Here is a useful one for all teachers: 10 Do's and don'ts to using PowerPoint to delver a lecture.
Or just ask the kids. They'll tell you what they hate about Powerpoint presentations. Or - better yet - ask yourself. We as teachers go to enough professional development speakers that we know a great presentation when we see it. And we know a terrible one.
Avoid the stuff that makes for a terrible one.
I like what LinkedIn is doing to eliminate useless meetings. They get rid of the presentation/Powerpoint period. In other words, they are flipping their meetings.
*****
Speaking of boring Powerpoint, here is one that is interesting, though I would never try to present it to my students.
I love the ideas and the message, but the generic graphics and tone are enough to cause a group of 16-18 year olds to revolt. I know I would.
However, slideshare is a great place to find slideshows and then take their ideas and adapt them to your classes.
And that's what I'm going to do with this slideshow because it fits great with my College Comp 2 unit on Steal Like an Artist.
****
Speaking of creativity, here is an expert on it, Ken Robinson. I think he is spot on. Thanks to NCLB and its obsession with high stakes testing, we are drumming creativity out of our kids in order to get them to test better.
I mean, can you imagine creating a test that accurately gauges or assesses creativity? You could do it, but it would be time consuming and expensive. And those are two things (well, maybe just the latter adjective) that the mega test services want to avoid.
The new book I'm reading, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, focuses just on this concept.
One reason America has rose to prominence is that the industries of the time were incredibly standardized. Thus, you could easily train a student to work on an assembly line or drive a truck or fix a car.
Thus our education system, which was not standardized nor assessed like it is today, worked very well.
But because it was neither standardized nor obsessed with assessment, it also had enough gaps and down time to allow kids to be bored and to day dream and to become creative.
If you don't believe me, just look at a list of the top 100 entrepreneurs of the past 100 years. I'm willing to bet $100 fewer than 10% were considered "great" students. I think this is where the phrase "A students get jobs working for C students" comes from.
The current world we live in doesn't need people 'trained' to do routine work. They need to be creative and innovative. In the words of Thomas Friedman, "you not be able to find a job. You will have to invent one." There will be one person creating a business that employes six people. Six people will create a business that employes four people and so on.
It is insane to me that we are working so hard to score well on high stakes tests against other countries (and even those countries are moving away from the drill and kill strategies that got them to score so highly on the PISA and other tests). In essence, we are preparing kids for a labor market and economy that no longer exists.
*****
I found this link in an old email. What would we be doing for our kids if once a week we were able to make each kid in our class feel like this?
******
This article is preaching to the choir:
For Public Schools, Twitter is No Longer Optional
Shocker, I totally agree.
Why?
Here are the reasons I believe teachers must give your kids your cell phone number and follow them on Twitter. I'm going to phrase it in the first person though from my point of view.
#1 I like kids. Nothing says (to this generation of kids) "I don't really care much about you" than not following them on social media or allowing them to contact you when they have questions. Two years ago I had a student email me via our my prowler account. I got back to him via my smartphone in about 20 minutes. He sent me another email thanking me and telling me how surprised he was. He said most teachers took a day or two to get back to him, if they even got back to him. And this isn't a run of the mill kid. He'll be the top student in his class in two years.
It worked to have that separation between teacher and student for Gen X. But not anymore.
#2 If you show that you like them and care about them, it helps create a positive culture. And in the words of our leader, "Culture eats strategy for lunch." As one of my students said at the honors banquet last year, "I texted Mr. Reynolds at 11:30, praying he'd get back to me and not be too mad that I had procrastinated so badly on my paper. And within a minute he got right back to me and answered my questions. I knew he cared about me and his students."
#3 There is never an excuse for a late assignment
#4 The kids deserve it. When I was a high school student I did my work as late as possible. Not so anymore. I will get a text or a Tweet from a student at 4 in the afternoon as they're on the bus to a game. Then I'll get another one at 7 when they get done with practice. I'll get another at 9 when they're off work. And I'll get another at 11:30 when they're stuck and really sweating it out.
Compare your life as a student to these kids. My life in 1990 was not close to as busy as the lives of these kids. They deserve to have a teacher on the clock 24/7.
#5 Be a role model. When a kid fires off something stupid on Twitter, be there to show them how to be a responsible intellectual who loves learning and life. Don't act like a moron (and just check Facebook, you'll see a ton of adults acting this way) who wants to act like they're 18 even though they're 42.
Give them something to aspire to grow up to be.
#6 promotion. Show the world all the great stuff you do in class. If you don't do anything great, what are you doing in this profession?
If you don't do these things, you'll be a great teacher, For the kids who were in high school 25 years ago.
****
Speaking of being a connected teacher, here are 10 simple ways to build your personal learning networks.
No comments:
Post a Comment