The Uses of Video Conferencing

I feel that video conferencing can be useful, both among colleagues and in the classroom with students.

For teachers:

1) Allows for better productivity: Video conferencing allows for everyone to meet at the same time without having to travel (for example, to a PD opportunity). By minimizing travel time, more time is left over for productive activities that would not have been possible had travel been necessary.

2) Better interschool/interboard communication: Groups of teachers from around the city/board/province/country etc. can work as a team to share more ideas with one another. More ideas = better teaching opportunities.

For students:

1) Distance education is facilitated: Students are able to access lectures, study materials, and even talk one on one with instructors. This can be extremely useful for ILC and eLearning type courses, as instant feedback and information can be provided.

2) Sharing Information is easy: Most video conferencing software can be used to provide real time, relevant information, but also as a method of file sharing.

3) The classroom can be geographically limitless: Students can interact with other students, teacher, researches, professors, and locations all from the comfort of their computers. Gone are expensive field trips, as video conferences can learn at the click of a button.

4) Active participation is encouraged: In order to gain the most from a video conference, students need to do a certain amount of pre-learning. This will enable them to be better researchers, communicators, and thinkers. In all, they will become better interactors.

By minimizing the amount of time required to access resources, content, and people, video conferencing can be a benefit to the classroom – providing more time to actual use the resources, which is something where many teachers often find themselves lacking.

Presentation Tools in the Classroom: Part Deux

A variety of different presentations tools are becoming reasonably prevalent in the classroom. I see very few teachers using Powerpoint as their only tool, relying on several other types of software as well.

Naturally, presentation tools have their advantages and disadvantages when used as a teaching tool, both from a teaching perspective and from a student perspective.

Advantages:

From the teacher's perspective...

1) Presentations are easier to follow. If students are provided with a printout of slides, they can spend more time listening and less time writing - only writing key points or anecdotal information that they can reflect on later.

2) Increased student involvement and interaction. Since presentations often display a large amount of multimedia, including text, video, audio, and photos, it allows teachers to share the most recent information in a way that is more appealing to students.

3) Shared workload. Teachers can work together to create presentations, or use presentations that have already been created.This can allow students to be exposed to more than one point of view. Sometimes, a different voice or lens is all it takes to bridge the gap between not understanding and understanding. 

From the student's perspective...

1) Helps a variety of learners. Many of the tools make it relatively easy to record audio. This can help students who are auditory learners. As well, the incorporation of other media (video, photos, etc.) can help the visual learner, as they can see exemplars and worked examples that can help them through particularly difficult concepts.

2) Typically web based. This can be useful both when students are creating presentations, but also viewing them. When creating, presentations can now be cross-platform, which allows students to access their presentation from a variety of sources, including at school, at home, and potentially on their tablets/phones. When viewing, teachers can share lessons using a file-sharing system or website, which makes content available for students when they are away from class.

3) It can be purposeful for oral presentations. Students find, reflect, and interpret information, and use presentation tools to create something new. This allows for an opportunity for meaningful collaboration, as the finished product can be shared with others (social media, or in the classroom)

4) Teachers can share the workload of creating presentations, or use presentations that are already available. Teachers can share lessons and presentations simply using a file-sharing system or flash drive. Teachers can share the workload of creating presentations. Furthermore, a student seeing more than one teacher's presentations is exposed to more than one point of view.

Disadvantages:

From the teacher's perspective:


1) Neglect of interaction. If the teacher has not spent enough time learning the material in the presentation, they will spend more time looking at their presentation than they do engaging with the students. This can turn what was meant to be interative into more of a lecture.

2) High speed. If too much information is being conveyed, it can be difficult for students to keep up. Teachers will need to ensure they leave time for students to reflect, and time to gauge student understanding.

3) Not useful in many situations. When a subject is complex, it is difficult to summarize using 'bullet' points. Sometimes this is not enough to support their idea or demonstrate the complexity of what it is they are trying to convey.

From the student's perspective:

1) Clutter: A presentation that uses too many animations or visuals distracts the audience from the information that is being conveyed.

2) Focus on the medium: Sometimes, students spend too much time focusing on making it look 'cool'. They need to realize that presentations tools are just that - tools, and need to realize that the presentation, and not the visual, is what is the most important part of the task.

While there are certainly disadvantages, I think that many of them can be avoided with proper consideration when a teacher is presenting, and properly informing students of the purpose of presentations for when they are using presentation tools. If this is done, then presentation tools are an effective, engaging, visual, and often times fun way of presenting information.

Presentation Tools in the Classroom

Recently, I took a look at a few of the slightly less popular presentations tools out there. I wanted to gauge what was available to look at what separated them from the common (Google Powerpoint, Powerpoint, OpenOffice) presentation tools that are available. Here are the ones that I found most intriguing. Empressr –

1. Empressr is a free web based slide show presentation program, similar to Powerpoint. It is simple to use, although I did find it more limited than other presentation tools that are out there (no templates or themes). The upside is that it is extremely easy to embed video and audio, which is something I found a bit more difficult in Powerpoint (I had to change video properties to embed my Youtube video in my blended learning letter, in fact). As well, the app has an ability to be shared across multiple social media sites, which can be useful if students are being asked to share their presentations.

2. PowToon - PowToon is an online tool that lets the user create an animated story for presentations. Rather than being limited to bullet points and animations, students can make flash style movies and presentations. I liked PowToon because it was easy to use (I think it would easy to use even for younger students), but it provides a certain visual factor that other presentation software doesn’t. There are several styles that PowToon offers – marker style, label style, picto style, and even animated styles, which I think were all pretty neat! I could definitely see younger students enjoying this software, as it is visual, and allows them to create presentations that are just more fun in general, but can also result in an end product that looks professional. As well, the PowToon software is free, so long as you are willing to allow for a PowToon watermark in the corner of your presentation.

             

3. Present.Me - Present.Me is a for pay website that allows the user to add a narrative to their presentations. It allows users to upload slides from any other presentation software (Prezi, Powerpoint, Google Presentation, etc.) to their website and then add a video and audio narrative to their slideshows. I found it useful because it allows your audience to see both you and your content at the same time. I tried a free trial, and I liked it, because I feel like sometimes when people are using powerpoint, they read from their slides rather than presenting, and I think that present.me allows people to actually present instead, which adds a bit of engagement to the mix. I also liked that you were not limited to doing one take of your narrative – if you mess up, you can trim off your mistake and start from where you left off. I liked this in comparison to a whiteboard software like Educreations, which I have previously reviewed, that would require you to get it right in one full take. The downside, obviously, is that present.me can be expensive, however if you had one account for your department or school, it could certainly be useful. As well, this would alleviate the difficulties around presenting for students with anxiety issues - they could record themselves presenting, instead, and this would still meet the expectation of having to present.

4. Knovio - Knovio is a similar tool to Present.Me, except that is it completely free. It also allows users to turn their Powerpoint slideshows into video presentations, assuming the user has access to a webcam. I tried using Knovio for a classroom activity where I was not able to be in class, and I thought that it was effective. The quality of the presentation was not fantastic, and had a habit of blurring a little bit if you don’t sit super still, or you move too much during a lesson, but otherwise it is very user friendly, allowing for you to make corrections in a similar fashion to Present.Me. The biggest downside to Knovio is that unlike Present.Me, it only accepts Powerpoint files.

        

I liked all of these tools for one specific reason – they are web based. Students and teachers alike can access their presentations from any computer that has internet connectivity. I find this useful, as you will not be tethered to one device, which I find extremely limiting in this day and age.