PowerPoint
Karaoke
PowerPoint
Karaoke is a variation of traditional karaoke. There is, however,
no singing. Instead the performers have to give an impromptu PowerPoint
presentation. Presentation for this can be taken from the web
- the more outlandish the topic, the better - or can be especially
created for the occasion. The serious objective behind this is
to practice rhetorical skills in a playful way. But the presentations
are really open for any kind of playful nonsense that the presenter
can think of.
In the classroom:
The presentations
can either be prepared by the teacher or by groups of students.
Several variations of the basic idea can be used.
The teacher sets one of the following tasks:
1) You have prepared a presentation for class
but your little brother or a classmate has played around with
it when you were not watching and has changed all of the slides
for your presentation by pictures that have no relevance for your
topic. This is, however, your last chance to improve your mark
as it's the last week before the school conference. It is definitely
too late to change anything. You therefore just have to integrate
the slides you have into your presentation.
2) You have been given a set of slides in the
form of a PowerPoint presentation. There is no title and the slides
do not seem to have a common theme. It is your job - or the job
of your group - to make something out of it either in a serious
manner or totally mad.
Some teachers might find such work that is not
clearly tied to the content of the curriculum a waste of time.
It is, however, one way of bringing some humour to the classroom
from which it is all too often mostly absent. If a teacher has
qualms about these two strategies, the third one may calm his
or her nerves:
3) Give a prepared PowerPoint presentation to
class with both irrelevant slides as well as pertinent ones. You
could intersperse the random selection of images with some tables
or diagrams about the topic in question.
The procedure depends very much on the technology
you have available. Whether it's one computer on the teacher's
desk or a classroom with one computer per student.
If your resources are limited you could print
out the slides in the form of handouts and let students work on
them before they later deal with the real presentation from the
computer and video projector available.
Another variation can be seen as a fun activity
at any time.
4) Students prepare a PowerPoint presentation
as a class with very outlandish pictures and choose a topic. It
will be the task of the teacher to later give the presentation
in question. If this group activity is done in the target language
there should be a lot of interaction in the groups to make the
presentation really difficult for the teacher. This variation
also practices using search engines to find visual material.