Week 4

Week4

This week’s lesson focused on presentation software such as PowerPoint, which is available through the Microsoft Corporation. PowerPoint is a great presentation tool that can be used in business, education, and for personal use. For this blog entry, I will focus on the many different ways and reasons why PowerPoint can be an effective tool in the classroom. I will also discuss other material that was presented in this lesson including the technology explorations.

Other than PowerPoint there are also other ways to present material. Some websites that I explored that can do this are comiclife.com, storybird.com, and voicethread.com. These websites are the ones that I liked the best in my technology explorations. These different presentation websites are great for students to get more creative and learn content in a different way. They help develop critical thinking skills and can help student’s comprehend material.

Although PowerPoint can be an effective and very useful tool in education, it can also be implemented in a manner that is unwanted. For instance, before any presentation is executed, the presenter must fully understand how to work with the software. If a problem should arise, the presenter should know how to correct the problem and quickly resolve the issue. Once the presenter has fully understood the workings of the software, the user should understand the many different reasons why it should be used and when to implement it in their teachings.

There are many different reasons why you should implement PowerPoint or other presentation software into your instruction. It foremost incorporates technology in the classroom. It allows for multiple divers learners to learn in their own way, such as audible and visual learners. Another reason to use it is to break the mundane of everyday teaching, for example the lecture. It keeps students attention span because they are being instructed in a different way. It can also keep students engaged because of the many different items you can use in a presentation, such as videos, images, links, and even manipulatives. 

I put together a PowerPoint for my PE class that was about a game called human foosball. It is a game that implements various soccer skills in a foosball table layout. They organize themselves into a formation that is similar to that of a foosball table. It was presented to my eighth grade class and I am most proud of the diagrams of the layout of the game and links showing a video of how the game is played. This gave students a better understanding of how the game is played and sparked their interest. The game was well accepted and students were interested in the presentation. One thing that I would do differently would to make the presentation more detailed and longer. This would help better student’s comprehension and have more playing time than time spent talking about how to play.