Weekly Geekly
April 16, 2018
Missing Chromebook at LTHS-Southwestern #2
Folks to Follow- The Cult of Pedagogy
In a field where it it is sometimes difficult to balance realism with optimism, Jennifer Gonzalez seems to accomplish the feat while thoroughly delving into current topics and trends.
Oh, and you can follow her on Twitter at @cultofpedagogy too AND I am pretty sure just about every other social media site. Visit her website for all the links!
Reminder- When students use Chromebooks!!
Remember, on a chromebook, students can look in the LTHS Bookmarks folder in their browser and find the checkout form. On an ipad, there is an icon that looks like an app that links directly to the form. On a PC- you will need to direct students to bit.ly/LTHScheckout. CTE students should simply be directed to bit.ly/CTEcheckout for any device.
We are also starting to see more issues with carts being returned (or not returned, actually), with carts coming in with unplugged laptops, wires a mess, etc. Be sure to take the time to have the kids take care with the equipment. When we don't take care of the equipment it will not last.
Tis the season for kids to start getting really careless with our equipment. Thank you for your help preventing loss!
How are presentations looking in your class?
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As a part of preparing our students for the world they are headed into, we should teach them how to make GOOD presentations. Slides full of text = BAD presentations!
Tips for most presentations:
- Use as little text as possible- tell us what we should to know
- No sentences (or nearly sentences), unless it's a quote- if we read it, we won't remember any of it
- Make images as large as possible
- Use a single large image instead of multiple small ones
- If using note cards, they should be in bullet point format and not scripted
- PRACTICE!!!!
Resources:
§ Echo Rivera's You. Yes, you. You're using too much text on your slides
§ Death by PowerPoint presentation
§ Lifewire's How to Lose an Audience and 10 Ways to Get Them Back
§ Lifehack's 6 Secrets of Bad Presentations and How to Avoid Them
§ RenderForest's 10 Dos and Don'ts for an Effective Presentation
§ Edutopia's 8 Tips to Power-up your Classroom Presentations
§ Video: How to Give an Awesome Presentation
For Teachers:
To make it easier to grade, have students create and turn in 2 products:
1. a Google Slides presentation (based on the tips above) that will be presented live in class, and
2. a Google Doc that includes all of the content, research, sources, etc. that you're looking for in the rubric. You can quickly grade the content from that Google Doc and the audience won't be bored to tears with a bad classroom presentation.
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I'm going to add another tip of my own- if you can break free of Google Slides then try out some of the other presentation tools available out there. Need some help? I can put together a menu of sorts for your kiddos! You can still collect the student evidence separately so the presentation is clean and engaging. And if you are still using PowerPoint...I'm not sure I want to know. I might have to stage an intervention.