educating for the journey

Power corrupts, but Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
- Paul Grabowitz, USC Berkeley – 2003

Never before have three letters elicited such fear in a group of high school seniors then these. The acronym is for the Senior Extended Essay, a major project that is a requirement for all Carol Morgan students to graduate (roots in IB’s EE). It is a lot of work for both students and staff and is in its sixth year here at CMS. The theory behind the project is sound; a culminating activity to these seniors’ high school career. It is cross-curricular and combines teacher effort from all walks.

The papers are in, the oral defense looms.

Today i sent my classes to the FlowLab and spent the day under contract from the English department trying to prevent these students from using PowerPoint to ruin their oral defenses. A large task; these students came with my personal nightmares: projects riddled with fancy transitions, PowerPoint sound effects, clip-art, bouncing bullets, the works. These were the exact things i was hoping to prevent seeing by giving this workshop. Hopefully my message will have some of these students re-consider their work. My original hope was to move some students to some web 2.0 presentation tools (zoho, slideshare, etc.) but i quickly realized that what was needed was some presentation basics. In preparing for this presentation i elicited some help form some of my favorite bloggers and contributors so i thought i would share some of them here:

• Garr Reynolds on Presentations; on Preparation
• Christ Craft
• Downloading YouTube video
• Importing DVD clips

We are really letting students run with creative license on these defenses this year and are hoping that through continued monitoring we can see them really take off. I will keep you posted.