Many teens dread giving a speech in front of their peers. They have difficulty capturing – and keeping – the attention of their audience. They struggle to structure and communicate their ideas successfully.
Integrating a variety of technology into your courses – whether it’s history, science, language arts, or a foreign language – will provide teens with a range of multimedia and design tools. In doing so, teens are more engaged and thereby develop a range of skills related to production and video presentations. Best of all, they learn to communicate more clearly and more compellingly with their audience.
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Tips For Keeping Teens Engaged
Teens get bored easily – especially when instruction is delivered the same way or when asked to give yet another speech to demonstrate what they have learned. Keep teens engaged by designing lessons that include novelty, variety, and fun.
When teens use short and friendly video, they can awake interest for almost any topic. Creating explainer videos with mysimpleshow, for example, is easy and exciting, and it also trains users regarding the application of creative technology resources.
Focus student attention by incorporating demonstrations, role playing, hands-on activities, storytelling, and multimedia presentations to enhance instruction. Requesting students create explainer videos with mysimpleshow is a great means to structure content, provide guidance, and give an overview.
Did you know?
The great Roman orator, Cicero, recommended the use of images as part of memory training. He also used visuals, in the form of props, in his speeches. For this reason, he is considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists.
Many teens love to socialize and do projects with their peers. Cooperative learning opportunities are highly effective in keeping students engaged and participating in lessons. With mysimpleshow, students can work in teams (either in small groups or with a partner) on video scripts and visualizations to aid in their collaboration skills.
Our Favorite Resource for Video Presentations
While there are many interactive presentation and slide show apps, mysimpleshow is our favorite resource for video presentations. It is the perfect medium your students need to make their project fun, engaging, and interesting.
mysimpleshow is an online tool that enables anyone to create concise and engaging explainer videos in just a few minutes. It is also a great option for teachers to create lessons and presentations with multimedia and interactive elements such as video, audio, and embedded assessments.
Writing the video script native to the mysimpleshow platform, enhances writing skills, as students need to use transition phrases and must only include the most relevant information to align with the storyline template’s character limits.
The screenshot visible above is excerpted from a video I put together for our Scout troop detailing the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse. On the left side, you can see two highlighted words – these are the words that are illustrated with graphics from the available gallery or images the user can upload.
I love that the user has the freedom to select the words to animate. As the slideshow plays, the selected image will appear as the narrator reads the highlighted word. The user will thereby need to make small adjustments to their script to assure the graphics appear in a timely manner – a great problem solving opportunity.
My daughter used mysimpleshow to create a fabulous explainer video for Ranger requirement #2g, “Make a presentation for your crew on communications equipment used in the outdoors with emphasis on how this equipment would help in a wilderness survival situation.”
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is based on cards which you arrange in a chronological timeline. The game mechanics are super easy and it’s highly addictive – we enjoyed it so much that even after a winner was determined, we kept drawing cards just for fun. The cards are small, about half the size of a deck of standard cards, and each game comes with a set of 100. Additional expansion games include Historical Events, Diversity Game, Music & Cinema, and Inventions. The sets are interchangeable, and I’ve heard rumor that Monuments, Arts & Literature, Music, and Sports are soon to follow.
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allows kids to build fantastic marble runs with suspended tracks up to 8 meters long. It has been specifically designed so that marbles of different sizes and materials can be used. The design prompts kids to make interesting observations, while experimenting and discovering the world of physics (speed, gravity, centrifugal force, friction) and to intuitively understand its fundamental principles. We started with the Mini Rail system but additional expansion sets are also available including motorized elevators and pulleys.
Thus far, our favorite fallacies are the “Red Herring” and “Special Pleading”. We have come to discover that a couple of us use these tactics regularly to varying degres of success. Upon completing the exercises in 