A normal weekend
This story is to provide my students with a some information about myself other than what they know of me at school; serious and no nonsense. The purpose of this is to help build rapport and lines of communication with them. As Chickering notes in the seven principles-communication between educators and learners is key. This is much easier if they know a bit the teacher, as well, I intend that the students create a similar story about themselves at the outset of the course. So, sound pedagogical approaches would indicate that modeling a task can provide ideas and encouragement for students.
Affordances and Challenges
I had looked at several tools before settling on Slide. Initially I liked the simplicity, general approach,and what appeared to be an option for music (possible in the pay version ). Different backgrounds and themes can be selected allowing for personalization and it has connections to numerous social media sites where individuals can draw upon resources that already exist; the remix/and mash-up. I was concerned though by it’s request to access Facebook data and accounts and therefore I bypassed this by downloading content to the computer and then uploaded to Slide. Other limitations were limited ability to re-size or re-orient the images, the text for each slide is also visible only if one mouses over the slide, which at first I though was a negative, but in further consideration it provides viewers with an opportunity to construct the story first without the teller’s bias.
Story telling works well in that it is a natural form of communicating information both factual and fictitious. Depending upon whether it use text or graphics it can draw upon familiar formats and allow for creativity. Limitations lie in the setup and execution if using social software (students my have weak technical skills or be sucked into the “black-hole” of exploring tools and making it “pretty”). Depending upon the format of the story; images only for example, it is possible to mis-interpret details or miss ideas all together if conveying academic content. Stories for the most part are uni-directional and only promote limited conversation, at least initially.
As I noted in the main page post; these are great tool for using in the classroom for a variety of ways and provide multiple opportunities to not only talk about creating presentations, but also building technical skills, and internet-ethics/safety.
Reference
Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.