I believe that this is a conversation we should be having, mainly because our public system is failing kids. It is failing some kids completely, and I feel that it is failing all kids at least a little bit. Also, I am in the midst of deciding how to proceed with my own education career – something I have time to do because my precious babes now spend the majority of their time in school. It is a good time for me to think this through.
I had the good fortune to have some very intense experiences as a BEd student, that have helped to form my opinions about public vs private.
Late in my BEd, I was lucky to be placed in a school where the regular teacher had a nervous breakdown. More typically, a placement would be supervised by the classroom teacher who would help maintain class control and could step-in where necessary, but I was to teach in the regular teacher’s absence – a sink or swim proposition that would give me great experience (so I told myself). Day after day, I came home exhausted by the job of maintaining just enough class control so that those students who cared to learn, could. I learned that unless a student wants to learn, they won't. And I spent most of my energy trying to help kids just get to a place where they could start making progress. I saw very clearly how years spent teaching that way could drive a sane person to a nervous breakdown. And most of all, I was sad for those kids who might have flourished in a different class, but who were just barely surviving instead.
Later, a private school that was struggling to implement a school-wide laptop program hired me to teach their staff some strategies for effective teaching with computer technology. At the same time, I taught science to grades 9-12. All of the students challenged me to keep them fed with information, but the 12s were doing their international baccalaureate and were especially voracious learners. I didn't have to get any students started - they were off and running. My nights were spent prepping into the wee hours of the morning, while my days were spent looking out at optimism and sparkling curiosity. I raced to stay ahead and thanks to the bright students, combined with the seemingly boundless resources of the school, I had the opportunity to try every cherished pet theory that had inspired me to teach in the first place. We discussed the juicy stuff every day, there were frequent moments of “ah ha!” when students would make a leap in understanding, and make the whole class shine a little brighter. I was constantly exhausted and thrilled. I also loved walking to work along tree-lined avenues and stepping into the beautiful school to be greeted by a sense of community well-being. People, teachers and students alike, wanted to be there.
After my time at the private school, I was struck by how addictive it would be to work in a beautiful place, among bright and happy students, using all my talents as a teacher to actually teach. I suspected, with some discomfort, that I could push the niggling doubts from my mind easily enough. Every day, those students I taught were reminded in a thousands ways, some subtle, others not so, that they recieved more & better than most, because they deserved more and better. And there was little time for opportunities to identify with other kids. They are our future leaders of industry, but clearly, the world would be a kinder place if even CEOs could empathise with those less fortunate. I wonder if the CEO of Monsanto was home schooled... ;-)
Of course I also know that not all public school classes are as dismal as that first one. As Scientist in School, I’ve stepped into many lovely public schools where the health of the learning community was palpable. And at Kawartha, I’ve now seen a spectrum of both public and private, and I can’t say anything very consistent about either. Every school has its own culture – some healthy, some not.
But as I said at the outset, our public system – the one that takes all kids, regardless of ability or social standing - is failing them a lot of the time. We, the grown-ups, have a responsibility to ALL of the children in our community to band together, to pool our resources, and to offer them the best educational experience we can. By the way, I don’t for a moment begrudge those kids in uniform. I am happy for them – they deserve the best. But so does every child deserve the best: a beautiful place to learn, great teachers who care, enrichment that takes them outside of themselves, equipment and resources to allow them to learn, play, and compete to the best of their ability. Every child deserves that.
I do not believe that it is reasonable to hope for a publicly-funded system that can rise to the level of education that many private schools offer. On the other hand, it is indisputable that if the parents and teachers who make private school what it is, poured even a fraction of their money and talent into the public system, it would be better. Yes, there are many talented, articulate parents and teachers already fighting to make public school better – and many who have felt like a voice in the wilderness, trying to inject common-sense and compassion into an obdurate bureaucracy.
If the public system did not so often squelch creativity, and bury children’s’ innate curiosity with repetition and facile seatwork, I could more readily say, “to each his own”. But the public school system is broken, and our kids are looking to us to fix it. I am not proposing an answer, only that we start with a conversation.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
For heaven's sake, get "faith" out of the classroom
In the wake of the debacle in one of Ontario's catholic school boards (where the board enacted a rule banning the word, "gay" from student support groups), it is a good time to talk about why Catholic schools are a BAD IDEA.
There are so many ways to argue this...the safest is to take the, "we are a multitheistic society" tack. Of course we are, but thats not what really matters. I believe that the point we need to address is that both catholic AND public school students are being dangerously shortchanged, for very different reasons.
Creating a healthy environment for learning is not possible in a catholic school.
Faith and learning each require a completely different frame of mind. Faith, by definition, requires an unquestioning belief. Learning is questioning, without limits. It isn't possible to indoctrinate and educate under the same roof, because learning is about nurturing critical thought and religious belief can only thrive in the absence of critical thought. "Question this, but not that"..."listen to me but not to them, fear what they say". But, "try to keep an open mind, kid."
A teachers job is not to teach students what to think, or how to think, but how to think for themselves - no easy task at the best of times and nearly impossible in a catholic school.
Sadly, public schoolers are faring even worse than their catholic-school buddies down the street.
I give half-day science enrichment to grade 7 classes. More often, it is catholic schools who can afford to hire me. I have been in many schools where the student/teacher ratio is 15/1 or less. I have seen many, many more SMART boards in catholic schools than in public. Why do they seem to have more money?
Because they can keep on functioning with fewer kids, and they can have a child removed if s/he doesn't fit.
Meanwhile, ask a public school teacher what she would change first to give her students a better education and she will tell you - she needs fewer of them. So why oh why do we allow a whole separate system to drain our public funding when our public school kids are drowning in overcrowded classrooms?
Given that we are being forced by repeated funding cuts to diminish the education experience of public school students, that public school teachers are underpaid and overworked, AND faith does not belong in the classroom anyway, I'm not sure why we aren't screaming for change by now. Please, enlighten me.
Our kids are running out of time.
There are so many ways to argue this...the safest is to take the, "we are a multitheistic society" tack. Of course we are, but thats not what really matters. I believe that the point we need to address is that both catholic AND public school students are being dangerously shortchanged, for very different reasons.
Creating a healthy environment for learning is not possible in a catholic school.
Faith and learning each require a completely different frame of mind. Faith, by definition, requires an unquestioning belief. Learning is questioning, without limits. It isn't possible to indoctrinate and educate under the same roof, because learning is about nurturing critical thought and religious belief can only thrive in the absence of critical thought. "Question this, but not that"..."listen to me but not to them, fear what they say". But, "try to keep an open mind, kid."
A teachers job is not to teach students what to think, or how to think, but how to think for themselves - no easy task at the best of times and nearly impossible in a catholic school.
Sadly, public schoolers are faring even worse than their catholic-school buddies down the street.
I give half-day science enrichment to grade 7 classes. More often, it is catholic schools who can afford to hire me. I have been in many schools where the student/teacher ratio is 15/1 or less. I have seen many, many more SMART boards in catholic schools than in public. Why do they seem to have more money?
Because they can keep on functioning with fewer kids, and they can have a child removed if s/he doesn't fit.
Meanwhile, ask a public school teacher what she would change first to give her students a better education and she will tell you - she needs fewer of them. So why oh why do we allow a whole separate system to drain our public funding when our public school kids are drowning in overcrowded classrooms?
Given that we are being forced by repeated funding cuts to diminish the education experience of public school students, that public school teachers are underpaid and overworked, AND faith does not belong in the classroom anyway, I'm not sure why we aren't screaming for change by now. Please, enlighten me.
Our kids are running out of time.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
I Wish I Had Your Talent
What does that talented kid feel when he is told how lucky he is? Lucky, you hope.
For the longest time, I bought into the concept of talent that people's reaction to it would seem to imply: it's like a bonus layer of ability, wrapped around an otherwise normal person - the gift-wrap. Unearned, it is a key to success that some win, some don't - lottery style. It is a reason to overlook a student's struggles - "she'll be fine, she is a real talent. Lucky girl."
But I wonder how often is the exceptional ability, when viewed from just a slightly different angle, also an impediment?
As a kid, I felt as though my head was crammed full of pictures to the point of bursting. I released the pressure by letting the colour flow out my fingers. Letters & characters were compelling shapes but I struggled to relate them to words. I was placed in a remedial reading group in grade 2. I remember hearing that I was a lazy learner. A few years later, I was placed in an advanced reading class - I battled through A Tale of Two Cities to prove that I had overcome my laziness.
Even after 40 years of learning to learn, auditory info remains elusive to me. As much as the words make sense in the moment that I hear them, unless I concentrate on stringing them back together in my mind, they just don't stick. I watch the news and while the faces and images cling to each other like a film-strip in my memory, the words are quickly lost, rendering the film meaningless.
Following my 3rd semester of university, I received a polite letter asking me to come and gather my things. My grades were THAT bad.
After some pleading and begging, I was given one more chance to succeed in the lecture hall. I focused my attention on those words flowing out of my prof's mouth with fresh energy (FEAR). As usual, pictures would emerge if I focused hard enough, and I started drawing them into my notes as fast as I could. Early on, this illustrative process could take many hours following the lecture but I got faster. After 2 more years, one of my profs noticed. He needed illustrations for a lab manual, and my picture-book version of his lectures made a good visual accompaniment to his laboratory teaching. All these years later, his successor still uses them.
Meanwhile, without realizing it, I was becoming a teacher - or at least, an impassioned advocate for a different kind of teaching. And I was receiving great training in the art of instructional design - a large part of what I now get paid to do. My students seem to learn from my illustrations, but I still lecture at them too much.
My main concern at this moment isn't my teaching. As I sit here typing, my 7-year-old draws beside me. Sometimes, she draws the things that a talented kid is supposed to draw: flowers, birds, rainbows - the stuff that adults recognize and praise her for. Her representations of things are remarkably good for her age. Other times, she sits alone, totally engrossed. The colour that flows from her fingers is abstract and frenzied and even more beautiful in its way. Her teachers have told me that she is a bright, talented kid. She gets great marks on her art.
In a recent parent-teacher interview, we were informed that our daughter is a bit lazy when it comes to her reading and math. As the teacher made this comment, I looked into my child's eyes and saw defiance and confusion.
I felt a little sad for the struggle she is facing, but I know that she's a lucky girl.
For the longest time, I bought into the concept of talent that people's reaction to it would seem to imply: it's like a bonus layer of ability, wrapped around an otherwise normal person - the gift-wrap. Unearned, it is a key to success that some win, some don't - lottery style. It is a reason to overlook a student's struggles - "she'll be fine, she is a real talent. Lucky girl."
But I wonder how often is the exceptional ability, when viewed from just a slightly different angle, also an impediment?
As a kid, I felt as though my head was crammed full of pictures to the point of bursting. I released the pressure by letting the colour flow out my fingers. Letters & characters were compelling shapes but I struggled to relate them to words. I was placed in a remedial reading group in grade 2. I remember hearing that I was a lazy learner. A few years later, I was placed in an advanced reading class - I battled through A Tale of Two Cities to prove that I had overcome my laziness.
Even after 40 years of learning to learn, auditory info remains elusive to me. As much as the words make sense in the moment that I hear them, unless I concentrate on stringing them back together in my mind, they just don't stick. I watch the news and while the faces and images cling to each other like a film-strip in my memory, the words are quickly lost, rendering the film meaningless.
Following my 3rd semester of university, I received a polite letter asking me to come and gather my things. My grades were THAT bad.
After some pleading and begging, I was given one more chance to succeed in the lecture hall. I focused my attention on those words flowing out of my prof's mouth with fresh energy (FEAR). As usual, pictures would emerge if I focused hard enough, and I started drawing them into my notes as fast as I could. Early on, this illustrative process could take many hours following the lecture but I got faster. After 2 more years, one of my profs noticed. He needed illustrations for a lab manual, and my picture-book version of his lectures made a good visual accompaniment to his laboratory teaching. All these years later, his successor still uses them.
Meanwhile, without realizing it, I was becoming a teacher - or at least, an impassioned advocate for a different kind of teaching. And I was receiving great training in the art of instructional design - a large part of what I now get paid to do. My students seem to learn from my illustrations, but I still lecture at them too much.
My main concern at this moment isn't my teaching. As I sit here typing, my 7-year-old draws beside me. Sometimes, she draws the things that a talented kid is supposed to draw: flowers, birds, rainbows - the stuff that adults recognize and praise her for. Her representations of things are remarkably good for her age. Other times, she sits alone, totally engrossed. The colour that flows from her fingers is abstract and frenzied and even more beautiful in its way. Her teachers have told me that she is a bright, talented kid. She gets great marks on her art.
In a recent parent-teacher interview, we were informed that our daughter is a bit lazy when it comes to her reading and math. As the teacher made this comment, I looked into my child's eyes and saw defiance and confusion.
I felt a little sad for the struggle she is facing, but I know that she's a lucky girl.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Certainty is overrated.
[In response to the idea, posted in another teacher's blog, that "science teaches us how to question"]
I'm a little affronted by the assertion that science teaches us how to question. I don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but my fear about the plight of science education makes me short-tempered. If the "natural skill" - and I absolutely agree that it is NATURAL in the truest, most innate sense - of questioning disappears, then it is because it is schooled out of us. Science classes don't teach us how to question any more than they teach us how to breath. We educate our students to question less - to follow without question, and to depend on us for answers. It is the time-honoured way to wrest control out of students hands. The fact that students don't care to question, or don't think to, is the most disturbing evidence we have that our classrooms are broken.
Humans learn, humans question. If that innate ability that is so fundamental to our species has been deadened, teachers bare a large part of the responsibility. If through our "teaching", we must reawaken that skill, we had better start with an awareness and respect for the FACT that it is merely dormant. Too often, we supplant a student's natural inquiring instinct with some artificial structure or system - sometimes misnamed, "the scientific method". In the process, we retain the balance of power in the classroom, but we also strangle the brave creativity that is unique to each student and essential to real learning. Our goal should not be to encourage students to arrive at the same conclusions as we do, but to arrive at some completely unique destination of their own. And how does this look? It looks chaotic and disordered. It feels even worse - confusing and scary, it takes courage to learn this way. By the way, it takes courage to teach this way, and in my classroom it is more a goal than a reality, but I'm working on it.
When I begin one of my science classes, I tell students that more than anything, I want them to be WRONG. I point out how often the path to amazing science has been almost completely blind, misguided or wrong-headed. Great discoveries are made by those who don't cling to their assumptions, hold their minds open, willing to be proven WRONG. Through demonstrations, I show them how much more fun WRONG can actually be than RIGHT. RIGHT is a brief self-satisfied nod of the head and move on. WRONG is shocking, surprising and exciting, sit back and reevaluate. WRONG stays with you, while RIGHT is long forgotten. Over time, students learn that what I look for is thoughtful educated guesses, even sudden rash insights. I don't want them to hold their tongue until they are certain.
Certainty is overrated.
I'm a little affronted by the assertion that science teaches us how to question. I don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but my fear about the plight of science education makes me short-tempered. If the "natural skill" - and I absolutely agree that it is NATURAL in the truest, most innate sense - of questioning disappears, then it is because it is schooled out of us. Science classes don't teach us how to question any more than they teach us how to breath. We educate our students to question less - to follow without question, and to depend on us for answers. It is the time-honoured way to wrest control out of students hands. The fact that students don't care to question, or don't think to, is the most disturbing evidence we have that our classrooms are broken.
Humans learn, humans question. If that innate ability that is so fundamental to our species has been deadened, teachers bare a large part of the responsibility. If through our "teaching", we must reawaken that skill, we had better start with an awareness and respect for the FACT that it is merely dormant. Too often, we supplant a student's natural inquiring instinct with some artificial structure or system - sometimes misnamed, "the scientific method". In the process, we retain the balance of power in the classroom, but we also strangle the brave creativity that is unique to each student and essential to real learning. Our goal should not be to encourage students to arrive at the same conclusions as we do, but to arrive at some completely unique destination of their own. And how does this look? It looks chaotic and disordered. It feels even worse - confusing and scary, it takes courage to learn this way. By the way, it takes courage to teach this way, and in my classroom it is more a goal than a reality, but I'm working on it.
When I begin one of my science classes, I tell students that more than anything, I want them to be WRONG. I point out how often the path to amazing science has been almost completely blind, misguided or wrong-headed. Great discoveries are made by those who don't cling to their assumptions, hold their minds open, willing to be proven WRONG. Through demonstrations, I show them how much more fun WRONG can actually be than RIGHT. RIGHT is a brief self-satisfied nod of the head and move on. WRONG is shocking, surprising and exciting, sit back and reevaluate. WRONG stays with you, while RIGHT is long forgotten. Over time, students learn that what I look for is thoughtful educated guesses, even sudden rash insights. I don't want them to hold their tongue until they are certain.
Certainty is overrated.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Time to ditch the outdated computer lab and use the technology in students' pockets.
When we started the conversation about technology integration into classrooms in 1990, %15 of homes in the US had a computer and by 1994, %2 had internet access.
Compare this to 2008, when close to %80 of the households in the US had internet access and broadband penetration across the country had reached %90 by the start of 2009.
There has been so much change in technology and particularly, in our access to it, yet the conversation about classroom integration seems to have changed relatively little. Whereas, in the 90's, it may have made sense for schools to try to add the role of teacher-of-technology to their other responsibilities, in the rush to get equipped, schools only found themselves in a losing battle. They could neither find sufficient funding for the equipment, nor adequate time for the training to use it.
And yet, today, this approach persists with the result that schools sink money into what has become a parallel (and rapidly outdated) system of access - in the form of computer labs, clunky peripherals, and endless software upgrades. This approach has never worked well, except possibly for the richest schools, but to add insult to injury, students now prefer their personal, sleeker and more functional portable technologies anyway.
%70 of students carry a cell-phone, and most of these have video, photo, internet and (arguably limited) word-processing capabilities. In 2005, a study on ergoweb pointed-out that cell phones "have a big advantage over lap top computers in the classroom because they are cheaper, more portable and almost as sophisticated. Using camera phones, students develop their literacy by capturing images, writing about them, and emailing the work to friends, families and teachers."
Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young has done extensive research on the topic of mobile computing - as it has evolved with cell phones. She has made a few examples available on a PDF called Mobile Phones for Learning.
Powerful and inspiring technologies are walking into class in students' pockets, and yet we still discuss integration as thought the first step were to plug it into students' desks and hire someone to teach the teacher how to use it. At the same time (and the same schools) there is a great deal of chatter about how to prize portable technology out of students' hands so that they can 'focus on learning'. Perhaps we have this backwards. The Ergoweb study reports, "The principal of one participating school had been looking for something to excite disengaged students, and has been "overwhelmed by the resulting enthusiasm" when projects incorporated cell phones."
When schools began investing in technology, we could not have dreamed of a world where classrooms didn't need desktop computers; where students carried powerful mobile devices, with a wireless connection to some super-cool thing call the internet - in their pockets. As if that weren't fantastic enough, the news gets better: enter, wireless cloud computing, a wonderful thing for schools (and organizations large and small). No more need of expensive servers, upgrades or technical support people to run it all (and make us feel foolishly ignorant). Almost anything we need -storage, software, networking - its all online, and much of it Open Source.
We have arrived at an emancipating new age for learning. When we embrace it, not only will students learn better, be happier and more engaged, but schools will even save money.
Compare this to 2008, when close to %80 of the households in the US had internet access and broadband penetration across the country had reached %90 by the start of 2009.
There has been so much change in technology and particularly, in our access to it, yet the conversation about classroom integration seems to have changed relatively little. Whereas, in the 90's, it may have made sense for schools to try to add the role of teacher-of-technology to their other responsibilities, in the rush to get equipped, schools only found themselves in a losing battle. They could neither find sufficient funding for the equipment, nor adequate time for the training to use it.
And yet, today, this approach persists with the result that schools sink money into what has become a parallel (and rapidly outdated) system of access - in the form of computer labs, clunky peripherals, and endless software upgrades. This approach has never worked well, except possibly for the richest schools, but to add insult to injury, students now prefer their personal, sleeker and more functional portable technologies anyway.
%70 of students carry a cell-phone, and most of these have video, photo, internet and (arguably limited) word-processing capabilities. In 2005, a study on ergoweb pointed-out that cell phones "have a big advantage over lap top computers in the classroom because they are cheaper, more portable and almost as sophisticated. Using camera phones, students develop their literacy by capturing images, writing about them, and emailing the work to friends, families and teachers."
Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young has done extensive research on the topic of mobile computing - as it has evolved with cell phones. She has made a few examples available on a PDF called Mobile Phones for Learning.
Powerful and inspiring technologies are walking into class in students' pockets, and yet we still discuss integration as thought the first step were to plug it into students' desks and hire someone to teach the teacher how to use it. At the same time (and the same schools) there is a great deal of chatter about how to prize portable technology out of students' hands so that they can 'focus on learning'. Perhaps we have this backwards. The Ergoweb study reports, "The principal of one participating school had been looking for something to excite disengaged students, and has been "overwhelmed by the resulting enthusiasm" when projects incorporated cell phones."
When schools began investing in technology, we could not have dreamed of a world where classrooms didn't need desktop computers; where students carried powerful mobile devices, with a wireless connection to some super-cool thing call the internet - in their pockets. As if that weren't fantastic enough, the news gets better: enter, wireless cloud computing, a wonderful thing for schools (and organizations large and small). No more need of expensive servers, upgrades or technical support people to run it all (and make us feel foolishly ignorant). Almost anything we need -storage, software, networking - its all online, and much of it Open Source.
We have arrived at an emancipating new age for learning. When we embrace it, not only will students learn better, be happier and more engaged, but schools will even save money.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sinking or Sailing - an outsider's perspective on classroom culture
Maybe its pretty clear from my posts that I am not a classroom teacher. I have a much easier job as a sort of science interventionist: I get called in to give half-day (activity-filled) classes in science. I see all kinds of different classrooms, and sadly, don't ever get to know the students or the teachers.
But I get an interesting overview and I wasn't surprised to hear from Bill Gates on TED that the teacher makes the greatest difference for a student - often the difference between staying in school or dropping out. Don't we all know this by now?
What I might not have realized is how amazingly easy it is to see, within moments of entering a classroom, whether the ship is sailing or sinking. In a class that is productive, safe and even fun, the teacher is punctual, clean and dresses as though she cares. The kids file into their ordered and uncluttered classroom space without reluctance. Most of all, teachers and students are clearly in it together and share an almost conspiratorial eagerness that glints in their eyes. I can feel the good times and the challenges overcome, and I sense the bonding that occurred in this atmosphere of mutual support. By contrast, the classroom that is adversarial, unhappy and unproductive is as easy to pick-out as if their were a sign on the door: DO NOT ENTER
As I write this, I hear tired teacher voices in my head - people who have been pushed to the limit and beyond by a system that asks far too much of them. I DO know. I DO. But I also have to believe that at least to SOME extent, the difference between the sinking or sailing ship is a choice - or a series of choices. As hard as it might be, especially at first, it has to be much better for ALL - teacher included - to choose success. Its not that I honestly believe anyone would CHOOSE failure. I imagine it must feel more like a slow incremental giving-up, or perhaps giving-in to the temptation to let the small stuff slide. Let the mess pile up, wear the dirty old t-shirt, and back down from that impudent little tween instead of holding your ground. I can see doing all of these things in the "short term", until one day, a teacher finds herself in a job not worth waking-up for, entering a classroom she hates. Imagine how her students feel.
But I get an interesting overview and I wasn't surprised to hear from Bill Gates on TED that the teacher makes the greatest difference for a student - often the difference between staying in school or dropping out. Don't we all know this by now?
What I might not have realized is how amazingly easy it is to see, within moments of entering a classroom, whether the ship is sailing or sinking. In a class that is productive, safe and even fun, the teacher is punctual, clean and dresses as though she cares. The kids file into their ordered and uncluttered classroom space without reluctance. Most of all, teachers and students are clearly in it together and share an almost conspiratorial eagerness that glints in their eyes. I can feel the good times and the challenges overcome, and I sense the bonding that occurred in this atmosphere of mutual support. By contrast, the classroom that is adversarial, unhappy and unproductive is as easy to pick-out as if their were a sign on the door: DO NOT ENTER
As I write this, I hear tired teacher voices in my head - people who have been pushed to the limit and beyond by a system that asks far too much of them. I DO know. I DO. But I also have to believe that at least to SOME extent, the difference between the sinking or sailing ship is a choice - or a series of choices. As hard as it might be, especially at first, it has to be much better for ALL - teacher included - to choose success. Its not that I honestly believe anyone would CHOOSE failure. I imagine it must feel more like a slow incremental giving-up, or perhaps giving-in to the temptation to let the small stuff slide. Let the mess pile up, wear the dirty old t-shirt, and back down from that impudent little tween instead of holding your ground. I can see doing all of these things in the "short term", until one day, a teacher finds herself in a job not worth waking-up for, entering a classroom she hates. Imagine how her students feel.
Monday, March 9, 2009
PowerPointless, Not!
What a fantastic talk on TED. One thing that I have noticed, watching TED, is that few speakers have very compelling slides to compliment their presentations...this talk by Scott McCloud is an exception, in the extreme. He is animated and articulate and passionate, AND his slides compliment his points with a simple elegance that is so rare.
How to Give Good Presentations: one of the most popular 'talks' that I give, because it is so important to present well, and yet creating the great presentation is so elusive. Like many others, I have been frustrated by the effect of PowerPoint on presenting in general, while at the same time, fascinated and thrilled by the possibilities that it offers...adding video, sound, images, animations. Why describe anything anymore, when you can google a great image of it to throw on a slide?
Well, I wouldn't say don't google the image. "A picture is worth...etc." The image is important, but the presenter is MORE important. Maybe the reason that we don't grasp this is insecurity - we sell ourselves short. We spend a lot of time connecting through this medium (I sit alone in my house as I type), and less time appreciating and cultivating the eye-to-eye and face-to-face connection - so maybe we forget (or never learn) how powerful it is.
Or maybe, we have bought the Hollywood fallacy that a person worth watching must be beautiful. No. She must be human, genuine, and believe in herself.
At a concert last month, I was moved almost to tears by music that I have heard on my stereo a thousand times. This shocked me because I don't see enough live music, and also because I had forgotten the power of the face-to-face. It can be magical.
A good presenter - someone who stands before her audience and feels respect for them, even love for them in their willingness to sit passively and listen - will have a very powerful impact WITH HER WORDS ALONE. PowerPoint can certainly illustrate your point. A clever animation, carefully timed to your words can be a distraction, but can also pound your point home in a way that leaves your audience breathless. But don't, DON'T turn the lights down while you are speaking! Your audience needs to see you, to look into your eyes and see your passion. That is the best way to make them feel it, learn it, and want to know more.
How to Give Good Presentations: one of the most popular 'talks' that I give, because it is so important to present well, and yet creating the great presentation is so elusive. Like many others, I have been frustrated by the effect of PowerPoint on presenting in general, while at the same time, fascinated and thrilled by the possibilities that it offers...adding video, sound, images, animations. Why describe anything anymore, when you can google a great image of it to throw on a slide?
Well, I wouldn't say don't google the image. "A picture is worth...etc." The image is important, but the presenter is MORE important. Maybe the reason that we don't grasp this is insecurity - we sell ourselves short. We spend a lot of time connecting through this medium (I sit alone in my house as I type), and less time appreciating and cultivating the eye-to-eye and face-to-face connection - so maybe we forget (or never learn) how powerful it is.
Or maybe, we have bought the Hollywood fallacy that a person worth watching must be beautiful. No. She must be human, genuine, and believe in herself.
At a concert last month, I was moved almost to tears by music that I have heard on my stereo a thousand times. This shocked me because I don't see enough live music, and also because I had forgotten the power of the face-to-face. It can be magical.
A good presenter - someone who stands before her audience and feels respect for them, even love for them in their willingness to sit passively and listen - will have a very powerful impact WITH HER WORDS ALONE. PowerPoint can certainly illustrate your point. A clever animation, carefully timed to your words can be a distraction, but can also pound your point home in a way that leaves your audience breathless. But don't, DON'T turn the lights down while you are speaking! Your audience needs to see you, to look into your eyes and see your passion. That is the best way to make them feel it, learn it, and want to know more.
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