Adams-C5 BookRecommendations

Adams-C5
Project Rationale: My goal was to create short informational presentations on books being read by my College Prep seniors as part of a Life Studies unit they complete over the second semester. They often struggle to find a book that they like, so I wanted them to have a way to streamline their decision process. In this way they get visual and spoken information from their peers who have read and liked the books. This project is a step towards my ultimate goal of compiling our recommended reading into a "recommendation library" of sorts, where students can go see and hear about interesting books from other students. I am not sure that present.me is the format I will use to do that, but since others were curious about this program at our last ELITE meeting, I thought I would use it so they could see how it works and explore it as an option, too.


The (Intended) Process: Using present.me, we recorded power points and opinions about books we are currently reading. Each student created a short (2-4 slide) power point of their book and composed a short description of the book, which was to prepare them for presenting their power points into the webcam. The Actual Process was that I spent a lot of time incorporating the students' power points into my power point (either you use one big power point or everyone does their own-I just added theirs to mine), and I had to enlist some stand-ins to take the place of the students' spoken parts, because my students were too embarrassed to talk into the camera in front of their friends (we did this project in class)! If I pursued this project using present.me, I would create a "broadcasting space" that was private (a hallway or the library, for example) and I would make sure the spoken parts were well-written and practiced before filming-it's not easy to talk smoothly into the camera, as you can see by my video! I also plan to require more specific information about the book....these presentations are really just short reviews, not book talks, but right now we are just experimenting to see what program will work best for our purposes.

Resources/student work: We used present.me at http://present.me/index.cfm
The students at work and rudimentary samples of their work are shown in the presentation, which can be accessed using this link: http://present.me/view/5232-6th-hour-book-talks
Although each student composed a short recommendation and powerpoint, we only included parts of two.

Reflection: I like the visual and audio elements of this program-it offers pictures/graphics/data and the opportunity to see real people (that students may actually know) talking to them.

On the flip side-I thought the editing process in this program was somewhat cumbersome. Also plan any "changing of the guard" at the webcam and practice, practice, practice speaking (I obviously didn't do enough and it shows.) I was frustrated at being tied to the camera, and getting a good webcam angle can be tricky, as can the use of props.

The students really dug in to this project. and jumped at the chance to share their knowledge. Although they were loath to speak openly in front of the class, I think they would have done it in a more private setting in order to share their "finds." I look forward to further experimenting with this and other programs.