Need a handy way for students to read from a script without staring down at their notes?
Stage fright is crippling, and if you’ve watched a student freeze in front of a video camera, you know the embarrassment and frustration he or she experiences. I’m not talking about fun home movies where Frankie and his buddies perform watersliding cannonballs at the neighborhood pool - I’m referring to classroom multimedia projects in which Frankie and his classmates are asked to step outside their comfort zone and “act” a part without the freedom for playful impromptu. For example, suppose Frankie’s group is recreating the Civil Rights march on Washington and Frankie has to recite parts of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech for the camera. Poor Frankie! He recited the speech perfectly when he practiced. He didn’t know he’d be nervous until the camera started rolling.
For my middle schoolers, being in the spotlight in that way can be worse than throwing up on the bus or being scolded in front of the class - at their age, sometimes just being alive is torture!
When the video camera starts recording, some students mumble and stare down at their notes; some ramble nonsensically and veer off topic like Jay Leno on Vivarin; some get silly; some develop speech impediments.
We try not to laugh (right?), and we try not to grow impatient when Frankie’s self-consciousness causes five re-takes of the same scene. Who has time for glitches like this?
To save Frankie’s ego, you might offer a little cheat sheet that all the newscasters and politicians use - a teleprompter. I found a handy little app online that’s totally free. Here’s how to use it:
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Posted on July 26th, 2008 by Sharon Elin
Filed under: Uncategorized
Great idea! I have used PPT slides or just Word with a larger font size for similar projects.
Welcome, Jennifer! Thanks for commenting. You’re right. PPT slides and Word do work well for this purpose, but they lack the scrolling action and the automatic formatting (it’s nice not having to tweak and get the text just right to fit the screen, etc.). If you’re a Mac user, do you know of any similar programs?
A mac program called pages would work quite handy for this.
The scrolling can be managed by a cordless mouse and just clicking on the up arrow.
This could be done by the speaker or the director. Letter size could be as large as
needed to be seen.
If you want it to scroll automatically, this can be accomplished in Keynote. This is the
Mac version of Power Point. It is far more impressive than PP though. You might
think of it like PP is Doctor David Banner. Then exposed to some kind of rays,
Keynote is like the incredible Hulk.
‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was made with Keynote however it didn’t even take it to
the limit of what can be done.
Hope this helps.
where it can go.
Thanks for the Mac tips! I must confess, I am a Mac virgin and use PCs both in my school system and at home, apparently culturally isolated from the rest of the world! You’ve made me curious ~ Keynote sounds like a powerful program I hope to explore soon.