Battle: Phebe vs Power Point

I have just completed the tutorial on power point... something I thought I had a significant amount of expertise and experience in. I was horribly wrong... yet again! Whilst I have long known the basic applications and operations of power point, as I was trying to come up with a presentation to show off the numerous possibilities, I was quite quickly confronted with my shortcomings. So, it has taken me almost an entire (very valuable I might add) day to come up with the first 6 slides of a presentation about photosynthesis the completion of which has been thrown in the 'love to play some more but have no time' pile (a pile which continues to grow!). What did I find so tough? Mainly trying to find and then (here's the kicker!) CONVERT video and audio files to embed in my presentation, am I frustrated... YES! And after all that effort I can see now that the music didn't work! (just to set the scene... I had What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong playing for the first slide!) NB: Slide Share is yet to be learnt... this may be where I need to look! Keep your eye out for a post about it to see how I went... or if when you read this the music works then you'll know I've worked it out!

Photosynthesis Presentation

View more presentations from phebemoore.

Who knew boring old power point had so many features - music, videos, animation.... I'm not shy to admit I always just used a template and filled it with numerous boring bullet pointed text, not even once attempting to throw something interesting in. But, having now explored the options available, I can see Power Point as being a somewhat valuable tool in the classroom. I think it lies somewhere in between chalk 'n talk and Voki Avatars on the 'exciting teaching practices' spectrum (please see previous postings), if only for the fact that a. the technology is well recognised and not 'new', and b. students are still being talked at, rather than learning by doing. The Learning Pyramid asserts that it is the latter type of learning that leads to the highest level of engagement and information retention, and whilst a power point presentation has the potential to appeal to varying learning styles, including visual learners, and even auditory learners when sound and music are included, information is still being presented in a non-interactive way. Indeed, this software gives teachers the opportunity to mix things up a bit, and provides a means by which videos and images can be presented to students in the context of information and content, but in my opinion teachers should be wary of overusing it - is it really promoting a different (and more effective) way of learning or just a different way of teaching?


To be fair, it is a technology that students would benefit in knowing how to use, if only for the technology skills that they will no doubt require in the workplace. Perhaps a valid use then would be in presentation of assessment, to ensure students have appropriate skills for producing professional presentations. Another use suggested in the online tutorial I completed was to set up power point as an online revision and testing tool. Whilst in this application, overall results are not recordable, the student is instead redirected back to the question if the answer they select is wrong, promoting self-monitoring and ensuring students are learning from their mistakes.This notion fits ion nicely with Marzano and Pickering's concept within (1997) Habits of Mind: Self-regulated thinking.



If we do choose to utilise power point in the classroom, a few common errors to be avoided are in the following video... how many times have we all seen these ones done! Snore.....






Hopefully I can avoid some of those shockers and come up with some creative, engaging ideas for using power point in the classroom.

References
Marzano & Pickering (1997). Dimensions of Learning. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.