As a classroom teacher, I almost never (if ever) give complete presentations to my students. We do all sorts of visual image type stuff, ranging from SmartBoard slides:
The slide above is a journal prompt taken from the work of Dr. Jane Healy
The two pictures were swiped from Creative Commons
I've used the journal prompt for years, though this year was the first I thought to match it with pictures. The pictures definitely generated a lot of discussion. I spent a bit of time searching for the pictures I wanted, though I wasn't sure what I was looking for at the beginning. I settled on the to pictures mostly because neither one was at the top of the search list, and both capture the essence of the question without directing the conversation. Nobody talked about floating above their bed or being a hollowed-out bronze statue.
Another visual based activity I've done for the first time is an awesome activity that my wonderful colleague Robin put together. Here is a student's example.
So, I've definitely played around more and more with the idea of picking a few images carefully to represent my "message" and like the idea of "less is more." With those concepts in my, I dug up a presentation I have the MS humanities department at the end of last school year. On Saturday, 26 September, I worked with two colleagues to revise the presentation.
While I don't give presentations to students, I do give them to colleagues and parents from time to time. I think creating a slick, image-intense presentation will benefit when I'm explaining to my parent group what the school year will be all about. Of course most don't want to be burdened with slide after slide of edu-jargon. However, I now realize that a few powerful images will help capture the main ideas and will hopefully leave parents with a strong impression of what they can expect for the school year.
Still a work in progress, but below is the revisions we made to the original PowerPoint.
There is a link to it here
Fantastic! I love the visuals in your parent presentation! (The only thing that's missing is image credits). The integration of the Wordle at the beginning is a great idea. I also love using the visuals as prompts for journal writing and reflection. Would you say that the conversation this year was different with the introduction of the pictures? Was it worth it?
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