Student Presentations

A frequently used teaching strategy is for students to give presentations to the class, either face to face or online. Presentations allow students to create assignments and allow for feedback from peers. There are a number of tools that allow students to give presentations in an online class.

TeacherTube provides students the ability to easily stream digital video just as YouTube does. If your student has access to a digital video camera, TeacherTube is one way he can make a presentation to the class.

Another option is SlideShare. With SlideShare, users with a free account can upload PowerPoint slides. Recently, the ability to add audio to a PPT turning it into a Slidecast has been added. The only problem with Slidecasting at SlideShare is that the audio must be recorded separately with a program like Audacity, and then uploaded and synched with slides.

VoiceThread is a free new tool where registered users can upload images and add audio commentary right from their web browsers. It's simple to use and you can create audio asynchronous discussion. Other users can come along and add comments to your image and comments. Follow this link to see an example of a presentation where folks all over the world introduce themselves. It's a free and simple way to handle online student presentation projects. You can't upload PPT slides to VoiceThread, only images. However, you can easily save a PPT presentation as .gif or .jpg files. VoiceThreads can also be embedded into other webpages like the SlideShare Slidecast above. If you decide to use tools like these to facilitate online student presentations, the easiest thing would be to set up a course blog or wiki where students will embed their presentation into their respective pages.