PowerPoint Alternatives

Many teachers use presentations in their classrooms as a way for students to research and present information to their classmates. The most popular form of presenting this information is either PowerPoint or posters. The problem is these are usually the only two mediums students use and many don’t even use them well. There are  alternatives to PowerPoint and posters out there for students to use. I recently had two students think outside the box and created a fake MySpace page for a deceased physicist using PowerPoint (Niels Bohr MySpace). What a creative way to show information! There are other alternatives such as videos, ScreenCast, VoiceCast, Jing, and as mentioned before, Scratch for younger students.

Secondly, students are not being taught how to create good presentations. How many PowerPoints have teachers seen where there are 20 animated GIF’s jumping around bright yellow font that is difficult to read and two paragraphs of text copied from Wikipedia. As teachers, our job is to not only teach research skills and public speaking skills, but also how to properly use technology to present information. Let’s think outside the box and give our students more options than the traditional ones. They have imaginations that get used less and less the further they progress in school. Many of them will be asked to be creative in the work force and college, they need to be practicing those skills in all their high school classes.

Wikis In Science Classrooms

Wiki technology provides opportunities for collaboration around a common topic or subject with unlimited individuals contributing to a page. While wikis such as Wikipedia have been criticized by some as unreliable, many others see the potential of this addition to the Web 2.0. Anyone can edit it and contribute their own knowledge to a wiki. Some argue that wikis allow contributors to add whatever they want, right or wrong, the beauty is that another contributor can correct it. Wikis are self-policing.

Science has been doing this for quite awhile although not as streamlined and accessible as a wiki. When a research article is published in a journal such as “Nature”, the methods and results are published so that other scientists can recreate the experiment to check its validity. An experiment’s conclusions are invalid if they cannot be replicated. This is a foundational component of science. Bad research is quickly identified and good research is validated and usually  improved.

A purpose of the classroom is to prepare students for the work force. Students who want to enter a scientific field need to gain experience having their work critiqued by others. A wiki would allow students to post their results from an experiment and have other students try to replicate their experiment. A discussion could then begin between the two groups about necessary changes to the experiment.

Wikis can also be useful for teachers. I found this wiki using a quick Google search for “physics wiki”. It provides teachers with labs for different physics units. Teachers can discuss what worked in the lab, how they changed it, and how to extend it.

As our world becomes smaller, collaboration is going to play a larger role in our jobs. We will not only be working together with people in the same building but across the world. Wikis provide students with the opportunity to practice the skills necessary to be a contributing member of the global community. They have to be responsible for the content they put up and thoughtful about the feedback they provide to others. This is a skill we can begin developing in schools using wikis.

Socially Constructed Learning

The article “Minds on Fire” suggests that traditional idea of lecture-based learning needs to be re-thought given the current technological advances. Learning needs to be viewed as participation in a community which allows students to acquire knowledge  when the need arises. This new approach to learning is not so new as many teachers have used labs and projects to encourage student interaction but not necessarily using the internet. Let me provide an example of how the web 2.0 of blogs and Facebook has opened up new learning opportunities.

As a young high school running coach, I don’t have much knowledge when it comes to planning running workouts, injury prevention and various the components which go into coaching a cross country or track team. Books, websites and videos have provided me with information but it is difficult for me to apply it to my particular situation. Unfortunately, I am the only distance running coach in my school so the opportunities for collaboration are few. The best resource I have found so far is a blog by professional running coach, Jay Johnson. Jay posts his workouts, strength routines and everything else that goes into training his runners on his blog. On top of that, he engages in dialogue through the comment section, direct email and Twitter with other athletes and coaches around the country. Being able to participate in this dialogue and email Coach Jay has helped me grow immensely as a coach. I can get affirmation and guidance from him and other coaches without ever meeting them face to face. Jay uses a variety of mediums such as slide presentations, online videos as well as the blog and Twitter mentioned above.

In a high school science classroom, I foresee this new approach to learning helping in areas such as using equations to solve story problems. One of the biggest problems students have in physics is knowing when to use which equation and how. There are a lot of tricks and exceptions in physics which make this a difficult process. I demonstrate these problems in class but students usually write down a few steps and the answer without the explanation. If I uploaded a few example problems to a website using VoiceThread, students could have that as a resource. Students could also be required to write and solve their own story problems and then critique someone else’s. I could monitor these discussions and provide information or clarity when needed.

Socially constructed learning involves learning in an online or physical community. Information is provided when it is needed and learning is achieved through collaboration. By using blogs, VoiceThreads and other media, learning can take place in a guided environment outside of the classroom and at the student’s own pace.

Coach Jay Johnson