Russell Stannard reflects on a good use of Present.Me: reflection.
This isn’t the first time I have written about Present.Me. As soon as I saw this tool, I knew it had lots of potential for the ELT classroom. The difference, however, is that I have now done lots of work with it, and I can share my results with you. I am really impressed with it and my students seem to be, too.
Present.Me
Present.Me (https://present.me) allows a teacher or student to upload Word documents, PDF files or a set of PowerPoint slides and then add their voice to them – and video, too, if they have access to a webcam. The resulting recordings can then be disseminated over the internet by sharing the link or embedding the recordings in a blog or web page. The document will appear on the left-hand side of your screen and the webcam recording on the right.
The potential of this tool is almost limitless. It is ideal for teachers who want to produce content that students can access out of the class, such as lectures, mini-presentations, vocabulary to practise, etc. Teachers could, for example, record themselves going over a particular grammar point. Their PowerPoint slides would be on the left and the video of them giving an explanation on the right.
This tool has amazing potential for students as well. They could prepare a presentation using PowerPoint slides and then record themselves going through and explaining the slides. They could choose a topic that really interests them: a place they like visiting or information about their family and friends, etc. This has real potential in EAP classes, too, as students can create mini-presentations associated with the topics they are studying, and these can easily be shared with their teacher or peers.
I also think this tool could easily be used for preparing students for oral exams. The webcam scenario means that students could work in pairs. The questions could appear on the screen, with one student conducting the interview using the questions and the other student answering them. Similarly, students could be given a speaking task to do, with the task instructions appearing on the left-hand side of the screen and the students appearing in the webcam recording on the right-hand side, doing the task.
Reflection
I really believe that developing good reflective practitioners is at the heart of what we are trying to do in education. When I think about my own learning, how it has evolved and how I have learnt to become more autonomous, then it all relates back to my ability to reflect, draw conclusions from my reflections and then attempt to act on them. Reflection and autonomy are closely related since good autonomous learners are continually reflecting on their learning and refining it.
The problem is that reflection is not easy to do. It is time- consuming and students don’t often see the point of it. They often don’t like the fact that the reflections they are asked to do are written – which means additional work. This happened to me when I did my MSc dissertation. I didn’t like the fact that I had to write a reflective diary, on top of the 15,000-word essay that I had to produce.
I have wondered about getting students to reflect orally rather than in written form. Recently, I was running a series of experimental classes, using a range of different technologies. I wanted the students to reflect on the lessons and explain to me what they thought they had learnt, what sort of language processing had taken place and how I could improve the activity in the future.
In one particular class, we experimented with a tool called Wallwisher. The students had to work in groups and create ‘tourist guides’ for various cities in Europe by finding interesting articles, videos, pictures and links and adding them onto an electronic corkboard (a ‘wallwisher’). This meant working in groups, organising the activity, finding the content, adding it to the corkboard, editing it and then finally choosing one student to present it to the class.
I provided a series of reflective questions that I wanted the students to answer after the class. They uploaded them into Present.Me and then recorded their answers. They shared the links with me so that I was able to play back their reflections and listen to what they had said.
What amazed me first was just how much they said. The reflections were far more detailed than anything they had ever produced in written form. But more important was the quality of the reflections. The students really gave me an insight into how their groups had organised themselves, how much language was actually produced and what they actually thought of the activities. This led to several changes in the way I organised groupwork and the way that the students worked on the internet. It gave me probably my first true insight into what really happens when we do groupwork, seen from the students’ point of view. I learnt more from that one reflective session done orally than I had ever learnt from any other reflective technique I had attempted.
Along with the usual training video to show you how to work with Present.Me (see below), I have provided an example recording of what one of the students said, for you to listen to. This is a real example and though it is not the best and most detailed reflection I received, it does demonstrate how a tool like Present.Me could be used. Although this was not the aim of the activity, it also demonstrates the potential of Present.Me as a simple tool for developing students’ speaking skills.
Unfortunately, Present.Me requires a good internet connection, but if you are lucky enough to have one, it is an excellent tool. I do know that they are gradually developing better compression, so you might find that in a year or two it will work on much slower internet connections.
How to use Present.Me
www.teachertrainingvideos.com/presentme/index.html
Student example
https://present.me/view/47956-wallwisher-activity- feedback-reflection
Russell Stannard is a Principal Lecturer in ICT at the University of Warwick, UK, where he teaches on the MA in ELT. He won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in Information and Communications Technology in 2008, TEFLnet Site of the Year in 2009 and a 2010 British Council ELTon award, all for his popular website www.teachertrainingvideos.com.
