REFLECTING ON POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

Here is my attempt at a PowerPoint slide show presentation. I found it an easy tool to navigate and create with. However once again time was the enemy. I have not chosen PowerPoint as one of my final four tools for analysis. Through interacting with the various tools on offer I had a preference for Glogster. My reasoning was that I thought for a Primary Education audience it had more promise. However I still really enjoyed working with PowerPoint and can see that as a digital tool it could be very effective in enhancing eLearning design.
Below is a link to the slide show and a brief analysis of Power Point as a Digital Tool.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B-iMZCHcLIsgYjM2MzIwYTMtOTU5YS00ZjdlLWE4YjItYmRjMDFjYzdjZDhl&hl=en&authkey=CJXtos8J

Pluses

• Simple to navigate the technology.
• Clip Art option means that kids can access images without the threat of copyright issues.
• Ability to link websites, sounds, video, photographs.
• A user friendly and visually exciting way of presenting information and a good learning experience for students working on their own research and presentation.
• A good tool for summarising information and encouraging students to present only the most relevant parts that convey the most meaning and importance.
• Students are able to interact and engage with a range of digital tools within the PowerPoint format including digital images, slides, movies, music.
• A really good tool for teachers to present information to students.
• Will suit visual and spatial learners and verbal linguistic learners. The tables, graphs and charts that can be inserted might also suit mathematical and logical learners.

Minuses

• Once again the time it takes.
• Technological challenges. I was able to create the power point presentation but was unable to embed it.
• When I transferred the document from my computer over to Google documents the written content of the PowerPoint was lost. Through help links and searching the Internet for information about why this might be so I was unable to locate an answer and rectify the problem.
• I have decided to leave the PowerPoint presentation like this as an example of how digital tools can sometimes be frustrating, perplexing, and time consuming. When planning my own eLearning design these factors should be taken into consideration.
• Overuse?
• Teachers will need to scaffold the activity so that learning outcomes are achieved.

Uses In The Classroom

• Kids create a digital presentation on a topic across any of the KLA.  For example a presentation on the history of transport in Australia. A slide show presentation about a specific cultural group. A slide show presentation about a book, a local area project, the Solar System. Remember to scaffold the activities so that higher order thinking is encouraged.
• Teachers could also use slide show presentations to present information to the kids in the same way about particular topics. For example a Health and Physical Education teacher could present a Tennis Slide show outlining the rules of the game, tennis etiquette, images of famous tennis players, and sounds or a video of a game in action.
• Remember to give students time to reflect on their learning. It could be they liked a particular website. They found one digital tool tricky to operate or they used a particular font to make it easy to read.