After the initial recording session, the 8th graders reviewed their videos while making notes about their presentation skills. Whether it was poor eye contact, low voice output or killer smiles, the students found themselves facing undeniable evidence of their weaknesses and strengths as public speakers.

We could have used a camcorder and had the students take turns presenting but this would mean taking time to transfer footage from the camera to each student’s laptop. Students would also spend even more time sitting and watching classmates present when they could practice themselves and get immediate evidence of their progress. While we do set aside time for whole grade practice sessions, we are hoping that our version of the valuable technique of videotaping presentations will help our many ESL students not only feel more comfortable in their speaking but will push them to practice more on their own.

A coinciding use of the MacBooks is taking place in our 7th grade Language Arts class where Thomas Perkins has his students constructing a presentation skills rubric. The students first worked to create the rubric on paper. Now they are “laptop” videotaping themselves presenting for each of the criteria at the different score levels. Score a “4 out of 4” on the teaching rubric for Thomas in having his students engaging and learning about presentation skills by using thinking skills at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Thomas also gets bonus points for using technology to support and enhance the learning.

This was first posted at U Tech Tips.

Using good design techniques was one of the themes that ran through our ICL curriculum at my previous school. Both the library media specialist and myself as the instructional technologist worked to include the teaching of design techniques in any lessons that involved student generated projects. A big part of our ICL focus was on how our students communicate their learning. In today’s world where advertisers and social networking sites can overwhelm our eyes and ears with information, it is important to challenge our students to analyze the design of the delivery systems and to think how they can be improved.

We partnered with teachers in curriculum meetings to build a design component into the rubrics for the common assessments. This insures that the design lesson will be taught and assessed. Here is an example found in a 5th grade science unit.

As I worked my way through the recent K12 Online Conference, I found a presentation dedicated to teaching design in our schools. The author is Dean Shareski. Think about visiting the conference page and downloading his presentation.