Getting Personal with Power Point!

Power Points are a software that allows you to create presentations, handle charts, clip art, music and narration and even video clips. Unfortunately it is also one of the most under appreciated of all the Web 2.0 tools while conversely still probably the most used. I say that because power points are often relegated to a presentation display only, and most people never explore the other features that are offered through Power Points.

Power points can be combined with voice over and used to tell a story or developed as part of a project in a student centered collaborative task. I recently used power point with only four slides as a powerful backdrop to a talk on water management. Difficulties can arise with power point when you are trying to transfer one onto a computer that has an older version. They come across all skewed and a lot of the animation can be lost completely.

When I create power points for my class I tend to use a range of media in an effort to cater for the many different learning styles of the students, I use flash which makes the images move and I record music or speech onto parts, graphs and tables, as well as transitioning screens to grab attention. There are a lot of different things you can do and some very good guides around to help you.

As Oliver's Design Theory suggests Power point is a tool that you can be used to support your students learning. As with all learning involving new skills, students need to be explicitly taught how to use each of these technologies before assigning them a task that requires that knowledge.

I have used the engagement theory (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999) when considering how I might apply this tool into an authentic, student centered activity; and I really like the idea of having students work in small cooperative learning groups of 3-4. As Christmas is approaching I and students at my school recently had a safety week prior to the holidays I believe that this tool would have been very appropriate to use. Here is a small overview of the unit I have thought of.

Safety Unit:
Relate- Students are given the task of helping the younger members of their school to be safe during the holidays. They are to interview members from a younger grade and find out what sort of activities they will be doing during the holidays then each group will pick one of the topics that interests them.

Create- They will investigate that topic and what safety concerns they might need to tell the younger grade about to make sure they all stay safe for the summer.

Clip art provided by CLIPART FOR FREE














Donate- They will organise their main findings into and informative power point that they will play to the grade 1 students and then allow the Grade one students to ask them questions about their power point. Students would be asked to make their power points engaging and to consider the age group that they will be presenting it to when they present it.

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When I was helping my son make one for the first time I found a very child friendly site that gives them simple to follow instruction with entertaining characters. It also gives useful advise for teaching wanting to teach their students multimedia presentation using power point, Honestly this is a fabulous resource so I suggest you bookmark it.

Power Point Tutorial for students and teachers.

References:
Kearsley, G. & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A Framework for Technology-based Teaching and Learning. Retrieved December 5, 2009 from http://home.sprynet.com~gkearsley/engage.htm