One of the first things I have students do with the Chromebooks, is learn how to create a Presentation in Google. I've found it incredibly useful tool to organize thoughts, and demonstrate learning.
On Thursday I gave the students the task to calculate the cost of college for four years. I put tuition of nine local public and private Universities and a very low cost of living estimate ($1000 per semester... like that's gonna happen...) in a spreadsheet and asked them to calculate the cost of a four-year degree. As I was about to pass out poster paper for students to demonstrate their learning a student blurted out, "Are we going to create a Presentation to show how much it costs?"
Don't you love that? When students come up with better ways to do things? Sometimes it can almost be irritating, but today I ran with it. I played it cool... or as cool as I can play things. (I don't typically play ANYthing cool. Just ask my wife). "Well, of course!" I answered back. "That's what I was thinking," I lied. I threw together a quick Presentation Template, and created a new folder titled "College Costs" in our Math folder. The Math folder was already shared, so the new folder was automatically shared with the whole class. Kids knew how to make a copy of the template, and to put their copy back into the folder so I, and everyone else in the class could see their work. Within 2-3 minutes of my exchange with that student everyone had the Presentation, and began working.
On each slide of their Presentation, I had them perform a different task. On one they calculated the cost of their dream college. On another they figured out the most expensive college in the state (Utah, we're looking at you...) and on another they shared how they calculated which was the best buy (Congratulations, Snow College!). Then I had them figure out how much they needed to save every year between now and then if they wanted to have enough money to pay for college. Most needed to put away over $3,000. We had a number of awesome conversations from this task. If students finished while the rest of the class was working, they went into other Presentations and made comments, or suggestions.
When they were done I split the class in half. Half of the students presented "Poster Session" style, while the rest of the class walked around listening to the students and watching their presentations. Then we switched.
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| Student Sample: I made a vanilla template. They added the theme, pictures and detail. |
Using Google Presentations may have added some time to this lesson. I had the time, so it worked out. It was also worth the time, because students were accountable to one another, and spent that extra bit of time creating a product they were proud of. They really had to examine their math in order to create something they were ready to show their peers.
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