Noted teacher, Tweeter, and recent real-life colleague Robert Kaplinsky asked about this tweet today:
About to take notes on the stage presence of speakers in @tedtalks, using a shared login on #GoogleDrive and #iPads. #20time
b Matt Vaudrey (@MrVaudrey) November 4, 2013
There’s a lot happening in and around my class, specifically with regard to the students’ 20% Projects, so how about I just tell you what I told him.
The TED talk notes on Stage Presence were in conjunction with prepping my iPad class on their 20% projects. I got the idea from Kate Acker, who had her seniors watch TED videos on mute, making observations on stage presence only.
As you may imagine, about 20% of the notes were potent (a fitting ratio), but it led to a good class discussion with a few students declaring their intent.
“I’m gonna make sure to look at the audience!”
“Can I walk around the room? Sweet!”
What I neglected to mention to Robert (until now) is how the shared Note-taking thing worked (and how it worked out).
Shared Note-Taking
1.) This class has 1:1 iPads. They had previously downloaded the Google Drive app and logged in with one of my Gmail accounts (created specifically for this purpose).
2.) All students open Google Drive and open the spreadsheet that I had previously created for them. As you can see, student names run down the left, name of the speaker runs across the top.
3.) With 17 students all active on the same spreadsheet, it gets a little glitchy. Toward the end, some students are getting frustrated, insisting “Franz deleted my note!”.
4.) Only 17 students (out of the 22) are participating on their iPads, because two students have theirs confiscated pending a parent conference. One is absent, and one is lazy; she sits vacantly at her seat until I poke her with a pencil, at which point, she mumbles, “I can’t log in.” Super.
5.) The resulting notes (spread over a couple days) give us fodder for a class discussion on stage presence. I highlight a few boxes that interest me and we talk about them. Hopefully, they’ll take them to heart when we do a rehearsal next Wednesday.
As long as I’m hoping for things…
~Matt “100 by 100” Vaudrey
*It’s also notable here that I first heard of shared note-taking at the CUE conference in a session by Bill Selak.
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