Visual Presentation Assignment

In Research & Lit, the kids write their junior research paper, and they also give a presentation of their findings to the class in lieu of a final exam. Since some folks in the department were interested in using this kind of assignment in their classes, I'm posting the assignment sheet for others to critique, borrow, adapt, etc.

Right now, I like it quite a lot, but I think I could improve on it. I want to better capture the sense of how important and meaningful it is to develop ideas through the examination of evidence and then to own those ideas by presenting them to a group of intellectuals in written form and in person. The world is full enough of bad Powerpoint already, and I want my kids to be able to wow people with their insight and poise.


Research & Literature
Final Assessment: Visual Presentation

Your culminating activity for Research & Literature will be to synthesize what you've learned in your research into a visual presentation which you will present to the class during the exam period. Think of your presentation as your opportunity to demonstrate all of the knowledge you gained about your topic by discussing the most compelling aspects of your research paper to the class.

You will:
• Create a visual presentation using the format of your choice (e.g., Prezi, Powerpoint, Keynote, etc.) or another visual medium, provided you clear it with me in advance.
• Include: a title slide, at least one slide per major section of your paper, and a concluding slide that summarizes your exploration. You should also include a works cited slide to cite any sources cited in the presentation and any visuals that you use.  You should have a maximum of 12 slides.
• Avoid text-heavy slides. You will not read your slides to us, but use the slides as talking points. In general, the less text you use, the more punch it has.
• Create a presentation that demonstrates your expertise with your topic.
• Find images that present information or illuminate your topic for every slide. Avoid clip art or distracting audio. Emblematic quotes can be pertinent but should not be overused.
• Submit your final project to me by e-mail.

An excellent presentation will:
• Present both your perspective and the most relevant information you gathered in your research.
• Clearly synthesize the scope of the argument yet focus on only the salient points.
• Seamlessly use the visual medium to aid audience understanding.
• Use succinct, eloquent, clear, and varied language.
• Be free of mechanical or grammatical errors.
• Focus the class efficiently.
• Demonstrate thorough rehearsal of the material.
• Move through the material logically and with smooth transitions between sections.
• Demonstrate professionalism both in the quality of the slides and in the demeanor of the presenter.
• Convince us of the merits of your perspective and the reliability of your research.
• Conclude efficiently.

A nation engaged in real reform?

Finland's Educational Success? The Anti-Tiger Mother Approach

Apparently, Finland's educational system focuses on developing teacher talent with competitive salaries and programs, and then they get out of the way. They don't pretend standardized testing is the be-all and end-all of teacher performance measurement, and they don't track kids. Sound familiar?

My favorite quote? Glad you asked:

You don't buy a dog and bark for it," says Dan MacIsaac, a specialist in physics-teacher education at the State University of New York at Buffalo who visited Finland for two months. "In the U.S., they treat teachers like pizza delivery boys and then do efficiency studies on how well they deliver the pizza."

One caveat: there's a little bit of an apples and oranges problem when you compare a nation like Finland to the US. Our problems are very different than theirs, and they have an across-the-board investment in education that makes their adult population pretty different than ours. So not everything Finland does for their kids is automatically good or automatically something that would work here. But there's certainly some food for thought.

Conferencing

The English Department put together a few videos of our teachers' conferences with students. It's one thing to hear that the English Department at Staples is built around the idea of revision and one-on-one conferences with students over their papers, but it's quite another to see it in action. Having time to work closely with a student really allows you to troubleshoot in a very particular, specific way. Even more importantly, it allows you to highlight students successes and strengths so they can branch out and expand. There were three videos shown to the Board of Education at their April 4 meeting, and I'm including them here.

Pilot Project Status Update

At our department meeting yesterday, Kristin and I gave everyone a quick update on our work and our aspirations. We've got a lot of balls in the air —a lot of plates spinning on dowels? a lot of pans on the fire? a lot of taxis running out of our dispatch hub? a lot of metaphors for this particular situation?—but we focused on three areas: the changes we're making to assignments to foster authenticity in the work; the changes we're making to class structure in order to foster intellectual exchange; and the broader reforms we're looking at for the school as a whole.

To keep things fresh, I used Prezi and excerpted bits and pieces from our blogs and from of my students' blogs. The kids' blogs show a brief intellectual exchange between students developing their own paper topics for J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories. For me, this is a quintessential example of a way to take a useful, time-tested, traditional assignment—the analytical paper—and give it greater authenticity by having kids develop their own topics through intellectual exchange with other students. Harry takes his ideas, which are still a bit unformed, and compares them to Emily's. Her thinking sparks him in a new direction, and he develops an idea that goes quite a bit deeper. Emily, meanwhile, is engaging in the same process with Bridget's thoughts, and the chain continues on beyond the little window I've given you here.

Then, we moved on to some thoughts about broader reform sparked by our visit to the Ross School. We're still engaging in the tough questions about integrating project-based learning and assessment while not losing the strengths we already have. If you work from the assumption that the kids' curricular year is already packed to the gills with useful stuff, it becomes quite a challenge to decide what can be streamlined or cut in favor of something new and potentially better. The better you're doing, the less easy it is to pick something to cut or to find more time for something innovative.