Tech Tuesday: A LaunchPad For Your Pocket

[heather_halter]

Just because A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking is a bargain priced book, it doesn’t mean that we cheap out on the resources! Our LaunchPad contains priceless tools to help your students become better public speakers.

As a former public speaking instructor myself, I found that videos are a great way to connect students with the presentation process. LaunchPad contains over 200 videos, many of which also have multiple choice questions associated with them to create a well-rounded Activity.

Our videos feature real students, presenting real speeches, which are shot professionally. Simply type a term in the search box on the LaunchPad homepage to find one that will be perfect for your students. Great examples of full length speeches include topics on Preventing Cyberbullying and Becoming a Socially Conscious Consumer.

Not only do we have full length sample student speeches, we also take those videos and cut them down into smaller segments, so that you can focus specifically on a particular part of a speech. Talking about instructions? Use our clips on Attention Getters, Thesis Statements, and Previews. Lecturing on delivery? Assign students our Speech Clips on Effective Eye Contact and Effective Gestures.

We take our videos one step further through our “Needs Improvement” clips, which demonstration what NOT to do during a speech. For example, see speeches with Logical Fallacies, or a student using too many Vocal Fillers and Not Enough Eye Contact. While showing great sample speeches is certainly helpful, I found that students internalize these clips more; they don’t want to make these mistakes in front of their peers or when a grade is on the line!

All video clips can also be incorporated into a Video Assignment, which allows for time based commenting and rubric grading functionality. Click here for more information on how to build these activities: https://community.macmillan.com/videos/1383

In addition to our large video library, LaunchPad for A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking also contains an interactive version of James McCroskey’s PRCA and PRPSA to assess Communication Apprehension, A Relaxation Audio Download to help those apprehensive students, plus Speech Outlining guides and  templates, and tutorials on Presentation Software and Avoiding Plagiarism. Of course, LaunchPad also contains our ever popular LearningCurve adaptive quizzing.

If you’re interested in seeing LaunchPad in action, please view the brief screencast below, and be sure to schedule a demonstration with Learning Solutions Specialist Heather Halter http://www.meetme.so/HeatherKimball.

Video Link : 1837