What to do with PowerPoint?

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Permalink Reply by Jane Krauss on March 14, 2008 at 5:23pm

I'd baaack up and ask: What do I want kids to communicate, and why is powerpoint the right medium? Look at the logical communications that come from study in these subject areas. Reflection on learning, applications to real life, key concepts explained so others learn, mysteries or controversies that remain in this subject area, how we know what we know (ie: who first determined the size of Mars, and how did he figure it out?)... Think purpose and audience, then you'll know what to do with powerpoint.

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on March 14, 2008 at 7:17pm

Hi Coop,
Welcome to Classroom 2.0 - congratulations on your first forum post!

Your question is not an easy one to answer. As Jane says, it's hard to know exactly what you have to work with or what your goal is for the students. Do you see the students daily or just once in a while in the lab? What other software do you have access to? What kind of computers do you have? Can they make movies or record audio? Can the students access the web, build web pages or upload podcasts?

Powerpoint is one of those good news/bad news applications - it's easy to learn and use, but doesn't get you very far. (Also known as "low threshold, low ceiling").

Let us know some of these answers and I bet lots of people will have some great ideas!

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Epps on March 15, 2008 at 1:15am

I think PowerPoint (or Presentations or Slides or Keynote) is just one of the tools that everyone is "expected" to be able to use, from about 4th grade up. In itself its an interesting format. When well used it's fantastic. See the posts at Presentation Zen for a good primer on good PowerPoint. (Check out this example).

I think we should teach the mechanics of slides, along with a strong dose of good design...just like writing: Before you can create a good PowerPoint, you have to know what it's for - who will see it, where will you be in relation to it, how it is meant to support you, etc. It goes with the general "good presentation" skills we want to develop in students.

As for teaching the mechanics, I've asked the kids to develop a "choose your own adventure" story line, work out the tree structure of the story line, and then create it in PowerPoint. Apart from the story planning and writing, they also learn about slide creation, picture placement, text boxes, color schemes, and hyper links. All good ICT skills in any setting.

I was inspired by these projects at the Minerva School in Basel. My students enjoyed the creative and technical challenges, and sharing of finished stories afterwards.

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Permalink Reply by Cynthia Garrety on March 15, 2008 at 6:31am

PowerPoint can be used to do multimedia presentations complete with non linear hyperlinks to slides within other presentations and the web. Why not conceptualize an activity similar to what we used to use hyperstudio for and bring the same multimedia into powerpoint? Any 'report' that you do now on pen and paper can be brought to life by your students utilizing multimedia and yes, powerpoint as the backbone.

PowerPoint also will take voice recording making it a good beginner level choice for digital storytelling since the final product can be saved as a .mov file.

Good luck

Cynthia

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Permalink Reply by Coop on March 15, 2008 at 10:48am

Thanks for all the replies. I have students once every six days, so it is a bit tough and I do want to keep it curriculum related. I do non linear with a table of contents that link to each slide and Home buttons back to the table of contents. They insert their voice, pic and movies. We have iMacs and do Word PPT, Excel, Webdesign in grade 5 & 6, and a bit of photoshop.

I just feel like PPt. is losing its luster. Kids get caught up with all the extra's...animations, slide trans, custom animations. Everyone is PowerPointed to death. I have them take a subject binder to class and have 5 slides, hyperlinks, voice, Action Buttons, hyperlinks to the internet, Table of Contents. Again, just feels like it is getting old. I do feel it is important to teach them how to use PPt, so it can be used in other class.

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on March 15, 2008 at 12:59pm

With iMacs, you have a lot of audio and video capability - can you have them do a project where they take a subject and make a movie or radio broadcast about it? They could teach the subject to younger kids, or create a news broadcast from 1776, etc. The planning, storyboarding, writing scripts, editing and post production all can use other tools you've taught, like Excel for the time planning, Word for scripting and storyboarding, or Photoshop for creating props or projected backgrounds.

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Permalink Reply by Kathy Epps on March 15, 2008 at 10:39pm

I think it is old for us - we are old! But for them, the when they first meet PowerPoint -. it's full of wonderful possibilities - almost like Scratch! - and they just have to be allowed to play, experiment, color, animate, try it all out, before we can help them refine , and decide how to use it as a powerful tool. "A picture is worth 1000 words" and all that.

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Permalink Reply by Elise Mueller on March 16, 2008 at 8:16am

Hello Coop,
I too have felt that PowerPoint was getting old which led me to explore other tools such as Voice Thread and Photostory, both of which I use with 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. I went back to PowerPoint this year, after making changes to the way I use it.

Inspired by Daniel Pink and his Pecha Kucha (pe-chach-ka) presentations I asked my students to create mini Pecha Kuchas, 10 slides with 20 seconds of commentary. For some of my fifth graders this was a disaster. To them PowerPoint was not about content it was about skill with animations and transitions. One student put his head down on his desk after he heard the Pecha Kuchas would have no transitions or animations. It was as bad as telling him no more recess or P.E. I knew my students loved the bells and whistles but had no idea how far down on the totem pole content had fallen.

My answer was to continue to model, model, model improving my own presentations and allow students to chose their medium, some chose old fashioned posters! Photostory creates more of a movie type presentation which students have been using for book reports. VoiceThread allows students to comment on each others work, we are creating yearbooks with this tool. Students are beginning to choose PowerPoint again, using compelling images and their expertise to convey their message, minus the bullets, swirls, and explosions.

Two other outstanding presentations to learn from...Dick Hardt on Identity and Larry Lessig on Creativity and the Law

Good luck!
Elise

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Permalink Reply by Barry Bakin on April 2, 2008 at 9:25am

Think about how you see PowerPoint presentations being used in your professional life. Usually, a presenter is giving a talk and uses the presentation to help get the main ideas across or display results of some research. My suggestion is to create a context in which your students will be doing the same thing. In my case, my students work in teams (or pairs) to complete a small research project. They come up with a question, collect data, create a simple graph in Excel, transfer the graph to a basic (4 or 5 slide only) PowerPoint presentation, and present the results to the class and invited guests. While I work with adult immigrant ESL students, the basic idea can be easily adapted to whatever level of students you work with. For samples of student work (Excel presentations, PowerPoint presentations, some videos of students presenting their research, and step-by-step instructions for creating both a chart in Excel and the PowerPoint presentation itself) see http://esl.adultinstruction.org/ResearchProject.htm

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Permalink Reply by Kim Tufts on April 2, 2008 at 3:42pm

Hi there - I use Keynote (Mac) application, same as powerpoint, to my 6,7 and 8th grade students. I keep this project hostage until the end of the tri-mester because it is what the kids love most about the computer class! First I let them create a slide show about any animal they like. (6th grade) They first have to story board the lesson, so they plan it out. They also need to do some research about their animal, and of course include a bibliography. For 7th grade, I have them choose partners, and they do the "investigative reporter" slide show. They conduct an interview with the other person, asking a series of 15 questions. Some are the most embarrassing moment in their lives, their favorite foods as well as "kids today need to .....", fill in the blank. The kids love it! They also add pictures and if there is time, they can create music on garage band to upload to their presentation. For 8th grade, they use it as a "pitch" for the product they have created for their multimedia class. The 8th graders have to pitch their product to an audience through the slide show. They only have a limited amount of time and must present their product information professionally. The 8th grade class is almost like an apprentice type setup. They create a product, create all different things for that product, video(commercial), podcast (radio spot), letterhead, business cards, etc.. Hope this helps.. I usually let the kids run with it and they are so happy to do so! They love the pictures, etc. that they use. Also, www.freeplaymusic.com is a great resource for music mp3's. Make sure they click on mp3 when they are previewing the music! www.pics4learning.com is also a great site for pictures.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Barbour on March 16, 2008 at 2:24pm

You might be interested in checking out the Homemade PowerPoint Games project website. I'm a part of the project, so if you have questions just let me know.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Grewal on March 17, 2008 at 2:07am

Games, that is a good idea. I never even thought of that one! Good work NewFoundLand...lets see if Toronto can beat that haha

I was thinking sharing PowerPoints online. There are a few file sharing ones out there i suggest you check out coop.
Posting these ppt's online can give the students the ability to showcase there work to the whole net. Get kids using the internet to post their work, ideas and creativity.

I watched Larry Lessig on Creativity and the Law link above, it was amazing. He talked about getting kids to create content and share it. He hinted at this point, saying the new generation were going to be the content creators and such. Maybe sharing PowerPoint online is therefore a good way to start this process.

Thanks,
Dave

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