Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Powerpoint as a learning tool

I have been exposed to PowerPoint for along time, I have seen them used in presentations and training for many years. I would consider PowerPoint to be dominant presentation ICT used in education today.
PowerPoint is an easy to use linear presentation tool, however it is up to the user to develop an engaging presentation that utilizes the features PowerPoint, I have seen a lot of boring presentations that thought just putting information up on PowerPoint was going to engage the audience. PowerPoint can utilize many multimedia tools, such as images, video, freehand drawings, audio, hyperlinks, animations as well as a myriad of inbuilt features to help engage the audience.

in the classroom some of the teching methods I would utilise include.
  • subject outlines - standard presentation
  • stopping a slide show to progess deeper into a concept, either using movies, hyperlinks to other web-based material or
    • using a tablet PC and a stylus to draw/write on the slide (either myself or a teacher) to further evaluate a concept or idea and incourage a collaborative effort to come up with solutions or ideas.
  • with the aid of scaffolded learning getting students to work on individual slides individually or in small groups to create a larger slide show on an area or work that is currently being taught.

Here is my PMI for the use of PowerPoint .


Plus
Minus
Interesting
Currently the dominant presentation tool

Can include many visual aids
Animation
Pictures
Audio
Drawings
Video
Graphs

Easy to use and learn

Engaging to the audience

Not a complete learning tool, needs additional interface like an oral presentation

Not as engaging if only text is used or only images are used.

Copyright issues with images etc...

ethical use in class and for anything shared in fileshare.

students anonymity
Can be saved as a movie for uploading to the internet

Can be used with a tablet PC (like iPad) to be used interactively with freehand on the presentation

Individual slides can be saved as pictures.

used collaboratively to produce a large slide show.


and here is a demo PowerPoint I have put togethor.



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