Photo manipulated from geralt.
This question has been on my mind ever since I sat in on Nate M.'s 9th grade English class. That afternoon he prepped his students for their upcoming in-class presentations focusing both on traditional Japanese haiku artists, as well as a few of the student's own original haiku.
To be completely clear, Nate's approach looked good. Students would demonstrate their knowledge of the subject matter, show artifacts of their own creations in the content area, and touch on the communication standards through the in-class presentations. To me, this is a solid incorporation of multiple strands that English/Language Arts Standards hopes to accomplish, and by putting the student in front of the class, Nate has the added benefit of being able to analyze and provide feedback on the skill and content areas right there in class.
The problem was this particular group of ninth grade boys. How do we keep these boys engaged in the content of the presentation? How can we help them to see the benefit of listening rather than tuning out, or worse, negatively influencing the presentation? Is it even possible to hope for such a thing, or is the better course of action to sit near these boys throughout the class period?
I am going to admit right now that I have yet to find the perfect answer for this question. Instead, I would like to help generate some ideas (which I am hoping some will do via commenting on this post) by presenting a few overall mechanisms that can be tinkered with to enhance the presentation experience. Keep in mind, also, that the ideas below are in addition to techniques that the presenter must learn, practice and execute, e.g. elocution, audience interaction, use of humor, etc.
- Presentation Tool
Changing the presentation tool to allow for more multimedia interaction and different ways of displaying information (check out http://www.tiki-toki.com/) has the potential through novelty to make the presentation more engaging. - Commenting/Backchanneling
Students could backchannel during the presentation (https://todaysmeet.com/) to offer feedback, what they found most interesting, what they would like to know more about, what they will take away from the presentation. If the class used Google Presentation, you may consider allowing students to use the chat function during the presentation to express their thoughts. The same could be done with TweetDeck and Twitter. - Presenter-created Polls/Quizzes
You could require each presentation individual/group to create a mini-quiz using Google Forms or PollEverywhere to gauge the audience's grasp of key concepts. Both these tools I mention could be displayed as the audience answers questions, thereby adding engagement to the process. - Peer-reviewing/Critiquing
A few students for each presentation could evaluate the presenter's presentation using the presentation rubric (works especially well if students have helped in creating the presentation's rubric). This task could rotate through the class with each presentation. Similarly, if you would like to avoid the critique aspect of this activity, instead have a rotating group of students take "class notes" for anyone who missed the presentations, or in the event of a teacher assessment pulled from the student presentations.
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