Slideshow Karaoke

This was the funniest lesson I've ever done.

I'm not sure that qualifies me for Teacher of the Year status or anything, but today I had an entire class of students engaged, participating, speaking, and begging to be in on the fun. It didn't take long to set up, it practiced a ton of skills, and my room was raucous with mirth.

I didn't come up with Slideshow Karaoke, I'm not sure it has a direct parent. I learned about it this summer from Darren Massa. I filed it away in whatever part of my brain is now full time dedicated to remembering possible lesson ideas, to be accessed as needed. As organized as my external filing system is, my internal one probably has that next to the names of everyone who ever played in Metallica and next to the plot of all the Star Trek movies* College** is in there somewhere too, Mom.

I was inspired to pull Slideshow Karaoke out of the filing cabinet because we've been doing a lot of presenting lately. My kids in front of the room speaking is happening frequently and while they are getting better at it they aren't getting better as quickly as I'd like. Lots of constructive criticism, lots of advice, lots of time to practice. We needed a little extra push so they could internalize some of the things I've been saying about not hanging onto the slide for dear life, about using the slide as a starting point and then speaking extemporaneously from it.

Slideshow Karaoke.

Here's the basic drill (how I did it, you change it, it's your world)- I broke my kids up into eight groups. Why eight? Because I have six Chromebooks and two MacBooks. I told each group to create a five-to-six slide slide deck, plus a title slide. Don't put your name on it. Your slide deck needs to follow one topic. Each slide needs to have an image and a short piece of text on it. That's all. Every deck goes into a shared Drive folder. Not much time was given to create these decks. They don't need to be detailed.

Then I call groups up and randomly choose a deck from the folder. Not the one they choose. The group must present the slide deck as through it were their own presentation. Do your best to fill in the blanks in your knowledge of the topic. Improvise. Think on your feet, stay calm, and do your best. I'm not expecting accuracy, I'm expecting creativity and effort.

Dear readers- my kids are hilarious. Hi-lar-i-ous. Some of my quietest kids came out of their shells and Back to the Future. Turns out none of them had seen Back to the Future. Try to imagine how confusing the plot of that series is if all you know about it is some pictures in a slideshow. They totally faked their way through it, getting a bunch quote unquote wrong about the movie but completely right in the context of what they were given.
made up the best stuff. I had a group who had to present about

We learned about slideshows, we learned about public speaking, we learned about improvisation, we learned about making clean, understandable slides, we learned how funny and quick some of our friends are, and we had a great time. Everyone. The shy ones, the one's who would be terrified of speaking in public, got to be supported by their peers. It didn't kill anyone, no one cried or stressed out. The class made it a safe place because everyone was in the same boat- totally unprepared.

There are other forms of Slideshow Karaoke I've heard of. One is create a completely random deck. Random image, random text unrelated to image. Put five of those together. Then give the speaking group a random topic. "You have to talk about why the character in this books is a hero." The speaking groups need to take these random slides and try to fit them into the narrative they have been given. I think this is what I'll do next.

The other is take all the presentations currently in your Drive, choose a slide from each and create a new deck. Give the speaking group an unrelated topic and make them relate it. Same idea, but making use of slides that have a specific purpose adds another level to it.

I'm so amused by the decks my kids created that I'm even linking to them right here. Use them in your class or use them as a jumping off point. This has so many possibilities.

*except Into Darkness, suck it JJ and Orci.

**all the WWE I watched in...

Gold Rush Projects: Crowd Sourced Lesson, Student-Driven Project

It started here. I wrote a project. I posted the link on twitter. TeacherTwitter made my project better.

Now I'd like to share the fruits of our labor.

It went pretty much as I expected. I grouped the students according to predisposition. Who are the natural leaders, who are the artists, who is going to need the whip cracked? I don't mean I'm boxing my kids in. I don't grab them by the shoulders and proclaim for all to hear, "Thou art the Leader! Go forth!" But we all know groups need an engine and some kids have a bigger natural engine than others. Someone needs to kickstart the group when things are dragging. They all can draw, but there are some who love to draw. They all can research, but some will be better at guiding the others to relevant information. I try to create teams that have both flexibility and strength. The chemical composition of my class makes this difficult, but I did pretty well. Which means I helped them do pretty well.

The students were allowed two small reading books about the gold rush and pioneer days, a library book about the life of miners that was too much to read in one sitting but gave good in-depth information. They had the story that we read in our reading books which started this whole thing. And they had the interwebs, based off safesearchkids.com, my preferred kid search engine.

Are the results fantastic? No. Like most student projects they range from pretty good to oh no, where do you think you found that? Sometimes in the same project. There are flashes of creativity and insight. There's also a lot of, "Wow, I didn't spend enough time helping them understand how much gold is and was worth so they just pulled numbers out of their butts." To be honest, I was more concerned with the process of mining than the hard facts of currency conversion, so I'm letting the number fudging slide. Yes, they could have looked it up. But it wasn't explicitly on my list of things to know. The process and life of stuff was more important.

Someone, I don't know who, suggested Youblisher as a way to make the booklets digital. I did that today and it worked pretty well. I didn't crop the .pdf s so there's some white space where the scanner assured me, "No no, these are 8 1/2 x 11 pages. I promise. Stop fiddling with the controls, I got this." I didn't have time to fight with the computer and this is a first time, so I'm happy.

Lauren Taylor (@LTaylorELA) suggested audioboom for a different project and I decided rather than deal with video, this time we'd make radio interviews. Easier, quicker, less editing.

Below are the links to the group results. Each group has a link to their Youblisher, which is the booklet, and the audioboom, which is the interview. Like I said, I'm happy. Some I'm downright impressed. Feedback was and continues to be on-going and next time their products will be better. This was a first for us this year. Always looking for growth.

I want to thank everyone again for their help making the project better than I conceived it to be.

Group One
Audioboom
Youblisher

Group Two
Audioboom
Youblisher (not done yet)

Group Three
Audioboom
Youblisher (not done yet)

Group Four
Audioboom
Youblisher

Group Five
Audioboom
Youblisher

Group Six
Audioboom
Youblisher

Group Seven
Audioboom
Youblisher

Group Eight
Audioboom
Youblisher