The other day I met with a teacher to go over some things about our LMS. When I arrived to her classroom she had a student who had to give her a presentation before we started, so I decided to stick around and wait for him to finish. The student did a great job and really knew a lot about the topic. He was very mature and even shook the teacher’s hand and thanked her when the presentation was over. I assumed he had been absent on his presentation day.
I was wrong.
This student had asked the teacher if he could give his first class presentation of the year to just her because he was afraid he may be sick if he had to do it in front of the whole class. He wanted a chance to work his way up to giving a presentation in front of the whole class. I’m sure there are many other students in the building who have this same debilitating fear of public speaking.
So I got to thinking this weekend, how can teachers help students build their confidence to present in front of the entire class?
Then I remembered one of the screen capture tools I included in my 5 in 5 screencast from October 2013. I thought students could use Jing (or any screencast tool) to take a screencast of their presentation, including their voice to talk through the presentation just as they would in front of the class. Then students could upload their presentations to screencast.com and share the link with the class via a discussion board, class blog, class wiki, etc. Each student would be required to watch all the other students’ screencasts and comment on the presentation.
Sharing screencasts may be an alternative to first time, in-person class presentations, especially if you have a lot of shy students. How do you help students build their confidence to present in front of a large group?
Tech To You Later!
Katie