After the storm comes the calm! :-) After the work overload of the past weeks, comes an apparently calmer week.
I particularly enjoyed this week’s topics – Powerpoint and Interactive Classes, a way to engage students – because they’re all related to PBL activities I so much appreciate.
Although I make use of PPT presentations a lot, and so there was nothing transcendental for me in this week’s readings, still I managed to learn some new handy hints. I discovered new keyboard techniques I was not familiar with – the B key was a complete surprise ;-) and I tried it immediately!
As for the basics of slide creation, design and composition, two things caught my attention. First, the meaning of Serif and San-serif fonts (quite interesting!) and second, something I must confess I had never thought about – colorblind people. I tend to stick to black and white presentations (with some exceptions, of course, depending on my audience), but I had never ever thought about avoiding certain colors. I will pay more attention to this important question in the future!
I loved creating my own Jeopardy Game! I think students will like it, but I just loved creating it! :-) This is exactly the fun of it – being able to create our own materials, and then see the sparkle in our students’ eyes. I would love to have time to design and create my own materials for all my lessons! One day…. :-)
It’s pretty obvious the potential PPT has in engaging students. Not only is it different from having a teacher delivering the lesson all the time (imagine having to listen to the same person for 90 minutes non stop! Yuck! :-)) but we may create interactive lessons. The students don’t just sit and “enjoy” the “film” (where’s the popcorn?? LOL), they really have to participate – move around, complete tasks, predict, search for information… you name it!
And something really very important is that we need to teach our students how to create their own PPT presentations. Sometimes we just take it for granted that they know how to do it, or that they learn it in ICT classes, but reality is quite different. We mustn’t keep this knowledge to ourselves but share it with our students. I’m sure they will appreciate it and their future presentations will be much better.
I will take the rest of the week to work on my Project Plan, trying to tie up loose ends. I’ll try to write a reflection about that, if I manage to. ;-)
Dear Celeste.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you creating presentations in power point is an interactive way of teaching and also of motivating the students. The first benefit is because this program is very easy to use… because it is an application of Microsoft office and almost everybody has access to it.
I also checked your jeopardy game . You did a great job. Congrats
Alex.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment.
Yes, PPT is very easy to use and it is great to spice up our classes. ;-)
Celeste
Dear Celeste! I agree with you that we can share with our new skills in creating PPT! It was also wonderful week, with excellent information for reading and creating Interactive PPTsssss!!!(As I tried to create several)Interesting points that we covered were about student interest to the lecture and how can we include them into learning process actively. As I wrote before in discussion PPT can be nice for visual learners and for learners who learn by watching videos and listening to audios, but again we have to think about other groups of learners. There are so many that we have to explore in PPT. Thanks for productive and positive discussions in a week! The best, Natalia
ReplyDeleteHi Natalya,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, this has been a very interesting and productive week. As usual you did an excellent work! ;-)
PPT prsentations are great for all learning styles, it's up to us to design them to cover all the styles. ;-)
Celeste
Dear Celeste,
ReplyDeleteThanks for adding extra resources in your blog. I think the power point readings and tips to make our presentations more interactive are vital for all of our classes. So the videos are really strengthen our skills using this tool.I agree with you that it takes time to create good PPT, however, students will benefit a lot from them, so the effort will be worth.
Regards,
Wilma
Dear Celeste:
ReplyDeleteAlways you post some contrasting videos and animation resources. People have different points of view and it conduct to new reflections. Thank for share with us these contrasting ideas.
Jose, Ecuador
Hi Wilma and José,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. I always try to find something related to the week's assignments that I think might be helpful. I'm glad you do find it useful.
Celeste
Dear Celeste
ReplyDeleteReading your reflections I found myself, I totally agree with your comments. PowerPoint presentations must bring something more than nice pictures and colors. However your must brilliant comment is "we need to teach our students how to create their own PPT presentations". I think it is the real purpose of the acquired knowledge for this week.
Gabriela
Hi Gabriela,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you! What's the point of learning new things if we don't share them? If we ask our students to use PPT we must help them create effective presentations. ;-)
Celeste