Alien Pedagogy

The major assessment of our poetry unit was presentations. Students were required to use Power Point and I gave them a few general principles to guide their use of the famous program.

• The speakers should draw their audience’s attention. The Power Point is just a tool.
• Therefore:
• Avoid animation.
• Avoid images unless they are relevant.
• Do not mix images with text.
• What you say out loud should be greater than what you present on the screen.
• Look at your audience or your partner and avoid looking at the screen.

On the whole, most students seemed relieved that they didn’t have to put on a show with Power Point. The ones that did use PPt as an anchor (ex/ Analysis of Simile // “A bell is tolling, fading, fading / just like love”) tended to spend more time analyzing how the figurative language worked and they maintained better eye contact and body language.

A few pairs chose to animate their Power Point and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that their critical thinking was less developed. In spite of the effort that they put into their PPt, their mark on the scoring card was reduced because of this.