Chapter 9 - Using PowerPoint in Your Teaching
A lot of my professors at F.S.W. use PowerPoint to aid their lessons but I think that a lot of them are very dull. I think that if teachers are going to use visual aids, they should be interesting enough to actually aid the student. I know that in college not everything can be fun and have cartoons but it doesn't have to put the students to sleep either. Part of being a good teacher is to be on the same level with your students. If you have a diverse group of students then you may need to work a little harder to keep all of them interested in what you are teaching, but isn't that part of the fun of teaching? There is a section of our textbook that talks about some negative aspects of using PowerPoint, saying that it "usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis" (Maloy) but I don't think that I agree with that entirely. Again this seems to be a matter of operator error instead of a problem with the program itself. I have constructed a short PowerPoint to demonstrate things that a teacher could use in a classroom which I don't feel weaken verbal and spatial reasoning at all. I have also added a statistic that I have researched and know to be accurate. I hope that this PowerPoint can demonstrate my point, that these tools are great for education when used correctly.
My PowerPoint on using a PowerPoint
Chapter 9 - Strategies for Using PowerPoint with your Students
After reading this section of the textbook I can agree that people could easily "get lost" while creating a fun and colorful PowerPoint and lose focus on what the whole point of creating it really is. I think that it might be a good idea, when creating a PowerPoint, to go through all the slides that you intend to make and add all the graphics that you want to use in the entire presentation first. This would help remove all the temptation of "getting lost" because you would be playing with visuals first and then working on the academic aspect of your presentation afterwards. I would probably do mine backwards to that : the academic questions first and then go back and add all the bells and whistles. I really feel that using visual aids helps students, even if you are not a visual learner. Adding pictures that correspond to the information you are trying to get across to your student would help with association and even with recall if you set your lesson plan up thoughtfully. I would like to use PowerPoint in my classroom after I graduate college and I hope that I will design them to be silly enough to be memorable but relatable enough to keep my students engaged.
My Flipquiz
Chapter 11 - Digital Portfolios as a Learning Technology
I love the idea of having students create and keep a digital portfolio. This idea makes accessing previous assignments quick and simple. It also allows a teacher to show parents exactly what a student is doing with their time and the teacher won't have to dig up paperwork from weeks or months in the past. I think that students would benefit from having digital portfolios for a number of reasons. The most important reason in my opinion is that at the end of a semester, students can look back on the work they did when they first started the school year and they will be able to see how accomplished they have become. This would be great for self-esteem and that's a very important thing. I think that it would also help a teacher to assess whether a student is really learning something or just coasting by because they could also look back throughout the school year and identify if there was progress being made or if the student's work stayed the same. There are a few digital portfolios that I already knew about before reading this section of the book but I didn't call them "digital portfolios" because I did not know that term. One that comes to mind right away is an art portfolio called "Artsonia" where students from all around the world can upload projects they have created in school and then parents can see them before they come home. Parents also have the option of buying their child's creation on a teeshirt or coffee mug and more. I think that I will absolutely use a kind of digital portfolio in my classroom.
Resources
Flipquiz. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2016, from http://flipquiz.me/login
Jan4insight. (n.d.). Pie Chart. Retrieved April 02, 2016, from https://www.flickr.com/
M. (2013). What is an Elephant ? - A YouTube Visual Dictionary Learning Space Hosted by Chris Wells. Retrieved April 02, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHv5jUNpHzk
Maloy, R. W. (2011). Transforming learning with new technologies. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
Microsoft PowerPoint Online - Work together on PowerPoint presentations. (n.d.). Retrieved April 02, 2016, from https://office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx
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