You in four

Thanks to Cool Cat Teacher and the Flat Class Project I had the chance to come across a wonderful video on how to make your presentations stand out by Dean Shareski. The beauty of this is that it practices what it preaches by incorporating the advice given on originality, simplicity etc. . I have already used it once with one of my private students in order to get her started on her project (I'll link to it later when it's completed).

However, Dean mentioned an idea that the University of Chicago School of Business has introduced recently into its admission procedure. Basically, students have to submit,

"four slides or less, please provide readers with content that captures who you are."

I thought that this would be an excellent project for students wishing to start off their blogs. The university suggests Powerpoint or something similar. I would also recommend Comeeko.com which is a site that allows you to make comic strips using your own photos/images.

EFL/ESL and Google Docs

Although internet access at school for students is once again a non-starter, I have been thinking about how I could use the web with my private students who have internet access at home or perhaps those students at the school who want to do some extra practice.

As well as teaching them the basics of how to set up their own email/chat/Skype and blog accounts, I thought it might be a good opportunity to get them to collaborate on projects via the net. Taking as my inspiration the Flat Classroom Project I will try to get students, who live scattered throughout the city, to create something using Google Docs.

As lessons haven't really started yet this is not going to happen soon. However, I would like them to make their own presentation using Thessaloniki as a basic theme. One idea is that students each choose one aspect of the city to write about. This is then turned into a slide presentation complete with photos, video, text and voice other. Later on students take turns to proof read and correct the others work. Finally, the presentation is posted on all our blogs.

I think a good example of how slideshows can be used is to be found in the Magnum Photos site (click here).

I'm still in the process of working out the technical details and, of course selling the idea to the students and parents is going to be difficult as well. Yet I see a gradual opening up of attitudes as internet use becomes more widespread.