Introduction

Where can you go to find information? What different ways can we present information to people?  Books, websites, videos/TV, sound recordings/radio, posters, newspapers, magazines... people!

Discuss these different mediums with the children, what does each one give us? What advantages and disadvantages can you think of for each?

Explain that they are going to be creating a presentation on a specific topic over the next few weeks. This means we need to find out information about the topic and then put together the most important parts for other people to look at. It needs to be easy to understand and look good.

 

Non-linear presentations

Our presentations are going to be non-linear, that means that people should be able to look at all the different pages in any order and it should still all make sense. It will work a bit like a website so people can go to any page by clicking on page buttons.

But the first steps in this project are planning what’s going to go into their presentation.  A really useful tool to use for this is 2Connect from the 2Simple collection.

 

 

 

2Connect is a mind mapping and planning tool that can be used for lots of different things.

Like all 2Simple software, there are some really useful help videos to get you started. For that reason, this plan will not go into huge amounts of detail explaining all the different features of the program as the videos explain it all perfectly. Click on the Help button from the start screen to access the videos.

 

 

 

Choose a topic

The presentations your class create can be on any topic you like, so you may wish to link to a topic you are currently learning about with your class. In this example we have chosen Space as the topic.

Start a new file and add your main topic title to the centre of the page just by clicking and typing it in. 2Connect will recognise some words and offer you clipart to go with your title if there is something appropriate. You can colour this box by clicking on the ‘A’ box at the top of the screen and choosing a colour or choosing the bottom option in the list if you want to refine it further by adding your own picture, changing the font, size etc of the text.

 

 

From here, ask the students what sort of things do you want to include in the presentation? Explain that they may not know everything needed at the moment, but they will have the chance to do some research and find out all the facts they need. Take some suggestions and choose around five or six. Add these around your main title box, spreading them around the page

 

 

If you want to, you can colour these subtopics in a different colour to show they all sit at the same level under your main title. Connect them to your title box by just clicking and dragging from the title to each box when you see the pencil icon. You can also drag one box over another and hover there for a second and the two will become connected. 2Connect also automatically connects boxes that are placed close to each other. If boxes connect incorrectly just click on the line and then press the delete key on your keyboard.

 

 

 

Focus on facts

Go back to your class discussion and choose one of the sub-topics. What main facts would we want to include on this page when we make our actual presentation? What questions do we want to answer for our readers? Again emphasise that they don’t need to know all the answers now as they will have a chance to find them out later.

Double click on one of the sub-topics and go to the ‘Notes’ tab. Add a few of the questions or headings that they might want to cover on this page.

 

 

Ask the students to begin their own plan, considering what they want to include for their subtopics, and then questions or facts that they want to include on their pages. You may want to direct some or all of your class to some questions for everyone to include and/or give others choice of what to look for.

Ensure they save their work as they go, and again at the end of the lesson.

 

Plenary

Finish off the lesson by comparing the plan they have created to a website. What is a Homepage on a website?  Explain that the centre title box is like the Home page, the subtopics (in red above) are like other pages on the website that you can get to from the Home page. The notes added to each subtopic represent the information on those pages. How might information be split up on a website page? Subheadings, boxes or tables might do this job.