Students as Designers Part 2

We had our 2nd day of presentations that the students were giving for their "training" plan. I was disappointed to see that most all the presentations so far were ALL POWERPOINT presentations. They did not use any creativity in training methods. ALthough they did take on the role as a designer and created a training plan - they did not use any activities or creative ways for the other students to learn the information. I did learn something through this process....my students are modeling what they see through everyone who is training them. The see powerpoint so much that they automatically are going to that method in order to deliver information. I did use this opportunity to have a great discussion with the class. We sat in a circle and discussed how much they truly learned from the various presentations. The students feel that they learned it more because of the repeition of having to discover the information, then present it themselves and then listen to each other presentations over and over. We also discussed how each presentation was conducted nearly the same. We then proceeded to critique the presentations to see how they each could be done differently with various forms of different tools and activities make a more engagine atmosphere and cause the "training" session to be more effective. I will also in my next 2 classes do more "modeling" so that I can coach them through the next project runway episode's challenge. On a positive note, the kids are still excited about this being an authentic activity. to be continued.....