Digital Literacy and My Presentations

Two images: guess which one is the 'before'.


For this week's class I reviewed my Back to School Night presentation. I chose this one because of the challenge of making a thought-provoking presentation with powerful imagery while at the same time having to impart some basic straight-forward information.

During Back to School Night, for example, I always try to give the parents an introduction to the goals of the curriculum. I find that most parents are not particularly interested in the nuts and bolts of the curriculum (and tend to forget them when you tell them) but want to know about what their children will be striving to achieve throughout the year.

In Grade 6 this is a particularly interesting topic since it involves a very large transition from more literal to more abstract thought. We are constantly asking students, for example, "What does this represent?" "How could this idea be represented symbolically?" "What does this artifact possibly tell you about the people who inhabited this region?'' Etc. etc. etc. This often initially confounds students who have been very successful in the past, so I like to give parents an idea of what their children might be struggling with at the start of the year. Essays and discussion about books, for example, throw many students who are powerfully drawn to re-telling the plot. It can be frustrating at first but leads to an explosion of new ideas and WAYS of thinking about things.

In addition, the evening provides a great opportunity to talk to parents about some of the difficulties they are already facing at home (children who are suddenly uncommunicative, who see their friends as increasingly important, who want to be independent but are sometimes not ready etc.). In a sense, both students and parents are going through tremendous changes and I want parents to know that communication with me is an essential part of managing the change.

These ideas are easy to represent visually with powerful and interesting imagery. This year, my images were generally of classroom activity and, though they provided me with a suitable springboard for my questions and comments, they were not in and of themselves thought-provoking. Saturday gave me a chance to revamp much of my presentation for next year and to find many 'symbolic' images. For example, I chose a shot of an empty, desolate-looking bus shelter to represent the idea that students and parents are not alone in the changes they are experiencing. Next year, I have no doubt that the image will stay with parents long after they have forgotten my name.

It also allowed me time to figure out how to include basic information such as website URLs (parent portal, student portal, my blog) that I want parents to have. I settled on showing parents the sites (by embedding the link in my powerpoint) and then emailing them the links themselves. Since I don't expect many of them to be taking notes, this seemed like a good compromise.