Teaching for the future
Posted on: March 21, 2009
This week marked the end of formal lessons for the course I facilitate. I attempted to bring some “closure” to the readings, YouTube viewings, and experiences on 21st century learners and learning environments with my Prezi-based presentation on Teaching for the Future.
Over the next two weeks, my preservice teachers do walkabout presentations of their final projects. It is also an opportunity for us to celebrate the end of the course.
4 Responses to "Teaching for the future"
2 | ashleytan
March 21, 2009 at 1:03 pm
@Andrew: You first need to sign up for a Prezi.com account. As the tool is still in testing phase, you may need to suggest an idea and request for an account.
It can take about a week before they grant you access, if at all. A few of my current batch of trainees requested access but not all of them got it.
Then you need to get used to the new tool. It is simpler than using PowerPoint, but you have to unlearn PowerPoint conventions like slides and strictly linear sequencing. This alone can be a challenge.
I made two presentations. The first one on Second Life (http://prezi.com/10156/) was simpler but took me about 20 hours to prepare because I was learning. The second on was larger and slightly more complex, but I estimate that it took about 10 hours to get done.
Everything is prepared online and saved online, so you need a stable and fast connection. Each presentation is currently limited to a 100MB, which is quite a lot!
But it is a great tool. I like how I can zoom in and out and determine my own path in the presentation. I also like the fact that I can embed PDFs and open them within the presentation.
3 | Andrew Chong
March 21, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Okay, I will try it later in the term when I have the time.
In the meantime, I’m working on setting up a wiki for my students to use for the term ahead. It’s going to be used much like how we did for the ICT course in the 1st 3 weeks, meaning we do our weekly assignments on that page and I’ll post instructions and additional resources on it. I’m going to introduce it to them on Monday… If you have any tips for me on how to use wikis effectively or what you considered when doing it, do let me know. 
4 | ashleytan
March 22, 2009 at 2:36 pm
@Andrew: The advice I’d give at the moment is to first get them used to editing a wiki first and then to embark on a formal task later. This gets them past the technical barrier and allows them to focus a bit more on the task.
I’d also encourage more collaborative writing tasks as opposed to individual writing ones. After all, that is what wikis are designed for.
I used the ICT wiki for various things, one of them being a more flexible LMS. I think that it might be important for your learners to understand how a wiki is NOT an LMS otherwise they might behave less creatively and critically.
March 21, 2009 at 9:57 am
Hey Dr. Tan, I am so amazed by this presentation! Does it take a long time to do? I want to try something like this for my classes.