Communication is key.

How many times have you heard that in your life? Moreover, how many different situations has it been applicable for? We communicate, and lack to communicate, with one another everyday. It’s virtually impossible to go an entire day without communicating with someone in one form or another. In today’s world, there are plenty of ways to communicate with the people you associate with. The ability to communicate starts to develop at a very young age, but around the elementary and secondary school years, communication skills are necessary and they begin to advance. Social interactions and classroom activities fuel this development process but still communication is difficult.

Teachers try to infuse activities and practices into their curriculum to better develop their class’s communication skills. I’m sure the first thing that comes to your mind when thinking of communication in the classroom is group work. Group work is great for developing communication skills and friendships with peers that make the true test of communication, presentation, a bit easier. Presentation of information, just like communication, can come in many forms. Presentation can be to one singular peer, to a small group, a whole class, or just the teacher even. To simplify, presentation is hard. Everyone can agree on that.

But it doesn’t have to be.

That’s where Microsoft’s Presenter Coach comes in. Presenter Coach is an extremely user-friendly tool to use, and is an extension that goes over the details of your presentation. It tracks the time of your presentation, how many slides you have presented, and the pacing of your presentation as well. What I really love about Presenter Coach is the in-time feedback it gives as you present, so that if you get lost or want to tweak your presentation at a certain point you can receiver live feedback of that section.

Presenter Coach is a modernized peer review. It adds elements like Sensitive Phrases so you can accommodate to your audience and promote social awareness, and Originality to help personalize your presentation.

This is a tool I’m going to be using in the future. Discovering this tool half way through my sophomore year is six years too late. Mandating this in the classroom will improve students’ work, presentations, and presentation skills. The impact Presenter Coach will have in developing communication skills will transcend the classroom.