Processed Digital What?

As a classroom teacher, I have assigned students many objective-driven tasks that required them to create presentations. Being reflective in this space, I cannot remember a time where I took them through a process exploring how to effectively craft a presentation outside of just showing models of the assignment. In many ways, my experience as a teacher emulates what I experienced as a student, which consisted of directions like “go make a poster and include these elements” versus “go make a poster, but before you do let’s discuss the how associated with making this poster come to life in an effective way.” After reading “Crafting Presentations,” Chapter 4 of the Hicks text, I recognize I have been assigning presentations awfully wrong. And to make matters even worse, in the age of Common Core and all the new digital teaching and learning platforms that exist, the directive language for me has just changed to “go make a Glogster or Prezi and include these elements.” In all actuality, I have never given thought to the process associated with crafting a presentation or the startling similarities that exist between process writing and process presentation design.

According to Hicks (2013), a student should go through a composition process that includes prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Hicks (2013) contends that students should be free to pre-write using paper and pencil, giving themselves non-negotiables like ideas for slide content and animation to carry into their drafting stage. Reading this made me consider the time frame (about a week, sometimes longer) we spend on just the prewriting and drafting stages of process writing in my English Language Arts classroom. I allocate the majority of the process time to these two stages, because if the work does not demonstrate understanding here, more than likely the final product will not either. Hicks (2013) states, “It is our task as teachers to help our digital writers see why and how designing slides is, indeed, a task about crafting that concerns them.” After reading the chapter, it has pushed me to really consider the value of those stages and how they should be equally valued when it comes to crafting digital presentations too.

Next, Hicks (2013) tackles the concepts of revising and editing presentations where he reinforces this idea of “stickiness,” which is “the ability of your presentation’s message to make a lasting impression.” I imaging how different presentations of yesterday would have been had I taught and reinforced ideas like simplicity, credibility, emotionality, and unpredictability when revising or editing digital presentations (Hicks, 2013, p. 73). What skills would my 400+ students proficiently carry to high school? The final steps discussed are publishing for students and assessing for teachings. These two steps represent a huge shift in thought in that publishing is about more than simply standing and reading from a screen and assessing is about more than a quantitative checklist and more so about feedback, quality, and delivery. How much more prepared would I students be if we shifted as educators with these ideas?

The presentation above details key takeaways concerning process digital presentations.

There are, however, two gaps I can foresee in terms of the idea of process digital presentations becoming a reality in classrooms across America: the teachers’ skill sets associated with digital presentation tools and the newly found perspective of using technology to engage and facilitate student learning. Some teacher struggle with using the technologies themselves, so how can we champion students to want to do more than stand and read from a templated PowerPoint presentation where they have included eight bullet points on every slide? The conversation regarding technology is an emerging conversation, where some teachers are excited for change and others are okay with the status quo. Almost every CITE Journal article I have read on the topic of technology in education discusses the importance of preservice teachers and current teachers having experience with technology as facilitators who are charged with keeping the minds and hearts of children engaged during 45, 60, and 90 minute class periods. According to Young, Long, and Myers (2010), “Rapidly developing new technologies are changing the ways through which students read and write, as well as affecting the ways in which text is conceived, created, manipulated, and understood.” This shows there is firm grasp associated with the purpose of why these technologies exist.

However, the conversation is still anchored in how we can use these technologies to facilitate teacher-led learning experiences versus how we can instruct students to use these technologies to teach each other. Yancey (2009) states “meaning is created through the interaction between visual and verbal resources,” and “the role of audience and the social aspect of writing” have become key components of digital writing and crafting tools of today. There is real power in knowing this shift in thinking about literacy, but even more power in helping to make this shift more student-led by equipping students with the know-how to effectively use the tools.

This is an interesting video that can help preservice and veteran

teachers begin to develop a working knowledge of the

"what to dos/what not to dos" when it comes to digital presentations.

I am interested to know if you have every consider crafting presentations as being synonymous with crafting process writing. I am also curious about what you think it will take to get teacher who are uncomfortable with technology comfortable enough to help equip their students for effective usage. Lastly, I am sharing a few resources down below for people interested in starting this conversation with teachers and students in your respective schools. Please share your thoughts and takeaways below. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thinking Outside the Slide--Youtube

Making Better PowerPoint Presentations--Vanderbilt University

Resources

Hicks, T. (2013). Crafting digital writing: Composing texts across media and genres. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

How to Avoid Death By PowerPoint [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo

Yancey, K. B. (2009). Writing in the 21st century: A report from the National Council of Teachers of English. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Young, C. A., Long, S., & Myers, J. (2010). Editorial: Enhancing english language arts education with digital video. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/