Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Powerpoint presentation

PowerPoints a students best friend. When you need to do a presentation the good old Powerpoint comes to the rescue.
I did do the Powerpoint in the Classroom tutorial as listed in our activity for e-learning. I already had a fairly good understanding of the powerpoint presentation program and at first thought "Why would I need to do this tutorial?" and then the lightbulb went off in my brain (been doing that quite regularly lately). I could use this as a learning tool in MY classroom. There is a prompt on the original site that takes me to the 2007 Powerpoint tutorial which is more relevent to my program as I run on Microsoft 2007. Having the option of the older version and the updated version of tutorials allows for my learners who may be running different programs. I have come to realise along this journey that I need to be sure that my students will be able to have access to any programs etc that I may be sending them through cyberspace. Another profiling question?
There are so many benefits and uses for the Powerpoint presentation. Daniels (1999) states that the Powerpoint presentation allows for students to use the visual differentations to their own personal benefit. The slides allow students to stay on track and with the added availability of printing out the slides as a handout advantages the varied styled learner within the classroom (Daniels, 1999).
The audiovisual properties of the Powerpoint allows those students with different learning styles and ESL students to easily gain the information required (Daniels, 1999).
How would I use the Powerpoint program in my classroom? A few thoughts come to mind. 1.Procedures
2.Webquests
3.Instructions
4.Assignment presentations
5. All Key Learning Areas

When PowerPoint Goes Wrong

Have a look at this Youtube clip "Death by PowerPoint" (McMillan 2007). The PowerPoint presentation can go really wrong if you have spelling errors, too many bells and whistles, too much colour, too many words. Have you ever heard the term "A little bit goes a long way". This was meant for PowerPoint. I don't want my students to be totally lost in a whizz bang PowerPoint and to not get the point of the lesson. This would be such a total waste of time not only for my students but also for myself who would have spent precious time doing up a meaningless PowerPoint. If you are going to use a PowerPoint use it effectively.

References

Daniels, L 1999, Journal of computing in higher education, Introducing PowerPoint in the classroom: PowerPoint as the first step, vol. 10, pp42-56, http://www.springerlink.com/content/3628423174085807/, viewed 13th August, 2009.
McMillan, D 2007, How not to use powerpoint, YouTube,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cagxPlVqrtM&feature=fvst, viewed 13th August 2009.




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