think the excitement is more of the digital and less of the storytelling.


I was glad reading chapter 4 in Digitales because like all so many of our students who stare at the paper  with a broken pencil or play with all the possible fonts on the title, I need help with ideas. Chapter 4 gave a lot of ideas and I thought with many, "Hey! I could do that. This won't be THAT hard."


Going analog? I like to play acoustic guitar once in a while but prefer my electric. As for digital projects, I do a mix but the greater percentage is digital within the medium(s). I guess I'm no different from the moaning students, "What? We have to hand in pencil notes too?"


As for presentations? I don't have any. I've never given any. Never used a slide show and projector for teaching. My school had a projector but it's gone AWOL.  I'm taking a look at this whole presentation thing as something I'll be better prepared for when time comes for actually making and doing one. In the meantime, I'm gathering in the tips, tricks and suggestions and will also be generalizing them to be used in other media and presentation venues such as project website design and even my training website design.  


I think we need a few definitions of what presentations are in order for us to get this all right. I understand why we should take the time and think through a presentation that may bring in a few million start-up dollars from investors. Teachers making a dozen slides with bulleted highlights for a civil war lesson will never go away and I don't they they ought to if they serve the purpose well. Realistically, teachers aren't going to take the extra 30-40 minutes for tomorrow's class to go to the coffee shop and think analog, then another 30-40 minutes to get it all right with the sticky graphics, text & layout. They might do this occasionally but not for every day stuff. I do think that it is possible and recommended to take some of this in and make some changes that may end up with something more effective than bullets for those that use slides/presentations regularly.


What kind of presentations are we talking about here for teachers to make? Who is the audience? What are the presentations about? What is their purpose?

Question?: Does any one know of an accessible/downloadable database of the Wisconsin State Standards or Common Core Standards. I hate looking through all the individual documents and wish I could access it easily. I know many proprietary programs like Build your Own Curriculum have it built in as a feature but can us common folk get it some where?

2 comments:

  1. I agree that all of these ideas on how to make presentations are wonderful, but how realistic are they? Teachers already have so much to do and we don't have time to spend hours creating a presentation that is unexpected, tells a story, includes sounds/videos, or is extremely creative. I do try to do some of these things in my presentations, but some days all I have time for are the quick bullet points up on the smartboard. I do believe if teachers collaborated in making presentations and sharing them with each other there is a possability that we would have better presentations. Ihope you found an easy way to get the WI standards. I wish I could help, but I am from MN :-)

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  2. Very interesting point about the practicality of these tips for teachers. I very often get caught up in the day-to-day business of teaching and do not realistically have time to sit in a coffee shop for 30-40 minutes and plan a presentation every time I give. I suppose that it will be more realistic to focus on the things that will be easier and more practical to implement.
    Common Core Standards: http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
    Wisconsin Standards: http://dpi.wi.gov/standards/

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