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!