Experiencing Group - Serve up Some Prezi

Oh presentations, those wonderful detailed reports done with sweaty palms, stuttering voices and hopes and prayers completed in full public view. As a teacher, this is your life, your passion. Presentations become routine and far less important as an act than as a source of information; a skill of "second nature" if you will; even if the nervous energy doesn't necessarily disappear in all situations regardless of how experienced you become.

The basis for any good presentation is the research of the information behind its content, and what better way to come upon the gold mine than to allow the old adage "many hands make light work" to come to fruition. During our latest group presentation I found our subject to be the very theme of the entire product of our research into the question of classroom collaboration. Practicing what we preached went exactly as we had hoped.

Fitted with a group of individuals that were willing to participate and were dedicated to the success of the final product I found myself relatively relieved that my very weakness in writing would be helped along by those who were experienced in it. Research papers have never been my strong suit, try as I may, so to have others fill in that gap and be able to be helpful with the skills I did possess was the best of both worlds. While I did feel a little guilty about leaving the three of them to do the research writing on their own as far as content, when it finally came time to edit and give the three of them a framework and uniform voice for all their hard work I was more than willing to be able to contribute my own skills into the project. A thesis, a smooth paper voice, and opening and conclusion paragraphs to frame their beautifully done content proved to be more work than I imagined, but I was happy to do it.

Overall our project was a big success. We produced a collaborative research paper in which everyone was a participant despite busy schedules and varying distance from campus; a very well-designed Prezi presentation aide; and a verbal class presentation that had an expert in each sub focus area of the paper to present it fully and with good knowledge of the content. A very good result that comes from working with a great group of individuals.

Source of the Day:

A good example video of collaboration at work with fellow teachers. Though it might feel a bit forced at first, the examples they show of the benefits of working in a group together to support both student and teacher alike is a great example of how collaboration can begin to work at its finest!






 Google SketchUp:  A great (and free!) downloadable program from Google. This program allows the building of 3-D shapes on the computer by pushing, pulling, dragging and manipulating your way through the process. This is a simplified geometric drafting program that just about anyone can use, and the online video and text tutorials can fill in the rest of the knowledge gaps. 

This program tends to come in very handy in the art education classroom as a way to teach students perspective. Each student learns the basics of using the program and then designs a house to their liking out of the simplified shapes. These are then printed out for the students to use as a guide to reproduce their buildings on a separate sheet of paper using rulers, pencils, and vanishing points.


A very important aide to teach a very difficult concept for younger students.