I really liked the ideas behind the in-class activity we did with Google Slides: I thought it was a fresh way of getting students engaged about content creation. I'm not sure if a similar activity would work in my class, though: given that all instructions and interactions would need to be in Spanish, the added stress of having to negotiate in a second (or sometimes third or fourth) language AND navigate new technology might be a bit much for most students. There's also the danger that, since anyone can edit the finished product, we'd run into a slight hiccup like we did in class where the format got a bit thrown off for a while. Still, I think there's definitely some merit to the idea: I can see, for example, how presenting Google Slides as an option for in-class presentations would benefit students with hectic schedules who just can't find time to meet up for collaboration, and the fact that all group members would have access to it would eliminate the danger of "Oh crud, we have to present today and Mateo has the presentation on his computer and he's not here!"
Other than Douglas, who mentioned that he had experimented with this sort of activity in his classes, has anyone else ever tried it? If so, what was your experience like, and how likely are you to repeat the activity in the future?
I haven't used Google Slides as a student, but I have been using it this quarter to coordinate presentations for a class I'm helping to teach. Because you can edit the same file at the same time, it's useful for small group collaboration to get everyone on the same page. That way, you don't have conflicting versions to merge. But, as you pointed out, with such a large class and free-for-all on editing, you can run into hiccups. I would definitely use Google Slides in the future for a central file location and the ability to view edits instantaneously, but probably limit it to a few people at a a time.
ReplyDeleteI borrowed Douglas' idea for that activity in the class I TA'd this quarter. Groups of freshmen pre-bio students were assigned a single figure from a simple science article and tasked with explaining the data and conclusions to the class after collaboratively building a two slide presentation. I think it was a relative success. It not only exposed the students to the primary literature in their desired major, but for many it was also their first experience using any slide generating software. I'm TAing a similar class next quarter and would like to incorporate another, similar activity then. The one technological glitch was that some of the computers had trouble inserting images into the Google presentation. We never did figure out why, but I guess this is why you test new tech before you put it into practice!
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