PowerPoint (Ehhh + Sweet!)

PowerPoint (Ungh + Sweet!) was a recent project assigned to us in my technology class. I know that many of my fellow students were not completely clear on the assignment requirements until maybe the last class before it was due. What was requested of us was that we create an interactive power point that would be able to be used as a part of a lesson that would help the students to practice or review the lesson. I think the part where most of us got confused is that we weren't actually teaching a lesson first, but only creating the interactive part of the lesson where the students could actually click on the power point themselves. Then the power point could be used in conjunction as a game or with a review sheet.
Although the power point project had a rough start to it I ended up really enjoying being able to be creative with my project and ended up learning a lot about power point in the process. I liked that the project made me think critically about how to approach the classroom that I chose appropriately and interestingly. I think that once there was a detailed narrative given to us it was a lot easier to narrow down a subject that you could teach. I chose to teach middle school math reviewing the formula D = R X T. One source that helped me in this project was how provide the students interactive learning. You can read more about this site by clicking on the following URL http://tinyurl.com/8dp87v9.

In my narrative I said that I was teaching a small rural school in Montana and tried to find fun "farm or horse" examples to keep them entertained. The power point started off with a fun activity where the students bet on a race horse which then led them to a youtube video of a race in an effort to get them excited about the project at hand. I created my power point with the thought in mind that I would give a worksheet with the power point that let the students work on the examples presented. Then I provided the answers at the end of each problem so that if they had any questions I could assist them. How would I keep them from just writing down the answer, you may ask. Well in the worksheet instructions it would state that all work to find that answer must be shown to recieve credit. At the end of the worksheet examples I then provided a critical thinking bonus question that would spur the students to try to put together numerous learnings into one problem. In the question Buffalo Bill has to round up escaped cattle and at the end of each step the horse moves to the cow and the cow disapears. I really enjoyed this part of the project because I learned so many new things that power point can do.

For assessing our projects we had the opportunity to assess each other as peers. I really liked that we were able to do this because it gave us a chance to get other ideas from other students power points as well as think critically about how a student may look at a power point and how they would grade it. All of my fellow classmates did a great job in their blogs I thought that they were fun and interactive and properly fit to the age groups that they presented. If you would like to read about their blogs or how they felt about the power point project visit:Leah Stearns project or Katie Lybrook's project. To find more helpful tips on power point projects visit this url: http://tinyurl.com/5q2sdh.

So even though this project started out as a pain it turned out pretty sweet and I would encourage anyone who does not know much about power point to learn because it can provide a great teaching tool that is fun an interactive for the students.



Narrative for PowerPoint Project (1)



Teach Smith 183 (1)