Powerful PowerPoint

PowerPoint and I are old friends!!!

If you saw my last post about Prezi you may have thought I had a new bestie.  But really, I think for content delivery in particular I will remain loyal. Setting up slides is very easy and there are background themes that make your slides a little more interesting to look at. Text is entered in text boxes which is helpful when you are animating your slides. It allows you to keep each talking point separate.  You can embed YouTube videos directly into your presentation to play automatically or when clicked.

Thanks, to this weeks explorations I have seen that PowerPoint has adapted a few things to keep pace with all these new competitors. I learned that I could record a video of a presentation, record narration and sound on each slide and even present online. 

Below I have embedded a presentation I used on my last prac.  I didn't spend any time on getting the timing of the slides right but it illustrates the gist of the lesson. I do find that when I view the video it is a bit glitchy in the transitions which is not ideal.




One thing I really like about PowerPoint is that it helps to keep me on track! I always put reminders in for myself to check for learning throughout the lessons and to be explicit in my instructions.  These are two areas that I feel are important for good pedagogy.

It is not limited to just typing words either.  You can see that my presentation was not necessarily pretty (I had to throw it together in one sitting).  But it was very focussed on the actual students in the class and allowed for key learning concepts to be illustrated with graphics, drawings and font differentiation.

Incidentally, the students upcoming assessment item was to create an infographic.  They could pick a program of their choice and there are many to choose from.  However, I created mine straight there in PowerPoint.  What I liked about this lesson is that the kids were really engaged with it because it was about them.  When I asked them what drew their eye in the infographic I had kids pointing out every little thing (with hands up and waiting their turns of course) just to get their turn to speak.

Was PowerPoint the hero that day?  Probably not, but did it contribute? Yep!

Prezi-tations

Firstly, I'd like to share my experience of SAMR creeping it's way into my learning over many years in this Prezi...




I could have written all of that in text.  It's possible that the only person who would actually take the time to read a whole paragraph is the marker. It's possible that some people would read the first couple of slides on the Prezi above and then skip through quickly to the end (this is me sometimes). It's possible that some people would like to do both! OR neither...

Ideally, in the classroom context content would be delivered in many ways to reach all learners and this may include a Prezi.  Prezi could also be used by students to present their work. I have not spent enough time on Prezi to know what features and tricks it has to make a more effective presentation but it is something I plan to do more of in future.

In my Prezi above I mention a digital artefact.  When viewing others work in that subject many had used this platform.  If I'm honest, I scoffed, thinking it was just an unnecessary embellishment!  However, I found Prezi to be extremely easy to use.  I feel that my artefact could have been even better if had I used this.

Sometimes Bec doesn't know best!

Videos... Consuming, Creating and Learning

As a mature aged student, I have experience of video consumption and creation for educational purposes.

As a consumer, I have been so  much more engaged on Moodle accessing a variety of media types to learn and understand concepts.  My favourite bits are the YouTube clips.  I like that I can watch some of them at 1.5 speed as I am so time poor!!!

In the last couple of years I carried out a university subject (Performing Arts for Educators) that required us to record videos of us storytelling, dancing and singing... how embarrassing!  I learnt a lot about video editing (I used Windows Moviemaker) and enjoyed working on the products.  One learning outcome was to be ABLE to speak dramatically.  This is not something that can be assessed on paper.  If you can ignore excessive cheesiness feel free to have a laugh at my finished product below.



My children have used iMovie on their iPads for creating schoolwork. My niece interviewed me on camera for an assignment on the weekend.  It is clear that video is filtering its way into classrooms.

Podcasting - Discovery of a new and exciting teaching tool!

I was excited to stumble across podcasts as a teaching tool...  The only experience I'd had so far with podcasts was that I could catch up on my favourite radio station segments!  I had never considered using one as a teacher.

But check this out!!  I'm going to talk about some of the value of using a podcast in a classroom... below... in my first ever podcast!

Record music with Vocaroo >>

It is easy to see ways to utilise podcasting in an ICT savvy classroom. One thing to keep in mind is that podcasts need to be linked specifically to intended learning outcomes to avoid becoming "little more than ‘bells and whistles’" (Dobozy et.al., 2007, p. 19).

Following is an idea on how to use this ICT tool in my content teaching area, business:

Images and Visuals to Enrich Learning

I plan to use images and visual representations when in my future classrooms.  Mateer, Ghent, Porter & Purdom (2017) summarise that learning, accessing and recalling concepts is easier when concepts are presented visually as well as verbally.

I will refer to my earlier Geography (urbanisation lesson) to demonstrate how the use of visuals enriched my delivery of key concepts.  After conducting a survey of the students I drew three snapshot drawings of how a hypothetical city would evolve over time (shown below). This allowed the students to see as well as hear the changes that I was trying to explain.

At this point I was using substitution as I was projecting the images onto a whiteboard with PowerPoint rather than handing out a sheet with the image to them.

WIKI + SAMR = MISP (More Interesting Student Products)

I applied the SAMR model to improve one of my lessons that I carried out on my first practicum to see how it might look.  This would have been an insane amount of work for just this one or two lesson project.  However, with consummate users of ICT it is definitely a possibility and would allow for wide differentiation within the class...

Reflection on a Geography (Urbanisation)  Lesson to Implement SAMR Model
What I Did Previously	Substitution	Augmentation	Modification	Redefinition
Took a survey of Students’ family structures, sporting interests and dwelling type in past, present and future scenarios.	I create a Survey Monkey to collect class statistic which the students carry out	Students access the survey to get results independently	Students create their own survey monkey to question peers in their for class	Students create their own survey monkey to question their own network of people
I asked the questions out loud and wrote totals on the board which I photographed for later tabulation	A student representative collates the results on laptop	All Students collect the data individually on a program of their choice
I hand sketched a hypothetical city that represented the classroom statistics and showed it changing on PowerPoint			Student’s create snapshot views (graphs, drawings or animation) of the changing city and share them on the class WIKI	Students do a time-lapse drawing of changes that have occurred in their local area and share it with the participants of the survey on YouTube and embed it in the class Wiki.

What the WIKI!!!

Oh boy!  I am having some trouble with my WIKI!

I absolutely LOVED the plain English video from the course so much that I have embedded it here in my blog so I have easy access to it when I am a teacher...



Video: Courtesy of Common Craft

After watching this video I was excited about the idea of creating an interesting WIKI that I could get some collaborators on. When I got a great idea and whipped it up with ease eventually, I sent it to colleagues for a test run.