I’m drawn to this session because the write-up states “model has your students investigating and answering higher-level questions.” The presenters are from Deep creek Magnet Middle School, outside of Baltimore.

A slam dunk model has 5 basic steps:

1. questioning
2. information sources
3. activity
4. assessment activity
5. enrichment (extended) activities

Here’s a link to the session wiki – http://slamdunknecc09.pbworks.com/

Why PowerPoint? To help ‘late adopter’ teachers. Jamie McKenzie has already created the PowerPoint template – http://slamdunknecc09.pbworks.com/f/slam+dunk+template.ppt. The idea is to make it easy for teachers to organize the project for students, including providing the links.

Session was a good combination of Jamie McKenzie resources and a truly simple way to introduce late adopters to using technology (which hopefully filters down to their students).

I had the opportunity to participate in last week’s Computers and Writing 2009 Conference at UC Davis. One of the highlights of the conference was getting to hear Bill Cope’s Saturday keynote: The Social Web: Writing in the Era of Digital Reproduction. The good news is that Bill’s keynote was recorded and I know that immediately following his address, participants cornered conference organizer Carl Whithaus with the request to post the presentation in the same way CUE posted Marzano’s presentation (PowerPoint slides in the background or as close-ups, with Marzano narrating each one), or to upload the presentation WITH the accompanying podcast.

I find it frustrating to view the many PowerPoints educators have generously uploaded to Slideshare and other venues WITHOUT an audio file or script to clarify the meaning and intent of each slide. As for Bill Cope’s presentation, each slide is probably fairly self explanatory – but, oh my, hearing Bill explain and build the case for teaching multimedia literacy is a tool every educator and administrator should have access to. So as soon as that resource is available, I’ll post the link.

In the meantime, I’ll point you to a few other PowerPoint resources I gleaned from the conference. Although I missed Fred Johnson’s Friday morning Starting with Bad PowerPoint, NCTE ACE colleague Rich Rice shared the handout. Fred has posted links to some great resources, including his own thought-provoking When Textual Technologies Transform Writing PPt, but, darn, no audio….yet.

Thanks to Fred’s site and a handout from Betsy Gilliland, also a CW2009 presenter, here are some great resources for moving  your slidehshows from bad to good:

• PowerPoint Ninja
• Making Change
• Slide:ology – Nancy Duarte’s gem:

Heading off to update some PowerPoints…