Chris Wondra . com

I’m one of those kind of guys constantly thinking about growth, goals and change. You know, personal development stuff. So it’s safe to say that I have quite a few goals–some of them lofty (at least from where I’m sitting now )

These goals fall into all kinds of different categories so that hopefully, if I focus and make progress toward all of them, I’m growing in sort of a balanced well-rounded way. That’s the idea anyway.

One of my major professional goals this school year is to bring more technology into my classroom and my teaching. I have a number of reasons for wanting to do this (including better learning), but (selfishly) one of the biggest is simply to push my own technical literacy and communication skills.

Anyway, we’re five weeks into the school year now so I thought I might share a few of the things I’ve found, used, and have turned out to work surprisingly well.

Just so you understand, by way of logistics, the visual applications I share by hooking my laptop up to a TV. It’s right next to my desk and so is the chord, so all I do is (literally) plug and play.

Slide Shows

The idea here is to show students excellent examples of slide shows that can stand alone without a speaker–then of course have students attempt to create there own. Why? It’s great practice organizing and supporting ideas.

Shift Happens is one of those great examples. You can find it, and more like it, at slideshare.net. The link is to their page of contest winners–so it’s sort of the best of the best. Few of them, however, are related directly to school and many are marketplace oriented, but they still make great examples for modeling.

Did you flip through the slides? Pretty cool, huh. If you thought that was something, follow the slideshare link above, download the powerpoint, add some music (this song works great) set it up to run 4 seconds per slide and have your class, or your staff, or your school board, or your legislative body watch it. I guarantee you’ll make an impression.

Slide shows are great, students can learn a lot creating them, and ultimately the ideas and their organization are the most important thing, but something I stress to my students is that if you can’t grab and hold your audience’s attention, nobody’s going to . . .um . . .pay any attention.

Music

Music is one of those things that can really put some kick into a presentation. Especially a slide show. Project Playlist is a great collection of free music that students can use during their slide shows.

And, yes, it is totally legal. On their “about” page, Project Playlist explains it this way:

Projectplaylist.com is an information location tool similar to Google® and Yahoo!® but devoted entirely to the world of music. Our purpose is to help you find and enjoy music legally throughout the web in the same way that other search engines help you find webpages, images, and other media,

It’s like a library of songs, compositions, and musical arrangements by hundreds (if not thousands) of artists and composers past and present. Students can’t download or save the music, but–if they can handle (and if the assignment allows) starting a presentation by pushing “play” in one application (the website) and then quickly switching to another application window (Powerpoint for example)–it’s an easy way to add punch to a slide show.

This might sound like a hassle, but if you have a good internet connection, an organized presenter, and a good sound system, this is an option that can really enhance a presentation–and open up a world of musical options that your students might otherwise not have.

Teacher Warning: The challenge for the teacher now really becomes: do kids understand the music’s purpose? Many will now get so wrapped up in “rocking out” that they’ll forget the tune is there for enhancing a presentation by grabbing attention, injecting energy or setting a tone. It should match the theme and ideas of the visual part–not distract from it. Not overshadow it. Be careful using songs with lyrics.

I’d like to give a shout out to Dan P (a student of mine this year), who introduced me to this cool site, and this rockin’ song by using both in his entertaining and innovative presentation the other day.

Interestingly, according to Dr. Ellen Weber, “. . .rhythms can induce enzymes in the brain and can add well being … or make you punchy … during a project.”
Read what she has to say about music’s effect on the brain or how music can play a part in increased consentration and learning. Check out these two infomative articles at Brain Based Business:

Baroque Music Helps You Focus and

>Whistlin’ While You Work

Flash Movies

The applications above are about presentations–information output. But what about input? What about listening skills? I do a number of things consistently throughout the year geared to help students become better listeners or better consumers of information. This next web site fits nicely into that toolbox.

Each year Citizens for Global Solutions puts on a Flash Movie Contest and makes the finalists creations available for the enjoyment of the masses. If you check it out, it’s pretty clear what their mission is, and I personally think it’s great. But from a Language Arts/listening perspective, I can now easily show a short flash movie (usually 2-5 minutes) and then have students respond to it in a number of different ways. For example I can have them:

• Create a title
• Describe what they saw paragraph form
• Summarize what they saw in bulleted form
• Retell the movie by creating a storyboard
• Organize the story into a mind-map
• Summarize the message or moral of the movie

And that’s just the start. What I like about these is that they are so short. They’re great for quick transition exercises to break up or re-energize–you know, change of pace stuff.

And they’re interesting from from a listening perspective because there aren’t any words. The entire message is communicated via images (and maybe a few sound effects). So it’s like listening with your eyes.

GlobalSolutions.org has been doing this for two years now so:

Here’s the link to the 2007 contest finalists, and here is 2006.

Background Flash

Now I haven’t exactly used these next two links in any specific lessons, but one thing I’ve found from a class management perspective is that playing a slide or flash presentation during work time, or when students are entering the room draws their attention before other perhaps less constructive distractions can.

For example, at the start of the year I ran a simple slide show of pictures from my summer vacation to Denmark. What I found is it wasn’t really a distraction, and it seemed to even spark some interesting class conversations.

Along those lines I found a couple of pretty good flash presentations that run well for that sort of thing. I haven’t had students actually “Do” anything with them, but, like I said, a bit of background music and visual stimulation has so far seemed to have a beneficial effect–if only from a mood setting perspective.

So if you are inclined, try these two on for size:

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun,

The 5.75 Questions You’ve Been Avoiding.

That’s it for now. There are a few other web applications I’ve found but haven’t actually used yet. I’ll share those with you as soon as I have a little more experience with them. Or at least have a better idea of how to use them.

When it comes to bringing technology into the classroom, there is definitely a learning curve for both the students and the teacher. But if your willing to learn as you go, I have to tell you, once you get into it. . .

Shift Happens

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