SIPS Showcase: Self-Assessment

During our inquiry into the possibilities offered by online presentation and sharing applications, I was surprised to find such a great variety of options. That being said, there are several programs that offer many functions that make other more specific applications redundant. The frontrunner in terms of multiple usages and opportunities for collaboration is GoogleDocs. Because it is sometimes difficult to gain access to online applications on school-based servers, it might be prudent to look for programs such as GoogleDocs that have multiple uses and functions.
Our showcase featured three online applications: SlideRocket, 280Slides, and SlideShare. My focus was on SlideShare, which I found to be easy to use and suspect that students would find engaging. One of the strengths of SlideShare is its user interface. SlideShare is essentially the YouTube of presentations. It looks a great deal like YouTube and allows you to search for and comment on presentations in the same way that YouTube does with videos. Also, SlideShare is designed to allow students to easily embed YouTube videos into their presentations. I think that the similarities with YouTube, a site that is extremely popular with students, will reduce the learning curve and produce interest and engagement in students.
SlideShare’s design makes it a valuable tool for locating resources. Students could complete research requirements or benefit from seeing student examples by searching SlideShare for relevant presentations. As a teacher, SlideShare presents the opportunity to put course content onto the web to be accessed by students at their leisure. The file size limit for SlideShare presentations is 100mb which all but ensures that your presentation will be publishable.
The use of SlideShare can contribute to inquiry because it provides students with the opportunity to contribute to the public body of knowledge. An important part of engaging students in inquiry is demonstrating that their learning is meaningful. By allowing students to publish their presentations, students are able to make connections with the outside world. They are able to take the final step of inquiry – action – and explore their agency in the “real” world.
Finally, I would like to mention another function of SlideShare that will help to make it meaningful and current in the eyes of students. SlideShare makes it very easy to post presentations to blog pages. In just one easy step, students can post their presentations to a number of commonly used blog sites (Blogger, Wordpress, and others). This is just another function that will engage students and increases the potential uses of SlideShare.