“Often mind-numbing, the reality that students barely do any
research below the surface, then copy and paste big chunks of text and images
onto a series of preformatted slides and regurgitate them in front of a class
of their bored peers should make any educator angry” (Hicks, 2013).
Yes, this does make educators
angry, but what has anyone done about it? The presentation below briefly outlines some
steps to creating an effective presentation using the guidelines presented in
the text. The steps include 1) Prewriting/Drafting, 2) Revising/Editing, and 3)
Publishing/Assessing.
Are all of these important? Who
really prewrites anyway? These are
legitimate questions that we as educators should be addressing in the
classroom. The pre-writing stage is often
overlooked by students because they do not understand the importance. Educators often do not require any sort of
pre-writing to be handed in, so why not just skip it? Creating an effective presentation in the
classroom revolves around the prewriting/drafting stage. Modeling this process would actually teach
students how to compose their own effective presentation by thinking about
their ideas, what information to gather, and how to organize. Without this instruction, students who know
they will be creating a presentation will go straight to designing, skipping the
research and thought of purpose for their presentation.
So where to begin? Pencil and paper. Just like writing an essay, students should
jot down ideas and get their thoughts organized before they start creating
their presentation. Prewriting Practices is an article I found that provides multiple prewriting strategies and
techniques that teachers can use for students throughout lessons to ensure
practice and get students in the habit of prewriting. When pre-writing specifically for a
presentation, remind students to think about not only on information they’ll
provide, but also the way in which they will present that information; they
should get an idea of what tool they would like to use to present such as
PowerPoint, Prezi, or Glogster, etc. Then the students can begin to let their
thoughts flow on what types of media to use alongside the information they have
gathered.
Students also need to understand
that “Spending too much time on the design takes away from the overall effect
of delivering the message” (Hicks, 2013).
While the design is very important, students can become consumed with
the way their presentation looks and spend less time researching the
information that will be provided. On
the topic of design, educators should teach students how to properly design a
presentation during the prewriting/drafting stage. Students need to know that using a template,
multiple fonts, and lots of animation does not make a presentation great. Rather creating a new template, using
complimentary fonts, and few transitions/animations is a better route but should
focus on the main idea and ensure aesthetic appeal. The presentation above lists some other
prewriting/drafting points that should be covered when students create a
presentation.
As educators in the current shift
into the digital world, these are things we can be teaching students on how to create these effective presentations
rather than expecting them to already know how.
Now I know what you’re thinking, when will you ever have time to teach prewriting
for presentations on top of all the other content standards and information you
are expected to cover? I have an idea. After covering a topic/lesson, rather than
doing some sort of review game, walk through creating a presentation on the
particular information the students just learned. Obviously, this would not be done after every
single lesson or topic, but could be done a few times at the beginning of the
year using the modeling strategy, I do-We do-You do. This would show students the in-depth thought
process that takes place behind a good presentation, specifically focusing the
prewriting/drafting stage.
Sources:
Hicks, T. (2013). Crafting digital writing: Composing texts across media and genres. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
