13. PowerPoints Day 2
February 10, 2010 at 4:26 PM Sue Boudreau 1 comment
A second rather grueling day of kids presenting their TAP powerpoints. It’s going painfully slowly. It takes 5 minutes per student MINIMUM, no way round that I can find.
It’s really important to reduce wait time for getting up their powerpoints. Best is on flash drive. Second best is on a cd. Third is downloaded from their e mail onto the school student server. Fall back is printed pages for projection with our document camera. This option is sometimes the only way for dealing with the Mac/PC photo compatability problems.
IS IT WORTH IT? The big question.
Well, yes we think. Karen and I reminded ourselves that we really do want kids to see the connections between the problems in the world and the middle school science curriculum. And the wide range of problems out there. But do they remember anything worthwhile from each other’s presentations? We’re having them each write “What surprised me about ____?” from each presentation. The “Better Cause and Effect Web” activity that follows will help us evaluate both their enthusiasm and engagement with world problems AND what they learned from each other. So stay tuned. We’ll be getting there by Wednesday of next week.
The quality of their work is better than last year, yay, we learned something 🙂 But still have a few that don’t get the central issue and phrase stuff in a very passive way. I always finish by asking “But tell us why YOU care about this issue.” and then get the best sound bite of the presenatation.
Need to be careful with how and when to give feedback to the presenters. Too much teacher input during makes them nervous, duh, and slows the process down. I have to talk LESS and let kids talk MORE. A concept I’m still struggling with 26 years in to the profession!
Based on our experiences this year, we’ve tweaked the rubric and ppt guidelines for next and will upload it in the next day or so.
Forgive the slightly rushed sound, that’s because it is! Have a great evening, off to a writer’s conference in Sebastopol to learn how to write non fiction for kids….
Sue
Entry filed under: TAP Curriculum.
Take Action Science Project Curriculum Blog 
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Karen Snelson | February 10, 2010 at 5:27 PM
Kids are presenting their power points. I see they are already thinking about what action to take. A few were really passionare about their issue. The Earthquake in Haiti is horrendous. and they want to get to work right away. Some found great sources for information on marine fisheries & marine pollution.
I wonder how I can keep track of these cool resources.
This is going slower and I want to keep the momentum going but having trouble booking computers for the next step. So we are alternately doing genetics.
Should wrap it up tomorrow. Karen
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