The technology I have tackled in the last few weeks has been asking the students to create a Powerpoint presentation about a Colorado Life Zone. I did this project last year so I was excited to tweak a few things to make it more powerful and meaningful for my students. We began the lesson by spending some time on research, how to do it, what it looks like, and identifying useful sources. We then also discussed giving credit to sites and authors so that it didn't look like our work. The students did well with this and I think it will make for more productive research throughout the rest of the year. I used BrainPop videos to support this learning and that was very successful in engaging the students and putting it on their level.
We then discussed the power of using multiple sources. The students had to take notes on their Life Zone using the text book and an internet resource. This way they really got exposure to why multiple sources are effective to help them to solidify their information gathered. This also allowed us to discuss Primary and Secondary sources, which was a meaningful conversation as well.
The students then gathered their notes using a Tree Map for organizational purposes. Once the notes were done, they had to put together a Powerpoint presentation on Google Docs. I created a template for them that they could alter and change. We discussed not writing full sentences on our slides and having it be more of a note catcher that we could expand on during our actual presentations. They really took my basic instructions and ran with them. I was impressed to see their dedication and excitement. They worked for three days on them and I never had one complaint that they didn't have enough to do. One thing I added this year was a sources cited slide. This way the students had to cite the web links for their embedded pictures and resources used. We haven't graduated to Easy Bib yet, but I felt like this was a good seg-way to getting them to understand the process of citing.
Today they will be sharing their presentations with other students and seeing what everyone came up with. They will then be providing each other with feedback on their final products. I am so excited to see what they have come up with!
