Assessment 1: Embedded Task 4 - Reflection on Presentation tools

PowerPoint Presentations

1.   An overview of the technical aspects

What can this technology do?

·         Embed text, links, audio, video and images – teachers can input the lesson’s content onto slides and accompany it with relevant engaging and educational video, images and audio.

·         Creates interactive quizzes – teachers can input quizzes to students’ understanding.

·         Creates concept maps and brainstorms (SmartArt function) – gives students the ability to ease into a new topic through the breakdown of concepts these tools offer.

·         Image files – students and teachers can create images through saving slides as jpg images.

·         Slide transitioning and animation – teachers can include slide transitions and animations into their slides to increase student engagement.

·         Edit images e.g. crop, border, filter – teachers and students can edit images they insert onto their slides to enhance presentations.

·         Easy to use – functions explained, ‘help’ tool included if needed – easy for contemporary teachers and students to understanding – “basic” form of technology.

·         Built in spelling, research, thesaurus and language application – can assist students in expanding their vocabulary and their spelling and grammar skills.  

·         Commenting and notes tool – teachers have the ability to give student feedback through comments and add to ideas through notes.

·         Creates charts (e.g. graphs) and shapes – teachers can input educational visuals to assist student understanding – e.g. this could help with statistics.

·         Varied background options – teachers can design bright and vibrant presentations to gain student attention.

What learning outcomes can they support in a classroom?

·         Improves student comprehension – students are more likely to retain information if an image or visual is presented with it.

·         Develops student creativity – students can design presentations – this allows them to be creative.

·         Assists in student individuality – students have the ability to personalise images.

·         Improves student understanding – teachers can test student knowledge through interactive quizzes; allowing teachers to see areas for improvement and adjust pedagogy accordingly.

·         Improves student feedback – teachers can add comments to students’ presentations; making it easily identifiable to students where they can improve.

·         Builds students’ ability to complete self-directed work – students don’t need to rely on the teacher to explain topics – the presentation can also be self-directed where students work through slides and then ask their teacher for help if needed.  

What sorts of activities/materials will they support?

·         Preparing handouts – if teachers use the notes page layout view they can print their presentation as a hand-out for students to refer back to after the lesson as revision (Brooks & Byles, 2015).

·         Vocabulary review activities – teachers can create slideshows of vocabulary words that students need to learn. Ran as a study show - with the words appearing along with pictures and definitions to help a student remember the meaning (i.e. a form of technological flash cards) (Brooks & Byles, 2015).

·         Spelling activities - teachers could have an image of the words they want students to spell on the side. Then have students say the spelling word and then spell it in their notebooks. As they spell, or to help them when they get confused, words could be brought up one letter at a time through mouse click (Brooks & Byles, 2015).

·         Multi-modal presentations – PowerPoint can be an option for students when they complete multi-modal tasks for assessment.

·         Oral presentations – students can make a PowerPoint to accompany their speech to gain audience attention and get their idea further across. Also if allowed, students can record their oral on their PowerPoint to avoid getting nervous in person.

·         Introducing a new topic – PowerPoint presentations can be a great form of direct teaching. Thus, making them an excellent tool to use especially when students have to gain knowledge of a new topic first, in order to apply it.

2.   PowerPoint applied to my own teaching context

Pedagogy

The use of PowerPoints can be applied to my own teaching context in a number of ways. For example, because one of my chosen disciplines is English they would be of great assistance. Firstly, they could be used to advance students’ vocabulary through “vocab study shows” (as mentioned previously). In addition to this, they could be used as a tool to increase students’ spelling capabilities through providing an effective structure to develop these skills (see activities/materials sections). Also, in a history teacher context due to PowerPoints having the ability to make interactive class quizzes I could use this function to test general knowledge on the current unit’s topic. Additionally, the use of PowerPoint would make it easy for me to discuss and share primary sources with the students like images and video footage from the time of the event. Also, as students are more likely to retain information with the use of an image or visual I would input this into my pedagogy and make sure I have plenty of visuals in the presentations to assist students in retaining information. For an example of how it could be included in my teaching context refer to my example PowerPoint at the bottom of the post.

SAMR Model in a PowerPoint Presentation Context

Substitution:

Teacher puts class content on presentation slides and students copy into their notebooks. Therefore, at first PowerPoint is just a basic ‘substitution’ to teachers writing on whiteboards/chalkboards.

Augmentation:

Class completes quiz using PowerPoint instead of using pen and paper. The functional benefit here is that teachers can receive almost immediate feedback on student level of understanding of material if completed as a whole class activity. The impact of immediate feedback is that students may begin to become more engaged in learning.

Modification:

Students can record their multimodal presentations onto their PowerPoints. Students can avoid the nervousness of having to present in front of the class.  

Redefinition:

Whole class lessons are structured on PowerPoints. The use of video, images and audio accompanying content in the lesson, increases student engagement and with that increases student educational outcomes. PowerPoint presentations can be saved and given to students as handouts to refer back to for revision which hence, makes exam study easier for the students. The PowerPoint program becomes central to student learning progression with each lesson being structured using the application. 

References

Brooks, S., & Byles, B. (2015). Ideas for using PowerPoint in a classroom. Retrieved from http://internet4classrooms.com/ideas_pp.htm

Grammar and Punctuation Revision

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