Every Romanian 12th grader engaged in the bilingual English program must prepare a final project/presentation before graduation. The topic can be anything relating to American/British history or culture. Today, I was invited to view the presentation aspect. Let me share some of my notes:
Popular Themes:
- Famous Sites of ________
- The Life of ________
- History of ________
Re-think Question to prevent plagiarism.
“Air of an inquisition”
Presentation Skills
- weak
- no visual aids
- taking charge > set the tone (vs. just answering questions)
- long silence in response to questions
Technology (available at school)
- laptop/projector – make available – encourage use
- PowerPoint skills
Proper source citing
- not just domains!
Authenticity
Starting with “… was born on…”
New: immersion – presentation/show/food – max 10x/day
I am glad that I went (even though I would like those two hours back at some point.) What I saw today was well intentioned teachers following the same tired old line, with lazy/robotic behaving students spewing back hastily memorized facts taken from the internet. In short, the entire exercise was a joke. What makes it a shame is that American/British culture is such an interesting topic! The written component of this project, for most of the students, consisted of a slick bound volume replete with color photographs. Of course, 95% of the information was simply copied and pasted from the internet (the other 5% brief introductions and conclusions.) What struck me was how blatant it all was. First you have this shaky, one paragraph introduction, full of odd verb tenses and a preponderance of “the” in front of any object (“I would like to talk about the Henry Ford…) and then, bang, perfectly nuanced writing. One of the teachers confided to me, during a short break, that the lowest grade they could give was a 7 (out of 10.) All in all, on display today was a massive failure of effort – both by the teachers and the students. Although I do not doubt that most students had some interest in the topic they chose, their presentation (or shall we say testimony,) did not reflect that. The teachers, depending on whether or not they liked the student, either gave them a pass with softballs or ridiculed them by pressing on with questions which they could not answer. When the students were able to talk, mostly it was a rote reading of the script they had prepared on note cards.
As part of a project I am doing with 11th graders now, we are working to produce a tangible visible presentation. To begin, I brought in my laptop to school and showed them a real PowerPoint presentation about a similar topic to the one we are studying. We talked about how this basic tool raised the attractiveness of the presentation through the use of photographs, graphs and video clips. Since students here tend to be computer literate (that is, regarding games and pirated movies,) I am sure they can figure out PowerPoint. The problem is that these skills – basic to any successful presentation – are not being integrated into the classroom. Yes, I know that most teachers can’t afford a laptop, but unfortunately technology seems to be viewed as something for computer class only. With these 11th graders, I hope to come up with a presentation that not only reflects genuine research methods, but also utilizes modern, if simple, interest generating devices.
I am considering suggesting my findings to the other English teachers, but I want to first get their reacton to today’s events… so it is.
I’m not too surprised by lazy students anymore, but it sounds like the teachers are the real failure here. You’ve mentioned before that connections and social influence determine a lot more than they should. Students who know that their grades are determined by their networking capabilities probably aren’t going to be motivated to put a great deal of effort into academic projects.
As far as PowerPoint goes, I have the impression that it’s a great educational tool that’s prone to abuse. I almost never use it, but a friend of mine is getting her MBA at the moment, and she says a lot of the presentations she sees are sterile, overloaded mixtures of pseudo-facts yanked from Wikipedia and packaged in flying text and animated clipart. These, I might add, are presentations put together by managers, engineers, and businesspeople – educated, ambitious people. Seems like one of PowerPoint’s main strengths is making weak ideas look authoritative.
So, taking that into account, I actually think PowerPoint’s a great idea. It might really help your students to figure out what they’re trying to say if they need to summarize it. Just make sure you give them some good tips on what to avoid in presentations. I’d start with “Don’t read your slides verbatim”. And maybe threaten to hurl them out windows if they use anything animated or musical.