Around this same time, a teacher colleague of mine introduced me to Pecha Kucha. I was very intrigued by this presentation style, as it relies on visual images instead of slides crammed with a thousand bullet points and so much information it will only fit on the screen in 6-point font. I also liked the fact that Pecha Kucha forces the presenter to actually know what they are talking about and puts a conversational (“chit-chat-y” if you will) tone in their presentation (you can watch sample presentations online).
I had to try it immediately with my sophomores. They of course hated me for this. “We can’t read from the slides?!” they exclaimed. I apologized for trying to ruin their lives and being the worst teacher ever.
This did, however, make me reconsider my initial plan. A presentation in the true style of Pecha Kucha is 20×20: 20 images displayed for 20 seconds each. The presentation is timed so that it advances on its own, and the speaker talks along with it, making the presentation six minutes and 40 seconds exactly. My students’ protests helped me realize that I needed to ease them into this, and help them break the bad presentation habits that they had developed over time gradually, instead of cold turkey.
I decided that for their first Pecha Kucha presentation, they would be allowed to have no more than three pieces of information on each slide, but they had to include a picture that encapsulated the gist of that slide’s information. I decided to keep the 20×20 format for a 6:40 presentation, but allowed my students to work with a partner this first time to share the responsibility of presenting.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well my students did with this first go-round of Pecha Kucha, and they were too! For the next presentation I assigned students, they were required to have only images on their slides, but they could use speaking notes during the presentation. Eventually, all of my students were presenting in true Pecha Kucha style. Some ran with it and excelled, others plugged along, and some begrudgingly suffered through it. In time, though, their presentations improved, and their learning also increased. I didn’t see anymore slides with information copied directly from a website; my students were finally researching their topic, synthesizing the information, and presenting it in a way that showed me they actually understood the subject matter.
Here are four tips to other educators wanting to try Pecha Kucha in their classrooms:
(Next page: 4 tips to get students hooked on Pecha Kucha)
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