Power Point

Power points in my lifetime have always been used, however in saying this I can recall them being used very poorly. Dumps of information and lots of reading, power points in my experience were never as engaging as they could have been. From further investigations on how power points could be used, I found a lot of useful and great information that I, as a future learning manager will incorporate.

Power points can be used to create interactive presentations containing text, art, animation, hyperlinks and audio and visual elements (Education World, 2007). As a future learning manager I would take the approach to using this great tool by presenting a lesson similar to the following outlined;

Students research an event that happened on a particular day in history. Each student will be then asked to create a 10 to 15 slide presentation about their findings. Students will then be asked to find graphics, sounds and other engaging tools to make their power point more appealing to the audience.

Power points not only can be used for presentations but for creative writing classes (Education World, 2007). An example to expand on this idea is a visual poetry activity, where students read a favourite poem and create a power point presentation depicting a visual interpretation of the images in the poem.

This great tool relates perfectly with Kearsley and Schneiderman’s (1999) active learning, because it relates to the real world and is a great tool to create authentic learning within the classroom environment.

Also in my investigations I concluded that power points can work well in a number of other ways. These include;

· Presenting information or instruction to an entire class.
· Creating graphically enhanced information and instructions for the learning centres.
· Creating tutorials, reviews, or quizzes for individual students.
· Displaying student work and curriculum materials or accompany teacher presentations at parent open houses.

In conclusion I look forward to using power points more effectively as they are a great engagement tool that not only enhances students knowledge but also their understanding and overall skills to complete an authentic task set (Kearsley & Schneiderman, 1999).

References

Education World. (2007). Retrieved August 5th, 2009 from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech013.shtml

Kearsley, G. & Schneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology based teaching and learning. Retrieved August 16th, 2009 from http://home.sprynet.com/-gkearsley/engage.htm