I recently listened to the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast #110, which focused on teaching students good presentation skills. Joyce Valenza pointed to their efforts to get students to think about their message and the importance of using images over text, whether one uses Powerpoint/Keynote, video, PhotoStory, etc.

This reminded me of an exercise that our 7th-grade students did this past year. They were prompted to choose an emotion to then use images and music to express. They could use any digital delivery tool as the focus would be on the message and the audience understanding the depicted emotion. The students used GarageBand to create their own music and ArtRage to draw the final slide that named the emotion.

 

It was a starter assignment to get the students thinking about improving the design of their presentations and preparing them for upcoming projects where they would take their persuasive, position, and autobiographical essays and create image and musically rich interpretations of each.

With almost all of the 7th graders being ESL learners, this was an essential music and visual literacy learning opportunity. Look at an abbreviated version of a student’s video on sadness.

Note: Also posted at U Tech Tips