Day+4

toc = = =**Day 4: Google Docs for Presenting**=

Prerequisite Knowledge
1. Ability to create and manipulate slides in PowerPoint and/or Google Docs presentations. 2. Ability to locate and insert images and other multimedia files into a slideshow.

Content
The Google Docs presentation tool offers new ways to use age-old PowerPoint style presentation activities, and it holds the potential for completely new ones. Today we will look at how the sharing and collaboration abilities of Google presentations allow for engaging lessons in language arts.

We will take plenty of time to "play" today with building our own presentations. While we have all no doubt built a plethora of PowerPoint slideshows over the years, we will be creating presentations meant for shared use and viewing on the web rather than simply for projecting on a screen. We will also experiment with features that can make student-created presentations more worthwhile as a way to demonstrate learning.

Objectives
By the end of Day 4, participants will:

1. Develop strategies for using Google presentations as a powerful pre-reading device. 2. Be able to effectively include advanced features such as speaker notes, sharing, synchronous chat, and embed code with Google presentations. 3. Be able to create highly engaging lesson activities and projects involving student-created shared presentations. 4. Hone their skills at slide layout and teaching good slide design.

Lesson Activities
1. Facilitator directs participants to Digital Booktalk []. Participants peruse the book trailer videos for a short time. Facilitator then leads a discussion on how the concept could be easily transferred to simple slideshow presentations to introduce literature readings.

2. Participants choose a novel, story, or literature genre they teach or have taught. They then create a short pre-reading "trailer" presentation of approximately 5 slides. Participants are encouraged to include highly engaging images or other media to spark interest. Finally, participants embed their "literature trailers" in the blogs created the day before. (brief review of embedding shared html code may be necessary).

3. Participants break into the small groups from day 3 to view each others' presentations (They can find the new posts in their RSS feeds from day 3). The entire group will view each presentation one at a time, using the "view together" option. Facilitator directs participants to the synchronous chat interface, and encourages participants to discuss the presentation as they view it. After viewing the presentations, participants record their thoughts on the blog post containing the presentation regarding ways they could use Google presentations as a pre-reading or reader response tool in their classrooms. Full group discussion follows.

4. Each participant creates a new slideshow of 3-4 slides based on a simple language arts topic (i.e. defining vocabulary words, identifying similes and metaphors, etc.). However, most of the slides' content are left blank. Each slide is labelled with the name of a small group member. Small groups collaborate to complete each other's slideshows. When finished, the original author embeds the presentation in a new blog post, with a brief reflection on how this technique could be used in the classroom. If time permits, participants can visit each other's blogs and add comments.

5. The third presentation will be a completely collaborative effort in small groups. Each small group member will contribute one or two slides summarizing a quick lesson ideas for using collaborative presentations in their language arts classes. The final small group presentations will be embedded here:

Additional resources and materials
Digital Booktalk - []

Evaluation
Please take a moment to fill out the evaluation form below about the day's activities.

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