A Collaborative Project – Improving Presentations

This semester Darin Janssen and I partnered with Mr. Park from Mortlach School in Mortlach, SK on a collaborative project. We set out to help Mr. Park’s students create better presentations using collaborative tools. We taught an online lesson and gave the students a brief introduction to some slide presentation design basics. We used WiZiQ to teach the lesson and GoogleDocs to view and provide feedback on student presentations. Check out the Prezi (see below) that Darin and I created as a way of reflecting on our project. It was a great learning experience and provided us with an excellent opportunity to teach online and see what it’s like to truly collaborate. A big thank you goes out to Mr. Park for allowing us to work with his class and helping us out along the way. I recommend viewing the Prezi in fullscreen for the full effect.

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Tools I am exploring this month…

This month I am specifically spending a lot of time exploring a couple of tech tools in preparation for an online lesson I will be teaching in my ECMP 455 class. The tools I have chosen are Google Wave and Prezi. While I have briefly used each of these tools before, I plan to gain a better understanding of how to use them effectively both in and out of the classroom. Specifically, with Prezi I want to look at how to make an effective presentation as there are so many more options in Prezi than there are in tools such as powerpoint. With Google Wave I want to see what exactly it can do, if there is a practical use for it in teaching and learning or if it is just an over-hyped web tool.

Below is a video which gives a brief introduction to the idea of Google Wave…

As I continue to explore I would like to connect with people who are currently using Google Wave as it seems most of my contacts have signed up but are not active. My username is mcfarljo@googlewave.com so feel free to add me or leave your username in the contacts section. Also, feel free to direct me towards any well done Prezi presentations that you have discovered or created.