Are your PowerPoint’s Pointless?

Are your PowerPoint’s Pointless?

1. What do you think the author means by powerpointlessness?

Often the use of technology, especially that of PowerPoint’s, becomes a means to itself. Instead of the student or the teacher using technology to enhance the lesson, it becomes the focus of the lesson or detracts from lesson. Some common pitfalls are: too many bullets, too much clip art, simple thoughts, one liners, lack of flow and an inability to grab the audience through presentation and etc... One author called it “Death by PowerPointing.” This is ultimately seen when there is a PowerPoint with a weak presentation.

2. Have you ever witnessed powerpointlessness? How then, according to Jamie McKenzie, can we teach students to learn to think and communicate thoughtfully with PowerPoint?

I have never noticed “powerpointlessness” but that probably was because the presentation in general was pointless or did not grab my attention. The author challenges teachers to help instruct students on how to “think and communicate thoughtfully with PowerPoint” through many means. Here are a few ways:

a. Provide Examples. From childbirth people learn by mimicking others. One great way to help students become more affective presenters with PowerPoint is to show them examples of other student’s work. This will give them a model to follow.

b. Provide a Rubric. Another way to help students avoid the disease of “powerpointlessness” is to provide them with a rubric. One of the reasons that students often do not present well is because they struggle understanding what the teacher is really asking for. Give them a rubric stressing the main emphasis’s such as: presentation ability, creativity, eloquence and etc...

c. Concrete Research. Stress the need for concrete research to be presented in the PowerPoint. Too often students display one liners or incomplete sentences without any indepth research. One author said a PowerPoint should be “80% research and 20% flash.”

d. Make it appealing. Though the emphasis should not be on flash, a little flash always helps. Students should be cautioned against too much clip art and to use digital cameras when possible to deliver “more punch and power to their presentations.”

e. Teach them to present effectively. Students must master presentation strategies such as: maintaining eye contact, speaking fluidly, grabbing the audience, avoid reading slides aloud and etc…

f. Reference. Students must learn to give credit where credit is due. References, quotations provide evidence and give credence to ones presentation.

g. Be succinct. PowerPoint’s are meant to be an outline of the presentation. Avoid putting to much information in them; reserve that for the “speaking element.”

h. Consider the audience. The formation of every presentation must begin with the consideration of the audience. How old are they? What are their interests? How can I grab them and keep their attention? These are relevant questions and should be considered when developing any presentation.

Resources

http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html

Technological Bites for Increasing Higher Learning

Benjamin Bloom created a differentiated order of six thinking levels that we all go through in understanding a subject matter. These thinking levels are as follows:

“Knowledge: What do you know? Comprehension: What do you understand about what you know? Application: How can you use what you know? Analysis: What similarities, problems, parts, trends, do you see in what you know? Synthesis: Can you combine what you know to develop a new idea? Evaluation: How can you evaluate what you know? (Lorrie Jackson) ”

The problem with most classroom teaching within schools today is that they only take their students to the first two levels of learning: knowledge and comprehension. This is typically seen in the “memorize the answers and regurgitate them on the test” assessments. Most students leave classrooms with little understanding of how to apply, analyze, synthesize or evaluate their knowledge. How can teachers help facilitate higher orders of learning in their students? In this blog we will talk about simple ways using technology that teachers can help their students develop higher orders of understanding while using critical and creative thinking skills.

The first level of learning is knowledge and there are some very helpful ways using technology to encourage students to retain knowledge. In studying a certain subject matter students can be taken to the research lab. Instead of simply being passive learners hearing the teacher talk, they can use search engines and find the information themselves. In order to find more grade appropriate information it may be wise for the students to use the Internet Public Library or Kidsclick. It is important that students also write down the information in their own words instead of simply cut and pasting. This will help them retain the knowledge.

How do we help our students comprehend? There are some great resources online to help students comprehend subject matter as well. Try flash cards or matching games at Funbrain or Quia. For older students reading books, there are quality questions at BookAdventure. It may also seem prudent to use games like Jeopardy in class while making the class more of a competitive environment.

Application, how do we help our students apply their knowledge? Obviously the best way to do this is to find ways in which they can use it and of course technology can help in this endeavor. For instance if your students are studying a subject in which there are opposing sides such as politics, there are very fun polls online in which they can answer questions and find out where exactly they land. One such tool is PollZone. If the students are collecting a lot of data and need a way to present it to the class, there are tools online to help them graph it such as NCES Create a Graph Page. It may also be helpful for students in high school to use a wiki, such as wikipedia, to write down their research about a topic.

How do we help students analyze a topic and take it apart? One such resource particularly helpful with history projects is that of EyeWitness History. They will be able to listen to eyewitness accounts of a historical era as they increase their own understanding of history. They can look at cultural artifacts at American Memory or they can use ThinkTank to help them analyze and subdivide research topics.

How do we help students synthesize and put it back together? Obviously again, there are many resources, but some of the most affective are Backflip which can help particularly elementary and junior high students create folders containing all the websites used in the research. They can research three to four people at Biography channel put together common themes on a research topic. It may even be helpful for students to create a webpage or a blog putting all their final research together.

Finally, how do we help students evaluate their subject matter? One particularly interesting way to have students evaluate their information is by allowing them to participate in an online debate or forum. University of California Berkley has one such site called Wise specifically for controversial science debates. Students can research and post their own side. Also students can create their own surveys online and ask their friends to participate in them as they evaluate others thoughts on certain subjects. One such site for this is Zoomerang.

With students of this generation becoming particularly so technologically based it is becoming increasingly hard to reach them by the lecture format; the best way to reach them and increase their higher order learning maybe through the use of technology. This takes the learner from being a passive listener to being an active participant in learning. These technological tools and many others will help students develop not only knowledge and comprehension but application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The last four higher orders or learning particularly help develop critical & creative thinking which will be most helpful for students in college and as they get into the real world.



Resources

http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic69.htm
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/techtorial/techtorial011.pdf

Educational Technology

1. A little bit about you.

My name is Greg Brown. I am pursuing an Elementary/Middle School certification with endorsements in English, Math and Social Studies. While in school, I am an assistant basketball coach for the women’s team at Trinity International. I also pastor an English congregation consisting mostly of youth and college students at a Korean Church in Vernon Hills. I have been there for almost 5 years and hope to stay while I am teaching at a school.

2. Why you want to be a teacher.

I want to be a teacher for several reasons. First I feel called to bivocational ministry while serving at a church, in the same way Paul was a tentmaker while starting churches. As a pastor teaching comes most naturally to me and I have a great love for youth. When I first started working at the Korean church 5 years ago as specifically the youth pastor soon after I said to myself... "Man, I love teaching youth I should have got a bachelors in education." Here I am 5 years later pursuing what I realized in that moment years ago...

Since I already have a MA in Religion I probably would rather be employed at a Christian School teaching both English and Religion. At the same time I am not opposed to a public school I just feel I may build more fruit for the Kingdom while clearly proclaiming the word of God at a private school rather than just by presence at a public.

3. Your technology proficiency or comfort level. Describe ways you regularly use computers, computer peripherals (such as digital cameras, scanners, CD burners) and the internet both for your personal and professional use.

I would classify my technology proficiency as average for this generation. I regularly use email, face book, chat, as well as writing all my sermons weekly on Microsoft word. I know how to use PowerPoint though I would not call myself savvy and I have never gotten into digital cameras and cd burning though I feel as though I could pick up those projects very quickly.

4. Expectations for this class. (anticipation of, concerns, etc.)

My expectation is to become very comfortable with using technology as a teaching tool. I would expect that we would become more efficient using PowerPoint, YouTube and webpages as teaching tools. By webpages I assume that we will be trained on how to handle a partially internet based class by using something such as "blackboard."