Using Prezi... (For the first time)

If you are fed up with the monotonous aspect of power point, I suggest you to take the plunge and try Prezi instead. I am not trying to underestimate power point as such, it is greatly useful (As I have stated in the previous entry) but if you would like to spice things up a bit, Prezi is certaintly the way to go!

This was the very first time I used it and to tell the truth, I was a bit apprehensive about it since I thought it would be extremely difficult to handle. It just takes a few minutes until you get used to the experience and then is like riding a bike, really. The results are alluring and more glamorous, it is a pleasure to look at, especially the way in which you can arrange the slides to move backwards and forwards; it is completely novel. You are also allowed to zoom in and out, depending on the emphasis you might give to certain things and the display is not linear like in power point but is messy in a lovely kind of way; you can play with it to create the effect you desire and it also has enticing effects to highlight some words and the outcome is surprisingly modern.

We used Prezi for ECO's PW nº 2 and had the possibility of choosing either power point or Prezi. We worked in groups, which made the whole process more "doable" and when we got together we decided on a whim to give Prezi a try. Choosing Power point would have been a much safer choice but it is interesting to move towards unknown directions and be positively surprised. We were supposed to work with a unit called "Girls night out" and to come up with a lesson plan that includes one of these presentations. We thought it would be really interesting to create a Prezi presentation with our own "nights out", including real pictures and customs that we have here in Santa Fe as a contrast with the ones they have in The United States. Our Prezi would be used a model for learners to create their own Prezi with their own stories. I must say it came out wonderfully, and the foremost important aspect of this work was the authenticity implied.

All in all it is worth running the risk of trying new things out, I would definitely use it again for further presentations. We were not able to try it out in a real classroom, but I'm posistive that students would be thrilled to work this way. It is a personalized work, extremely menaingful and enjoyable.

Here I share our Prezi for you to see how gratifying the result is!

Using Power Point Presentations adequately

Using slides are a great way to guide your audience through the main points of your presentation. Slides that are clear and concise will complement, and even enhance, your verbal presentation. However, slides can also become a source of distraction. There is a fine balance between providing enough information so that slides make sense and overwhelming the audience with excessive information.

Let us consider the following tips to capitalize on its use:

1)-Use readable font: make your slides easy to read from anywhere in a room.

-Use bold font for all text on a slide.

-Do not rely on the default settings; they may not be as legible when projected onto a large screen as they are on your computer screen.

-Use contrasting colors for text and background.

-Be consistent, use the same size and color font throughout the whole presentation.

2)-Use key words and phrases: be concise on slides.

-Use bullet points (phrases instead of complete sentences)

-Your slides should guide the reader to your main points: make only three or four points per slide.

-However, include enough information so that the slide makes sense.

3)-Use Charts and Figures: when it is difficult to describe something briefly, display the information in another format.

4)-Keep it simple: too much animation, color, or text will be distracting.

-Use simple design templates or backgrounds.

-Use animation sparingly.

-Keep text out of the slide design.

5)-Talking with your Slides: remember that no matter how great your slides look, content is the most important part of your presentation.

-Use your slides as your outline for the presentation.

-Use the same words in your speech as appear on the slide; this will help the audience follow along.

-Be sure to discuss the text on the slide; try not to make the audience choose between reading the slide or listening to you.

-Reference your information by including citations on slides

-As a general rule, have one slide per minute of presentation (e.g., for a 12 minute talk, have 12 slides)

-Practice your talk so you stay within your allotted time.

We should definitely employ the use of power point presentations or prezi for our teaching practices because it offers the possibility of making your work more attractive and neat (following the above criteria). Instead of making a plain oral speech we could implement this to enthrall our audience and aid comprehension, as long as slides are tidy and clear. Besides, note-taking is improved since the slides state the main points of the topic and people can have a better understanding of the subject matter.

I personally believe that one of the best pieces of advice on the use of power point presentations is to keep it simple, do not overload the slide with words, if so, your audience will switch off at once and the main idea of your theme will be lost. It is always advisable to include images that represent what you are stating and make it more eye-catching.

If the above criteria is too serious and formal for you, take a look at this video that will make you break in two with laughter!

Food for thought: Is it a good website?

Websites can become our ally when teaching and looking for novelty or adding variety to our daily practices, but being assertive on our choices is not something that comes out naturally and  out of the blue. One should be mindful, and foremost important, to be as critical as possible and to browse deeply through it to find any information that may come handy and give us a hint of its credibility and reliability.

This may seem a piece-of-cake-kind-of-task, but it is definitely not. It is time-consuming and also requires our undivided attention, if we want to do it properly. On the other hand, it is highly rewarding and it may be an interesting complement to introduce variety, to shake up routines and it serves as further practice on a particular topic that the teacher wishes to enlarge on, or to extend its practice.

As a complementary part of our subjet ECO, I have been analyzing websites based on a specific criteria, and believe me when I say it is worth every bit of our time. I must confess that I wouldn't have payed attention to the analysis of websites before, in fact, choosing a website for me was something instinctive and directionless; I only cared for the attractiveness of the activities proposed there. After having the chance of revising key features within sites, I have come to the conclusion that we should be consciencious before choosing to work with one.

Some criteria that may be useful to apply:

Accuracy: make sure the athor provides e-mail or contact address/phone number and the institution that published the page.

Authority: If your page lists the author credentials and check URL domain. The ones preferred are: .edu, .gov, .org, or .net.

Objectivity: If your page provides accurate information with limited advertising and it is objective in presenting the information.

Currency:  If your page is current and updated regularly and also if the links (if any) are also up-to-date. Pay attention if the page is outdated or to the amount of dead links present.

Coverage: If you can view the information properly and it is not limited to fees, browser technology, or software requirement, otherwise you will be loosing the opportunity of making the most out of it if you do not have the required sofware to view the information.

 If you use this guideline as a framework for your decision, then you won't run the risk of choosing an invaluable website.

The above criteria also applies to our learners. The internet can become a trap for some children if they do not have a steady direction to follow. It is our duty as teachers to create awareness on this issue and to deliver trustworthy information about it. It is pretty common to see very young children in front of the computer, clicking thousands of webpages every day; then, it is worth asking ourselves: how many of these kids are able to distinguish a safe webpage from a crappy one? the answer is alarming. Consequently, helping them to utilice this magnificent tool is our number one priority and should not be procrastinated. This is the only way of showing them that not all information out there is valuable and that a careful selection of the material existent in the web is needed.

 I leave you this quote which I think should be reminded constantly when in panic!

 "There is no reason to fear the Internet. When used properly with the right precautions educates, positively influences, and provides a creative outlet for today's kids." 

Don Tapscott: "Net Generation"

In the first entry of this blog I have put forward my viewpoint regarding Mark Prensky's article about "Digital natives and Digital immigrants". I have read another author called Don Tapscott who also wrote and did research on the same topic presented, but with the minor difference that he uses another terminology: "The Net Generation" (Shortened to N-geners). I reckoned that it would be quite interesting to reflect upon some ideas that I've gathered from one of his most well-known articles called: "The rise of the Net generation".

I took an excerpt from the article that I considered worthwhile: “The Net generation are children at the heart of the new digital media culture, and whose learning styles and strategies have changed profoundly and dramatically from that of their parents”. I believe it is highly important for us to see that learning strategies and styles are no longer similar to that of former times; hence, we need to move away from the traditional teaching model to a more eclectic and inclusive one. Our learners are more demanding because the world we live in is fast-moving and insists on trends that are hard to crack.

 Furthermore, we should not fight back or resist the network fashion but we should adopt it and apply it to improve our lessons and to appeal students. That is why I think it is advantageous to obserb and be mindful about our children’s strategies to develop lessons that are more fruitful, content-rich, and that contemplate the new learning styles.

Another characteristic the author mentions, is that this new generations are exceptionally curious, self-reliant, smart, focused, able to adapt, high in self-esteem, and has a global orientation. Let alone the fact that the way they get hold of input data is utterly different, and their ability to multi-task has shaken everything known so far.

 This last fragment holds truth only partly, since it generalizes and one cannot take for granted that all kids will have these traits with no exception whatsoever. In the educational field, we encounter individuals of all kinds, some of them may embody the characteristics mentioned above, but some others won’t. This is the moment in which our role becomes important to help learners develop their learning skills, stimulate their intelligences and adjust our lessons to make the most out of their potential.

The “culture of interaction” is another topic tackled within this article, and I do agree with the author in that this generation has the strong necessity of exposing themselves, their passions and interests; it is the Internet the path that makes this urgency viable with only just "one click". This culture, if harnessed, can be a tremendous force in promoting learning.

"When these peoples surf the net, they typically participate in several activities at the same time.” This fragment reffers back to multi-tasking and I must say I have an ambiguous posture towards this topic. It is widely affirmed that this ability is aqcuired by new generations because of the way they access and digest information masively and overwhelmingly. However, it is also fair to say that this ability is somehow connected to maturational factors. Young learners have a more flexible schemata and they subsume information in a larger scale and with hardly any effort than older people, who do not have much "room" left in their shemas and their speed for processing data is fairly weaker. Two plausible theories for one topic, I guess it depends on how we want to see it.

“Another reality is that kids are not fond of pre-digested information, they want (and need) to learn by doing, where they check their own understanding trying things out! and this is how learning becomes experiential, and hence, meaningful and long-lasting.” When I read this passage form the article Brunner came to my mind immediately. We studied Brunner's ideas and theories in Psycholinguistics (a subject of our English teaching programme) and he coined the term "Scaffolding", by which adults or teachers (in our case) should guide the learner or child to discover things by himself. It is precisely this discovery that will have a meaningful outcome for the child and that experience is automatically engraved in his mind, resulting in a long-lasting learning. Having said that, we should consider devicing classroom activities based on problem-solving or simply tasks that pose a challenge to them and that they can resolve by trial and error.

These are some ideas that kept bouncing in my mind...

Hope you find them worthwhile.

Here's the link to the complete article if you feel like reading it! 

Embracing it!

While I was searching the web I bumped into this video and couldn't help but share it with you all.

What drag my attention instantly was that despite being a rather simple presentation, it definitely leaves a message concerning the use of technology inside the classroom. The reality is that the way in which human beings connect each other and exchange information is global, fast, and above all, enjoyable. So, when it comes to teaching and learning one should, at least, wonder if the lessons we prepare are not falling short of ideas or components.

This video also made me recall an instance when I was doing my observations last year, in which the teacher told students to work with an article that contained vocabulary they did not yet know and they were supposed to use the dictionaries from the library. Instead, they used their cell phones as dictionaries; this came as a shock to me since I was quite reluctanct to believe that they could be used as an actual tool to fulfill the activity proposed. My experience at secondary school was a bit different, I remeber being told off if I used my phone in class. Amazingly, I was proved wrong when I saw learners working energetically and enthusiastically looking up the words on the on-line dictionary. That got me into thinking it would have taken ages for them to look for each word in a book-like dictionary, and to tell the truth, the overall task would have been quite boring and time-cosuming as well. The teacher also gave them permission to do the activities proposed while listening to music in a low volume, so as not to disrupt the classroom environment. I considered this behavior to be disrespectful towards the teacher and not appropriate for an institutional context. We are institutionalized human beings because we need to learn certain rules and norms that enable us to live in a dignified and harmonic way; there are places in which we cannot and shouldn't do what we please.

This video illustrates the need for us teachers to articulate our practices by using technological devices together with the fact that we cannot expect to entertain learners and have their undivided attention with a piece of chalk and a blackboard on a daily basis. 

Hope this will get our brains in gear or at least plant the seed of curiosity ;)

Digital Natives Vs Digital Immigrants

To begin with, I would like to briefly describe two terms that have become widely spread: the so-called "Digital natives" and "Digital immigrants".

A Digital native is a person who was born during the introduction of digital technologies and interacts with them from an early age; as a result, they have a greater understanding of its concepts. Computers, e-mails, the Internet, cell-phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives. Consequently, the way they manipulate and process information has changed drastically to that of their predecessors.

At the other extreme, we find Digital immigrants who were born before the existence of digital technologies and adopted it to some extent later in life.

I reckon that this dichotomy poses a challenge to teachers who are trying to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the matter to make the most out of these new technologies for teaching purposes. The intended direction towards we are heading is an integrative approach, in which we incorporate these new developments as potencial tools that will foster and enrich learners' educational experiencies. Adopting an apprehensive position is not a viable choice; we cannot rely on traditional teaching as the only way out either. We are seeking to nurture our professional field and to provide high quality education, but above all, we are trying to reach our students, to engage them, and to help them grow up healthily without rejecting their worlds.

 I found Marc Prensky's article about Digital natives and Digital immigrants to be enthralling and quite straightforward on the matter and I would like to have a say and share my humble opinion:

It goes without saying that this concept of "digital natives" cannot , by any means, be overlooked. Personally, I believe it is essential for us, as future professionals, to become aware of the fact that the introduction of digital technologies has provoked drastic changes in the way our students process and deal with information. We shouldn't think of this situation as an impediment for our teaching practices, on the contrary, we should embrace it and make the most out of it, since it can simplify and make the teaching-learning process an incredibly exciting experience for both, teachers and students. Nevertheless, we should be conscientious with regards to its use.

I have selected a fragment from the article that I very much agree with:

"(...) today's teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. This doesn't mean changing the meaning of what is important, but it does mean going faster, less step-by-step (...)" I found this part of the article to be connected to what I mentioned above. This idea of trying to be updated to meet the increasing demands of our hectic world, together with the acknowledgement that things HAVE changed and the need to keep pace with these new developments.

And another one which I consider erroneous:

"(...) Digital immigrants don't believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the immigrants) can't (...)" I do not agree with this passage. I think people need to be less narrow-minded about certain issues; our students skills shouldn't be underestimated, and we should be aware that we are constantly bombarded with information; hence, the way of coping with things will be different. A clear example would be the ability to "multi-task", doing one or more things at the same time. The way in which students approach general data is significantly different from previous generations and the brain structure has changed as well, allowing learners to focus on more than one thing at a time.




If by any chance you want to have a look-see to the whole article here is the link to it:

http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm

 These images you see below epitomize the two concepts described in the article above: "Digital natives" and "Digital immigrants".

A pitiful depiction of a Digital Immigrant loosing his head over technology and the Digital native looking at him thinking: "poor  guy... he's utterly technologically impaired"

A clear example of how traditional teaching seems backward-looking compared to nowaday's reality. Reading, as a fine art, is also in decay.