Collage: A presentation tool for the K-12 Classroom

Presented byKanav Goyal Abhinav Uppal

Introduction• What is K-12 classroom?

• “Use of technology in the form of computers and projectors is becoming increasingly common in schools even in the developing regions”

• Microsoft PowerPoint is the most commonly adopted method for creating presentations, but how convenient is it for school teachers and how useful is it for K-12 classrooms?

• Typically school teachers would not want to alter their pedagogical styles hence technological aids should integrate themselves within classroom pedagogy

Related Work

• Interactive White BoardExpensive setupNo research on presentation software associated with it

• Classroom PresenterDesigned for higher educationPrimary focus on inkingCP works just on PowerPoint slides

• Document Camera or visualizerAllows digital projection of paper based contentDoes not support addition of digital multimedia content

Presentation tools and Pedagogy

• Common Belief : Instructing using PowerPoint increases their engagement levels and increases student productivity

• Research shows that difference in learning outcomes is often not significant

• Studies have also shown that the learning benefits of presentation software can be greatly improved by enabling post-instructional access to the content of the presentation

Initial Ethnography• 11 schools, 24 teachers, 21 classroom observations

• More than 6 computers per school

• 6 schools possessed a digital projector and 1 school had one projectors

• Teachers had an experience of 2 to 26 years and spoke atleast 5 different languages

• 2 of the 21 classroom observations involved the use of Digital technologies

Findings• Under-utilization of technology

• Reasons• Lack of proficiency of using computers

• Not confident technology users• Lack of expertise with typing

• Lack of sufficient time to prepare the content beforehand• In an independent survey of 41 school teachers, it was found that on

an average the teachers spent 5.5 hours preparing PowerPoint presentations for a 40 minutes lecture

• Main usage of the technology was to show pictures and videos

Design Principles• Keep it Simple• Minimalize time for preparation• Minimalize typing

• Display Images• Easy display of multimedia

• Exploit Paper• Help exploit content already present in everyday use

The Development Process• Plain Image Viewer kind of interface

• Paper integration• Allows teachers to write notes on paper and use in presentation

• Interaction with the content• Rectangle selection• Page elements• Zoom facility

• Features based on teacher feedback• Page decks, textbox facility, inking

The Development Process• Features developed on field• Whiteboard• Page Occlusion

• Deleted features• Word selection• Hyper linking

• 50 iterations

Deployment• Collage was deployed in 3 schools

• 2 teachers from one schools and 4 from the other 2 schools

• Used in 43 classes (40 hours of classroom usage)

• Training required at most 2 man hours per teacher, compared to almost 15 days to learn PowerPoint

Demo

Evaluation

• Qualitative feedback from 6 different users

• Flexibility of presentation

• Ease of content preparation

• Suitability for display of visual materials

• Downsides of collage

Conclusion• A tool for K-12 classroom presentations

• The deployment results suggest distinct advantages over PowerPoint

• The findings of the project are at large applicable to those who have a limited computer proficiency and who have greater inclination for using paper based tools