PechaKucha in Google Slides

​PechaKucha is so much fun! When I tried to present the concept of PechaKucha to my colleagues, it was a bit difficult because everyone thought I would start talking about some new digital tool again. PechaKucha isn't really digital at all, it is a format for giving presentations.

​This idea comes from Japan, but it has spread quickly around the world because it is so simple, fast and fun. In the original version, the speaker gets exactly 20 images that are to be displayed for 20 seconds each. That means that the presentation will last for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Precisely!

When you get the chance to make a PechaKucha, it is important to choose pictures with care and to really practice what you want to say to the audience. You can not exceed the time limit and no one wants to listen to someone who is silent for even 10 seconds on each picture. In other words, practice is the key to success. In Japan, this format has become so popular that PechaKucka evenings are held with lectures on a wide variety of topics during the same evening.

Now to my students! They are a B-group studying Swedish for immigrants and they really need to get started speaking Swedish. These weeks we were having "holiday and work" as a general theme and it felt like a good time to end the theme with an oral exam with a fun twist!

I planned the project to last for two weeks and the first Monday the students got to choose 10 pictures they liked on Pixabay. At least three of them would be about their jobs or future jobs. They saved the images that they found on their Google Drive in a folder that they share with me. That way I could print them out for the students so that they could take them home to practice.

After that, they were given a piece of paper where they had to number their pictures from 1 to 10 and start writing sentences for each picture. In the B-course, the students do not have many words in Swedish, but they got to make different sentences with the words they knew. It could be "I like the forest", "it's nice in the forest", "I often walk with friends in the forest" and alike. They got the week to practice talking about their pictures and to keep the time frame of 30 seconds.

The following Monday we were back in the computer room and I talked to them about Google Slides and they got to create a presentation with their 10 pictures and put it in the folder that they share with me. When everyone had finished their presentation they got until Friday to practice.
The last step I made for them was to open their presentations and select "publish online" under the archive menu. You get to choose how long each image should be displayed and I set it to 30 seconds. A link is generated that you can put in a common Google document or, if you want to be fancy, on a nice website in Google Sites created in honour of the day.

When it was time to hold the presentations, the students worked in groups of 6-7 students each. They got one Chromebook per group and I opened a document containing everybody's presentation-links. When a student clicked on his name, the pictures began to appear 30 seconds each and it was important to remember what to say! Of course, I was kind and helped them with questions if they forgot what to say, I think it's important that presentations are fun and not mixed with horror! The first student who held a presentation seemed a little nervous, but pretty soon all of them relaxed and enjoyed the concept.

The project went super well and I will do this again in different subjects!

Maria Rådstam

ICT-teacher

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