parallel learning and video blogging (my first prezi mash-up)
Two workshop prezis from JALTCALL 2010 at Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan, May 29th – 30th 2010.
Parallel Learning: How online teacher development informs classroom practice
Video blogging and Podcasting: Interviews with English Language Teaching Professionals
As you can imagine, there is a fair bit of overlap between the two sessions, so I chose to use the ‘flavour of the month’ presentation tool to make one big slide with two different pathways. It was really fun mapping it out… I am not sure if it helps me think differently, in a less linear fashion, or if it just panders to the mind’s natural inclination towards multiplicity. But this is my first paper run through….
Anyway, I am not sure whether it is such a bad thing to have ones thoughts marshalled into straight lines by PowerPoint or Keynote. Something about Prezi does scream ‘Big Fat Gimmick!’, but let’s enjoy the whizz bang fireworks while they last.
Because I hate decontextualised slides so much (one of the greatest dangers to academic discourse today, I’ll venture, is the proliferation of mute online slideshows, stripped of the only thing which gives them a life) I have recorded a run through with commentary so you know what all the pictures mean. It’s forty minutes condensed into twenty, so it’s both too long to watch online and not long enough to make any sense. Apologies for the mumble, everyone else is asleep and I really ought to be myself.
Parallel Learning: How online teacher development informs classroom practice from darren elliott on Vimeo.
I made this using iShowU HD, which works very nicely. Screentoaster also seems good, but a bit more obtrusive.
If you were at either of the sessions in Kyoto, thanks! Questions or comments are very welcome.
Good work here, Darren. I’m glad you did a screencast with voice, because while I am incredibly impressed with Prezi, I hate the silent format. Hearing a voice to go with images is so much better…
Liked your planning chart, too!
Oh, and yes, enjoyed the content of your presentations as well. Didn’t mean for that to sound like an add-on comment! It was interesting to get some more background information about you, as I’ve been “in the TEFL game” for about the same amount of time, mostly in a similar part of the world, with similar multi-cultural family, and similar progression through the various EFL ‘sectors”.
Only major difference, I have to admit, is that you have more class!
Keep up the good work,
- Jason
Nice post, Darren. Well I for one am very glad that you have been doing these interviews and finding ways to connect with teachers around the globe, since you are pretty much wholly responsible for introducing me to the world of ELT blogging
and I have followed up on so many other great writers through your blogroll.
Very interesting to hear your ELT story. I haven’t done a blog yet with my ESOL learners since they are really at the beginner level of literacy, but the more I consider the possibilites, I’m sure there are ways to work with this.
More food for thought…
Jason – I don’t know if I have more class… maybe more classes! I was going to make a crack about Australians, but I’ll leave it
Angela – I’m quite chuffed about that. There certainly are plenty of people out there worth reading and connecting with.
As for your ESOL students, there may well be ways to work it. Do they have access to the internet, and do you have time to support them, technically? Of course, some can mentor the others. But if you are thinking about blogging with students you REALLY ought to get your own blog out there first – it’s the only way to figure out how it all works.
Hi Darren
Interesting what you say about prezi having done a few myself now. I take your point about linear thinking etc – with prezi you still have to organize your thoughts, and powerpoint makes you do this all the time. Certainly I have found it takes a lot longer to prepare a prezi presentation because you need to design it for overall effect as well as simply think about what you want to say. And there are a lot of things it can’t do (yet) which Powerpoint can.
My impression so far is that audiences really like it, but maybe this is only because it is doing something new – what you call the whiz bang fireworks I think. I don’t know if this will wear off as people get more used to it.
And yep, point taken about needing to have the sound with it – as you say, mute online slideshows miss most of the content, of course. I haven’t done the same with the prezi presentations I did eg Two birds with one stone” because I have been using it mostly in three hour workshops, and a lot of the time is not me presenting, but the audience working. Prezi lends itself to a workshop scenario very well I think – easy to adapt and move with the flow of the discussion – nothing worse than watching a presenter flick through endless previous slides to find the one the audience has a question about.
My current position is that (a) prezi is a useful tool, and (b) presenters need to try it out even if only to think about the advantages and limitations of the tool(s) they normally use. But of course its what the presenter has to say that counts.
Thanks Evan. It’s funny, because one of the things I have been trying to do with my own presentations is bring in some kind of movement without using the inbuilt animations of Keynote or Powewrpoint. I managed some kind of rudimentary animation in Keynote by hand drawing several slides and clicking on through rapidly. I like that you can get that movement through Prezi, although my wife cut through the BS (as is her way) saying that it made her eyes go funny. What I do like is that you can go back and forward to revisit ideas by setting pathways – of course, you can do it in Powepoint and Keynote too, just repeat slides in the linear framework – but Prezi is especially helpful in directing one towards that way of thinking. I also like the the ‘zoom out and reveal’ technique, a visual representation of the ‘bigger picture’ metaphor. Yes, it might get old soon, but it offers adept presenters some interesting opportunities.
I am still astonished to see lousy Powerpoint and Keynote presentations though. I don’t get how people make the fundemental mistakes (reading text heavy slides verbatim with their backs to the audience etc). So far, the prezis I have seen have made great use of the possibilities, but I am waiting for some horrible abuse when it hits the mainstream!