English and ICT at Meole
Meole Brace English Department had a twilight this evening with the brief of looking at effective interactive technology use in the English classroom. After a hard day’s work, the delegates continued working hard into the evening through varied exercises and discussion on the ways that whiteboard and presentation technology can be used in the English classroom.
We demonstrated the use of presentation software (yes, it WAS powerpoint but needn’t have been) for emphasising texts and parts of text so that learners would be better able to single out the focus of an exercise. This was a good warm-up exercise, hitting new techniques on a familiar package. Of course, the same exercise could largely be done with interactive whiteboard software or easiteach, but with some teachers not having an IWB (projector only) it was felt that the generic functions of powerpoint were better to demonstrate these ideas. It also makes it easier to share the files since other teachers/schools are unlikely to have the bespoke IWB software.
Moving on, we looked at the use of collapsed text in an exercise designed to assess what genre of writing a passage is from. This movie demonstrates the procedure of collapsing text and getting the words into alphabetical order. By looking at the types of words used it is possible to decide what sort of text this is, and even reconstruct the passage to some extent. The use of the IWB software (in this case ActivPX) in highlighting words in different colours to identify verbs, pronouns and prepositions helps to make sense of the activity in realtime, and the ability to use Word to compare documents side-by-side and to drag words from one to the other just couldn’t be done without electronic hardware.
Segue-ing (is that a real word?) nicely into the next demonstration on prose into poetry, delegates were given their only “hard copy” of the session and asked to derive a poem from the piece of prose in front of them. All the words were in the correct order, just the lines had been joined up. In fact this is quite a difficult exercise and the poem structure is just not obvious from the prose. A lively discussion followed with a number of points being raised, with some valid alternative poems being generated (this is why I love these sessions - the interactive hardware pales in comparison with the interactive discussion) and a real enthusiasm for trying this in the classroom with various poems. Again, the ability to use the electronic facilities to add line breaks, and to change things quickly and easily keeps up the pace of a lesson and gives learners the opportunity for uninterrupted thinking - they don’t lose their train of thought while the teacher has to write something out again.
Keeping up the pace, I demonstrated the impact of the Lessig method of delivering a presentation, highlighting key words in a poem as I read it out. In fact, I really didn’t need to read it - it surprised me when preparing this demo that I had almost learned the poem “Job Davies” after only two readthroughs, such was the power of this style of presentation. (Some good presentation tips at this site too - linked from Presentation Zen). This led nicely into a discussion on ways of delivering this kind of material and its definite impact in the classroom. The following demo of using Audacity and MovieMaker 2 to create soundfiles and video emphasised the power of voiceover and sound effects alongside moving images. If only we’d been able to tap into the sound system I could guarantee that there wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house after the rendition of “Dulce et Decorum Est”.
Coming to a close with a demo of Kar2ouche Macbeth we looked at the power of positioning characters and generating discussion on what they might be thinking, and how the audience is affected by the relative positions and postures of the characters. This didn’t necessitate pupil use of Kar2ouche, in this medium it was intended only as a stimulus for discussion.
After the session we had a brief discussion on the nature of weblogs, and I hope to be working with Jo Dean in the near future on a class weblog here on ethink. Watch this space for further developments.