Collaboration

The first few classes in a semester are a busy time in a composition course. Not only do teachers have the difficult task of jumpstarting students into a mode of high production and risk-taking, we have so much to explain, demonstrate, and model. In the past, these efforts led me to talk too much. How could I introduce students to course procedures, technologies, and conversations by involving them in these very practices?

On the second meeting, I asked the classes to create in-class collaborative visual presentations. The exercise asked students to:

1. write reflectively about their writing experiences.
2. share writing experiences in small groups.
3. contribute to a class-wide collaborative presentation.
4. experience a potentially unfamiliar digital composing technology.
5. raise problems and questions concerning “what we know about writing and how we know it.”

What I liked about this exercise was that it involved the students in most of the practices important to the course: reflection, composition, collaboration, use of digital technology, publication, and presentation. On the second day of class, they were modeling the course practices to each other.

We used Prezi (www.prezi.com) for the collaborative presentations. Prezi allows users to create and publish non-linear presentations on a large canvas that can be navigated in numerous ways. One of the best features is the zoom which allows a holistic look at the presentation. We used my laptop to create the Prezis. Below is an example from one class. Use the arrow and zoom to navigate.



As groups wrapped up discussion, they sent representatives to the laptop to enter their information into the presentation. At least one member of each group experienced hands-on use of the technology. The action was broadcast on the large screen for the class to see, and students paid attention to the fluid construction of the presentation. In the third section, questions from the viewers emerged, leading to an impromptu whole-class discussion while the representatives were still creating. In fact, it was the spontaneous, unexpected moments of the collaborations which were most profound and occurred at real points of inquiry, places where the dialogic communications demanded the immediate address of questions and problems. The final digital product was interesting as an object of analysis, but the Prezi’s big payoff was the rich discussion and meaningful inquiry that emerged as we used the technology to map our understanding of writing.

Incidentally, the internet connection in the third section wouldn’t allow Prezi to operate, so we made a lightning fast switch to good ol’ PowerPoint. The less exciting format still created the spontaneity of collaboration that made the Prezis so useful in the earlier classes.