CEDU 531--Week 4: How My Students and I Can Improve our Presentations!

As we have progressed through this class, I realize how many new things I have learned (podcasts, photosharing, online multimedia tools and rubrics, etc.) and how I need to unlearn some presentation methods that I have used for many years. In particular, Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds (pictured here) has opened my eyes to more effective presentation methods for my teaching. I now eagerly anticipate conveying these design techniques to my students. At North Junior High, we teach non-linear PowerPoint in our 8th grade Computer Applications course and students continue to use this presentation tool in our business classes as well as science, English, and social studies.

Following are some areas, suggested by Reynolds, in which I can improve my presentation methods:
· “Quote This”—I have never used quotes before but now understand how short quotes add credibility to presentations.
· Image websites—Reynolds’ uses images from iStockphoto.com throughout our text. They certainly captured my attention and I will investigate this site as well as other recommended sites.
· “Masking tape and paper note”—What a great way to display short text passages with visuals!
· Bullet points—minimize!! Use for summarizing only. This runs against my past practices and certainly goes against what we typically teach our 8th and 9th graders to do. I will de-emphasize bullet points when my students create their Business Plan VoiceThreads this June.
· Signal-to-Noise Ratio—delete irrelevant components of a presentation. Always take a hard look at what you are including in text and graphics.
· Text within Images—I will place text within larger photos more often. Reynolds’ examples were helpful.
· Empty Space—I have heard this theory before when creating print ads. It certainly applies to effective presentations.
· Balance—I have always made my slides symmetrical. Time to mix in some asymmetrical slides!

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CEDU 531--Week 3: Storytelling in Business Education

For the last several years, all of my Business Venture students have written Entrepreneur Profiles in which they research famous entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Mary Kay Ash, Kimora Lee Simmons, and Mark Cuban. My eight and ninth graders are required to research the person’s background information (childhood, education, previous business/career experiences, socioeconomic status), company, ideas, and products/services. Students also share if the entrepreneur succeeded right away and if they solved a problem in society and/or for him or herself. Finally, students analyze the importance of their entrepreneur.

I have considered allowing students the option to create PowerPoints rather than Word documents. Several asked for this choice this semester and they did nice work, both in the content as well as in their class presentation. However, I now recognize how this assignment would be perfect for storytelling. Students could use VoiceThread or JumpCut to share the story of their entrepreneur’s background, company, success, and importance. They could even role-play in the first person as they add voiceover text to their slides. As discussed in our last grad course, authenticity and the LoTI level would be greatly increased as students presented their VoiceThreads or JumpCuts to their peers.

At North Junior High, we place a strong emphasis on providing students with options. In this case, I would allow students to create their Entrepreneur Profile in Word, PowerPoint, VoiceThread, or JumpCut. The latter three would require a class presentation. I believe that this lesson/assignment about famous entrepreneurs (their ideas, perseverance, management skills, creativity, etc.) would be best learned if students could fully immerse themselves in a method that best matches their learning styles.

CEDU 531--Week 2: VideoThread in Business Education

http://voicethread.com/#b101929

After we completed our Rosa Parks group VoiceThread last Tuesday, it occurred to me that my Business Venture students could utilize this multimedia tool as a most engaging method in which to present their business plans. This culminating project has always been done in Word. Students enjoy this; however, I believe they will be more engaged if they can use pictures of their business layout and products, maps of their location, sample ads, and organizational charts for their personnel. Adding their voices on top of these graphics will create an authentic assessment as their peer audience raises the LOTI level.

In order to prepare for this new multimedia learning opportunity, I will need to do the following:
▪ Work with our building tech coordinator to get microphones. In addition, she and I will need to come up with a game plan on e-mail addresses required for student VoiceThread registration. My initial thoughts are Gaggle, Gmail, or students’ own existing e-mail addresses. She can advise me on which option is most in line with our district technology policies and budget.
▪ Make sure students do not get blocked from the VoiceThread site. Our filter will block new sites once students start to use them.
▪ Create my own business plan VoiceThread. I may use my grandfather’s stories of his gas station in the Third Ward and/or his hardware store in Wauwatosa. I cannot wait to try this out!
▪ Decide how much I will shorten the Word portion of the project. As recommended in our textbook by Garr Reynolds, this document would serve to provide detailed elements that connect to the VoiceThread.
▪ Decide if the Word portion will make up the business plan grade and the VoiceThread serve as the exam grade. These would serve as assessments of all units in Business Venture.

CEDU 531--Week 1: How Might I Use Digital Storytelling in Class?

When I first reviewed our course description, I was not sure how an 8th and 9th grade business education teacher could utilize digital storytelling in our Business Venture and Financial Life Skills classes at Menomonee Falls North Junior High. However, after reading Chapters 1 and 2 of DigiTales, I now have some ideas that will strongly engage my students.

In Business Venture, an introductory business course, I might include digital storytelling in the following areas:

• Entrepreneur Profile: Rather than writing a profile of a famous entrepreneur (Kimora Lee Simmons, Ray Kroc, Bill Gates, Debbi Fields, etc.) in Word or creating a PowerPoint presentation about their life, my students could create a digital story that covers the entrepreneur's cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, childhood, education, previous business/career experiences, company, ideas, products, and/or inventions. In addition, my students could tell stories of their subject's previous business failures and successes. Finally, students could evaluate the importance of their entrepreneur and discuss what, if any, problems their businessperson solved in society and if we are better off because of them.


• Local Business Field Trip: Upon their return from our walking field trip to a nearby entrepreneur's business, my students could tell the story of that person's role in management, marketing, human resources, and finance/accounting. Telling the story of the start of the entrepreneur's career and business would also be an authentic assessment of student learning.

In Financial Life Skills, storytelling could be used in the following units:

• Budget Project: Students would interview their parents or guardians and uncover the story of how they analyze their monthly income and expenses. A greater understanding of the complexities of personal finance and a sense of empathy for their caregivers would be results.
• Consumerism: Instead of writing fictitious customer complaint letters, students could use digital multimedia stories to tell about real complaint situations that they or their families have encountered. In lieu of an actual occurrence, students could also create scenarios, as suggested by our author, Bernajean Porter, on page 19 of her book. These scenarios would envision appropriate and effective complaints, leading to positive consumer results.
• Identity Theft/Phishing: After learning how to avoid identity theft and phishing attempts, my students could create stories that describe how consumers are adversely affected by these negative events. Students would reinforce avoidance techniques and also understand the consequences suffered by identity theft and phishing victims.

Now that I have brainstormed these ideas, I look forward to trying some out with my students in order to increase the relevancy of their learning. I also believe this storytelling increases the LOTi level as students share their creations with their peers, families, and local businesspeople.

CEdu 521 Week 5: Final Project Connections

Going into Week 5 of our class, I thought that the time spent listening to our peers' final project presentations might be tedious and somewhat irrelevant. I am glad to state that I was wrong with those preconceptions! I found many ideas in our unit plans that I can take back to my business students at Falls North. This sharing of relevant technology use and authenticity proved to be most valuable.

Some of the connections I made to improve my students' future learning in Business Venture and Financial Life Skills are as follows:

• Jodi's "Adventures in Buying a Gift" unit had many differentiation suggestions that would easily expand this project beyond special education and into regular education, gifted and talented, and ELL. The product research, consumerism elements, budgeting connections, and presentation possibilities would all work very well for my Financial Life Skills students. The process of gift buying could be modified to fit the consumer purchasing decision lesson in our Business Venture marketing unit. Jodi's use of technology (PowerPoint, greeting card creation, digital pictures, calculations, etc.) and authenticity was strong and made me think further on how to use these tools for our Business Venture entrepreneur profiles and business plans. I look forward to adding more options to assignments that were previously done only in Word plus adding audiences to increase my students' efforts.
  
• Lori's Sickle Cell Anemia unit reinforced my previous brainstorming in the area of presentations. In addition, even though Lori is working with first graders, her research and writing ideas (with much sharing) could certainly be expanded for my junior high students. Finally, both Jodi's and Lori's projects had strong altruistic elements as students were asked to think of others (gift recipients and children with sickle cell anemia). As a business teacher, I strive to add this outward view as often as possible when dealing with ethics, charitable contributions within a budget, and honesty and empathy in interpersonal business relationships.
  

An additional connection that I made was to take my 8th and 9th grade introductory accounting unit and share it with our Menomonee Falls High School accounting teacher. Sara is a fantastic educator who never ceases to make accounting engaging and authentic to her students. I would like Business Venture to serve as a "feeder" to her program by "hooking" my students on accounting. I look forward to Sara's feedback and ideas!

CEdu 521 Week 4: Collaboration and So Much More!

CEdu 521 has been a most helpful course in several areas. First, as mentioned in our initial class, we indeed are learning less new material but are now applying what we have learned in our previous courses. Developing a project unit has been most exciting as we add authenticity and relevancy. I cannot wait to introduce my new accounting unit! While looking at the units I teach in Financial Life Skills and Business Venture, I am discovering so many methods to increase the LoTI and “Give a Darn” index. As a business education teacher, I continually strive to engage my students by adding value and purpose to our elective courses. CEdu 521 is helping me do this.

Not only is our course content making me a more proficient teacher, but the high level of collaboration in our cohort is also helping. I sense the enthusiasm we all have to try out our new projects/units. In addition, it is most enlightening to share our work with our study groups. I have learned so much from Tom and Megan. I never would have thought that working with a high school math teacher and a kindergarten teacher would have been helpful to my business teaching. However, they have broadened my view of education and made me think more creatively. I would not be using Inspiration with my 8th and 9th graders without Megan or be starting the process of purchasing a SMART Board without both Tom and Megan’s input. Every week, we help each other process what we have learned. This week, I needed help in developing a rubric and, as always, Tom and Megan came through!

Finally, it is always helpful to hear what other teachers in our cohort, regardless of district, age level, or subject, encounter with their students, parents, peers, district, administrators, tech people, schedules, etc.