Week 9: Power Point 2

What?

Last week, my group finished the Paper Chain project. The topic we chose to do it on was Mitosis. This week, my group did our second Power Point project, which was Who Am I? We gave six clues, and uncovered a picture of the mystery person one square at a time. In the end, it turned out to be Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. These are only two ideas of fifty that teachers can use to mix up their presentations and lessons for students.

So What?

It is useful for teachers and future teachers to play with these different projects like we did in class for this assignment. By exploring with these different activities, we can feel more comfortable with technology, become more creative in ways to present information, and have a larger pool of resources. Why not take advantage of every learning experience possible in order to make teaching easier and more fun for you, as well as more enjoyable and beneficial for your students?

Now What?

I've enjoyed doing these Power Point projects because they are extremely easy and quick ways of mixing up lessons. I was surprised at how simple the activities were. This is encouraging to me because I feel like I can actually set aside enough time to learn and play with more fun Power Point activities. It's not too overwhelming or time consuming, and it's easy enough that I can figure them out myself without getting really frustrated. So I plan on playing around with some more activities to use in my future classroom! It's been enjoyable for me and I know it will enhance my lessons, teaching, and appreciation for using technology.

Video: How NOT to use PowerPoint
This was a great comedy clip about how PowerPoint can often be distracting, overwhelming, difficult, or less effective. He gave funny examples of ineffective things such as putting every word that you plan to say on the slide, not using spell check, excessive bullet points (thus not pointing out anything specific because it's ALL pointed out), bad color schemes, number of slides, amount of data on a slide, and distracting animations. He proved that even if the technology is good, it can still cause the opposite results of your goal if you don't know how to use it the most effectively. It can do more harm than good, be a distraction, or simply be a waste of time, so it's important to learn helpful strategies to maximize the benefits of PowerPoint. I thought the clip was funny and very entertaining.