Esri Ed UC: PowerPoint Rules!

I saw a lot PowerPoint at the Esri Education User Conference (Ed UC) held this past week in San Diego. It was at the heart of nearly every session, save perhaps the one-on-one interviews in the two plenaries on Saturday and Sunday. And, to be fair, presenters were pretty much required to use PowerPoint (or at least were asked to submit one).

One comment struck me as I sat through yet another valuable but rather un-engaging session on Tuesday. The presenter shared that he was using the same slides he used in class.

That got me thinking. Do these educators teach the same way in school that they present at Ed UC? I can’t believe that’s the case for educators who spoke about inquiry, problem or project based learning. But I fear some use the same “sage on the stage” PowerPoint lecture format I spent ten or 15 hours watching this past week with their students.

That leads me to envision the conference I wish I could attend. I want to see presenters (specifically those who don’t use PowerPoint) teach. I don’t want them to tell me about how they teach, I want them to teach me and other attendees the same way they do in the classroom or online or informally.

Off the top of my head I thought of three sessions where active learning might have been especially effective.

• I wonder if Megan Patent-Nygren could have squeezed even a mini-version of her inquiry-based learning (one of the most memorable presentations I saw) into an actual activity we the attendees could do. She told us about it, but I wanted to “do it.” 
• I wonder if Eileen Johnson, who spoke about using model builder in her project based learning courses, could have had us try just a bit of what her students do. Maybe she could have asked small groups to develop a way to explain the complex models to non-GIS stakeholders. 
• I wonder if Tom Baker, could have use a different tactic than a big group discussion about possible ways Esri could help those involved in geographic education research at the research SIG meeting. Perhaps small groups could have developed and vetted ideas, sharing just their favorite with the whole group.

Why are we not modeling the move to active, participatory, group, problem, project and inquiry based learning going on in classrooms across the world at our conference?

I did try to execute this once at NEARC Educator’s Day. It didn’t work out very well in part because 20 minutes is not enough time to do even part of lesson. I want to suggest one way we might attempt this sort of session at EdUC or other events like the NEARC Ed Day. Organizers could set aside a few of the 75 minutes sessions and invite master teachers to teach their favorite or their most innovative GIS or geography lessons. Some might need a computer lab, but others might not. Would you want to attend those sessions? I would!

Every educator with whom I’ve shared this idea responded, “I’d attend!” Why? I can answer for myself only. The last time I saw another instructor teach (outside of a conference GIS lab session or a formal training class) was in 1988, the year I completed my Masters at Penn State. I’ll be honest, I need some new material! To be clear, I don’t need new things to teach, I need to steal new techniques, approaches, etc. And, I want to steal them from the best educators in the geography/GIS space.

Break the Schools Rules, Break Your Rules, Just Teach!

It really was a knock upside the head when my colleague and instructional designer suggested we not have assignments due only on Tuesday nights. Pretty much every other course in the program had weekly assignments due on Tuesdays. Even the course I previously taught did!

"Assignments can be due whenever makes sense!"he assured me. So, after some discussion we revamped the syllabus such that assignments were announced on Wednesdays, but deliverables were due Friday, Monday and Tuesday of each week. Friday and Monday assignments were contributions to our class discussion and the Tuesday assignment included student reflections (what they learned) over the previous week. My grad students may not have liked so many deadlines, but they didn't balk at all. We all settled in to a nice rhythm after about two weeks.

While I know everyone puts artificial rules and boundaries on ourselves all the time, this was the first time I ran into it in teaching. Thankfully, I'm finding more and more instructors who toss out the rules. Here are two more rule breakers who are making news.

Did you read about John Boyer, aka The Plaid Avenger in the Chronicle of Higher Education? He does some crazy stuff to teach cajole 3,000 students (yes, 3,000) at Virginia Tech to learn about World Regions, basically a current events course. He does podcasts, uses language I would not use in the classroom, has no required assignments (students pick from a long list of ways to earn points)... Students love him and more importantly, they learn. Can everyone do what he does? No, but more power to him for doing "his thing" and breaking lots of rules.

Also in the Chronicle I read Jennifer Brannock Cox. She teaches journalism at Salisbury. She teaches in a computer lab and that means students can be distracted by their own or the schools computers. And, they are, of course, distracted, often preferring to check-in with friends rather than watch the PowerPoint slides go by. But Cox is paying attention to her students. She knew she had to be more interesting than Facebook and Twitter and personal e-mail. So, she broke the rules and ditched PowerPoint now and again in favor of ... her own real life journalism adventures.

I find that the keyboard clicking subsides when I take a break from the PowerPoint and provide an anecdote that may help illustrate my point. For example, when teaching journalism students about the dos and don'ts of interviewing, my students are riveted by the list of places I was kicked out of—shopping malls, grocery stores, people's homes—during my days working as a daily-newspaper reporter in Florida. They especially like to hear my stories about a fellow reporter who once hung from a tree over a cemetery to cover a private funeral. And they squirm when I describe the time I tried to contact an accused child molester by knocking on the door of the home he shared with the victim and his mother. (I was on the police beat at the time.)

Students love hearing about my adventures and misadventures as a former journalist, and they are full of questions. The discussion that ensues not only captures their attention (and distracts from the keyboard), but it also allows me to covertly teach them about media law and journalistic ethics.

It's so easy to fall into a habit of doing "what everyone else does" and "what you've always done." And, sometimes that works. Other times it doesn't. That's a good time to pull out the big book of breaking the rules. What educational or institutional rules have you broken? Which ones would you like to break?