A couple of months ago, I was speaking to Mrs. Faux (@mrsfaux), and she mentioned that she was using Prezi with her Grade 7 students. I said that it would be great if her students could teach mine how to use Prezi too. I thought that we could use the screen share feature in Skype to do this. The two of us spoke more about this plan, and even though Mrs. Faux had never used Skype before, she was willing to give this a try. We thought that June would be the perfect time!
Mrs. Faux worked with her students to create six Prezis -- each a separate mini-lesson -- on how to use Prezi. The students ordered the Prezi lessons according to what skills they thought needed to be taught when, and then they grouped them, so that they could teach two skills at a time. Today was our first of three Skype call Prezi lessons.
Last night, Mrs. Faux and I worked together via FirstClass (our email system) to set-up Skype on her laptop computer, and this morning, we did a practice call at 8:30 to make sure that everything was working well. Once I realized that I needed to turn on my microphone for her to hear me (oops!!), we were good to go!
My students were so excited for the call, and her students were fantastic teachers. They went step-by-step, explaining what to do, and they made sure to answer students questions at the end to clarify what they explained as well. I think that the sign of a great lesson is when every student is able to accomplish what is expected, and in this case, that is exactly what happened!
Thank you so much to all of the Grade 7's and Mrs. Faux too for teaching us something new, and giving us a great way to create media texts and practice our writing skills while having a lot of fun as well! We can't wait for our next set of mini-lessons on Friday.
For the students in my class, what did you think about using Prezi? What are you excited to learn next? For other educators that have used Prezi with their students before, how have you used this tool? What did your students think about using Prezi? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Aviva
4 comments:
A couple of weeks ago I discovered Prezi and decided to use it for an upcoming presentation that I'm doing on how my kids us technology. I found that it was a wonderful tool for brainstorming and collaborating, since I was able to share it with two other educators that were also presenting with me. I think that is will be a great tool to use for focus lessons and I can also see my students using it to make presentations.
Awesome Teresa! I just found out from Mrs. Faux that you can have multiple people working together on the same Prezi. I love this! I hope to use it to collaborate on presentations too, and I'm excited to have my students give this a try as well.
Thanks for your comment!
Aviva
I started using Prezi this year to introduce my vocabulary words to my class. Hmmm... maybe next year I need to have my kiddos create the Prezis. How long did this first time endeavor take you? I love reading your blog and seeing the wonderful tech integration. My class has been chosen to be a model technology classroom for next year and I have gotten several ideas from your class that I want to implement in some form or another.
Thanks again for sharing!
Sara
http://malchowsreflections.blogspot.com/
Thanks Sarah! The Prezis probably took about 3 hours in total to create. Some students did it faster though, and now I know that most would take far less time. I love the idea of having students make Prezis for vocabulary words. I hope that you share how it goes. Glad to hear that you find the blog helpful! Thanks for your comment!
Aviva
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