Pecha Kucha
Pecha Kucha is a presentation format where a presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds each. I developed this presentation on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) for my EDUC5001G Principles of Learning course.
In the presentation, I begin by proposing that the classroom is already a kind of social network where students are connected by virtue of being enrolled in the same course at the same school, and that a SNS can be seen as a natural extension of this network.
I explain the different ways I was using SNSs in the classroom. I started using a platform called Ning so I could have students role-play characters from The Great Gatsby. I observed that the project was engaging for students because it more closely resembled the kinds of communication students engaged with outside the classroom. Although I hadn’t taken EDUC5104 Learning
Pecha Kucha on Social Network Sites
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Tools yet, I was already observing aspects the ARCS Model of Motivational Design (Keller, 1987). I was also trying to apply the ideas that Yancey (2009) explored in her paper “Writing in the 21st Century.”
The second way that I used SNSs in the classroom was as a platform for blogging. I noted that while engaging, the role playing exercise didn’t really allow students to move very far beyond the lower tiers of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1994). I used blogging as an extension of the literature circle meetings that happened in the classroom. In the blog posts, students synthesized the learning from their own readings and the group meetings to start drawing conclusions about their texts. They were able to exercise critical thinking by commenting on the posts of other students and answering questions posed by their classmates about their ideas. They were also writing for an authentic audience of their peers. Furthermore, the digital environment of the Ning allowed students to incorporate multimedia, rather than text alone, to demonstrate their understanding.