Wicked Problem Project: Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity
As a college student at Michigan State University, I always found that students disliked large group projects, and I included myself in that grouping. The nature of large group presentations often make them a difficult task to accomplish. Firstly, everyone has be on the same page, which means that meetings and communication are key. Problems arise because students obviously have different schedules making meeting up and getting work done as a team very difficult. More often than not, students end up splitting up assignments and having a designated tasks instead of working as a team together, which often times makes for a project with little conformity. Secondly, the creativity of large group assignments when they are presented is almost always lacking because the status quo is to use PowerPoint. While PowerPoint is a fantastic program in many respects, it is more of a program designed to present in a straight-forward manner. PowerPoint, in my opinion, doesn't foster creativity but instead takes away from it. Countless times in my college education was I assigned PowerPoint presentations as projects. These were always straight-forward presentations that took very little creativity on my part and I often felt like I could be presenting in some other type of software entirely. I have made movies in class before, but those were always difficult to make due to the time consuming nature of recording and editing a video. I wanted something simple yet complex. If there was a program out there that could 1. Be online and have collaborative features and 2. To be a more creative cousin of PowerPoint, I would love to see and use it. In my CEP 810 class, I was introduced to a program called Prezi. The second that I saw it in action I was in awe. The creativity and openness of the software was great. It looked great, allowed for many types of embeddable media, had many collaborative features that allowed separate people to edit the same document simultaneously, and allowed for the creation of an engaging, informative, and creative presentation.
In my Wicked Problem Project, I want to create a Prezi presentation on Prezi itself to show the features of the program through the program itself. This program will act as an easy to understand and follow tutorial on Prezi, what the program can do, and how you can be creative with it. There is plenty of education and Prezi literature online, including articles on the Prezi site itself. One story that I found is located here that is an interview with a well-renown Stanford professor about the creativity that Prezi allows for. I will also be using PreziU, which is the educational branch of Prezi, as a reference because it has collected plenty of articles and ways to use Prezi. I hope to be able to teach students and teachers alike the powers of Prezi as a presentation tool. Enhancing presentations through using a new tool is important, as is collaborative features in a program, and Prezi does both. Web 2.0 applications, which are very often free and keep all of your work online so collaboration is easier, is the way of the future.
Wicked Problem Project: Part B-Application of TPACK
I have decided to to do my Wicked Problem Project on Prezi, the online Web 2.0 presentation tool. I have found in my recent university stint, that collaboration and effective utilization of resources and manpower during group projects can be very difficult to achieve with the collection of different schedules and skill-sets of the members. More often than not, one or two students take the reigns of the projects and end up doing a larger percentage of the work. This makes for and unfair work environment as well as a weaker final product due to the work being handled often more quickly by a smaller minority of the group. The use of a cloud computing and collaborative software like prezi will make for a better product. The group planning stage of the initial assignment is important when addressing a new project, but once an idea and timeline is set, the use of Prezi will make for more efficient usage of group members time and resources. I will now be taking a look at the TPACK aspects of my Wicked Problem Project.
What is the TP knowledge for the solution?
From a technological perspective I will be using Jing and Prezi itself to teach the uses and effectiveness of Prezi as a tool in presentations and especially group projects. I will be implementing the uses of videos, screenshots, and other images to more effectively tutorialize the use of Prezi as a collaborative tool. I will also be presenting the final product in Jing. I hope that my video portions of my presentation will benefit the visual and auditory learner. This project emphasizes problem-based learning, and I hope to bring in a solution based on collaborative-based learning. The technology of Prezi will be used to present my presentation which is about Prezi in the first place, giving a very tutorial-like quality to my project. The Jing portion will serve as a tutorial on Prezi as well, benefiting those who learn best from seeing and hearing.
What is the TC knowledge for the solution?
The use of Prezi to present on the benefits of using Prezi is a good way make a tutorial because it shows the features of the program and how they can best be used as a presentation tool. Prezi is a very powerful tool in presentation and collaboration. I will be using imbedded youtube videos that promote the use of Prezi over other presentation software. I will be making a Jing presentation that guides the user through the presentation.
What is the PC knowledge for the solution?
The usage of video and images makes the learning of Prezi more accessible to students. Seeing a program in action before you use it is a great way for a person to wrap their head around the possible uses. While playing with Prezi from the start, learning through exploration, is another way going about the problem, I find that learning about the tools at hand before you use a software keeps the mind more open and willing to explore the program once given a chance.
Wicked Problem Project: Part C-Findings and Implications
Wicked Problem Project: Part D-Findings and Implications
I am creating a presentation on Prezi, the online Presentation tool, and gearing the presentation towards teaching how to use Prezi to collaborate with other people and groups in making professional level presentations. Cloud computing has given the World the ability to collaborate and share information at a level never before seen. Taking advantage of those opportunities both in the classroom and in the workplace will be vital to keeping up with technological advances and paradigm shifts in whatever areas of concentration. Prezi is a great looking, streamlined presentation tool that acts as an idea web for brainstorming and a powerful presentation tool that can use audio/visual media as a method of information sharing and presenting. I have started showing people my simple Prezi presentation on the uses of Prezi and have gotten overall positive reviews so far. Some things that I have learned during the beginning stages of implementation during this project can be seen below.
Formative
Thus far the implementation of the program has gone smoothly for the most point. I needed to gain more experience with Prezi in general before I could really teach the technology as a collaborative tool, but once I sat down and explored the technology for 2 hours, I found my grasp of it was strong and teaching it would not be difficult. I created a short 5 minute presentation on Prezi and began showing it, first to my parents, and then to some friends at Michigan State University.
Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice
The problem of practice for me was the fact that collaborating on projects in my experience can be quite difficult coming from the perspective of a recently graduated college student. Working around peoples schedules and busy lives often leads to people missing group meetings, differences in workload, etc. After working in Prezi and learning the software well, I have discovered its real usefulness as a collaborative tool that could easily be used outside of the classroom to create professional presentations for inside the classroom. Collaboration can be done on Prezi in real time through chatting and real-time editing, which addresses my problems well. Contributors can be invited from anywhere and contribute as long as they have an internet connection. I taught these lessons in my presentation and people overwhelmingly supported the technology because of its ease of use and creativity. I noticed that of the 7 people I had take watch my Prezi presentation, 3 of them had already heard and even used the technology, which tells me that it is growing in popularity and usage. The zooming feature was of course well liked, as were some f the template features for those of them that took the time to start their own Prezi presentation.
Approach How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?
I felt that my approach to the project was well done and thought out. I initially came up with the problem of collaborating online to benefit groups of busy people with busy schedules, and then thought about a possible solution from there. Prezi came to mind because I have seen a few presentations and they were remarkably well done and professional looking, and after talking with people about them I was told that it is relatively simple and easy to create them and collaborate with them. One thing that I would have done differently would have been to learn Prezi before I started the project to see if I could use and liked to use the technology. I choose Prezi quite quickly without doing any research and it worked out for me in this project, but next time a will do some more research on my tool of choice. I would also, when implementing the project by showing it to people, have made a short online Google form or something of that nature to both test what they know and get feedback on my presentation. I went about this in a very verbal manner just to really get an idea on how people feel about the technology, but gaining more documented information would have been very helpful.
Lessons
When it comes to teaching technology, tutorials need to be dumbed down as much as possible so that people at all skill levels can understand and implement the knowledge that they are learning. If someone only understands a fraction of vocabulary, technology jargon, or other such aspects, their understanding and eventual learning of the intended skill will suffer. This can be especially possible when TPACK is brought in to the equation. Understanding Pedagogy as it relates with technology and content is often not the easiest thing to do, which is why specificity should be a large concentration when integrating TPACK. I attempted to make my Prezi tutorial as easy to understand and follow as possible, as I was showing off a new technology. Most people in my age group have a great grasp on technology because we grew up using it both in our educations and for pleasure. However, my mother, who does have a decently solid grasp of technology, does not possess the speed or skill that we do, and she said she understood and grasped the presentation well which made me happy.
Changes
I have done many presentations in the past and have found a good recipe in doing them that works for me. I choose a problem first and then a technology to fix that problem. I think that when it comes to technology, the opposite method where you first find a technology and then figure out a way to use that technology to solve a problem could also work as well, which I would definitely think about doing.
Final Presentation:
The link provided here will take you to the video of my final presentations.
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