Week of April 14-18, 2014 -- Preparing for the stretch run

It's hard to blog on a Friday about school after a long week of work.  This week for our 20 Percent Projects, I showed them a little Ted Talk on tying your shoes.  At this point in the year students are pretty autonomous in working on their projects.  Some students still are spinning their wheels going no where, and then there are the students that don't do anything, be it this project or anything at all, which could be a whole different blog of its own.

The reason I showed this video was to show that you don't need to have elaborate animations or fireworks to engage people and share something worth while.  It all comes down to storytelling.

When a 47-year-old man acknowledges that he has been tying his shoes the wrong way for all these years, it makes you want to hear more.  Why?  How?  Am I doing the same thing?

On days of presentations, when people aren't prepared and don't think about how they will present what they've done, then it becomes a tedious and boring day.

I'm going to continue to show students little videos like this leading up to their own presentations so that they can glean from good storytellers and presenters.