The Presentation Dilemma

Now don't take this the wrong way.  I am all for students learning presentation skills.  These skills are modeled, brainstormed, and used frequently within the four walls of my classroom.  Being able to engage a group of people while relaying information is an essential skill in most professions.  Heck, in my profession, I need to use these skills effectively or twenty-five eleven year olds may revolt.  

So, What's the Problem?

My frustration lies in the fact that as teaching evolves, I believe student presentations need to evolve as well.  My teaching is based on student voice and student choice with a lot of collaboration and discussion in between.  My projects give students the opportunity to demonstrate learning in a wide variety of ways.  In my latest Literary Elements Project, students were given twelve different applications to choose from to demonstrate their learning with many students choosing to "app smash," combining upwards of four applications to create amazing projects.  

But when it came to the presentation piece, it became a passive event. Students enjoyed seeing the creations their classmates concocted from different applications to demonstrate what was learned, but they were listeners.  I have gone away from lecturing, yet during presentations I am having students turn into lecturing teachers.  By the twenty-fifth presentation (even though it was pretty good), I find myself losing interest, so I can only imagine what the other students are feeling.  

So, What's the Answer?

Wesley Hedgepeth (@wehedge) offered the idea of giving students specific tasks to perform during their classmate's presentations.  He also mentioned having students evaluate each presentation.  I liked the idea of having students actively engaged in a specific portion of each presentation.  For instance, if groups of students each concentrated on giving contructive feedback on a piece of the presentation rubric, the audience would become active listeners as opposed to passive observers.  

Angela Breneman (@teachlove4SpEd) offered the idea of having students backchanneling during presentations, so students could generate questions for the speaker to answer at the end of the presentation.  Using TodaysMeet, Edmodo, or a Twitter hashtag could create an actively engaged audience bringing up key points from the presentation or further questions to be answered.  

The ideas mentioned above take a class that is strongly built on trust and respect where students are comfortable putting their ideas out their for the group to discuss and dissect.   

Presentation skills are an essential piece of the learning process.  Students need to be able to verbalize information to a group effectively while using visuals to support their ideas.  But how do we keep these presentations from becoming the lectures that many teachers are moving away from in the classroom?How do we give students the opportunity to create and present to their classmates without losing the interest of the rest of the room along the way?

How do you use student presentations in your classrooms? What responsibilities does your audience have during presentations?

Thanks for any help and ideas you can offer in advance.