Throughout the last two weeks, The Power of Blogs and Digital Media in the classroom have highlighted the importance of students creating using technology. This weeks blog follows the same theme as we learn about presentation tools, legal and ethical protocols surrounding this and how students can use this digital tool to create in the classroom.
Presentation tools: what can they do?
Originally developed for purposes other than education, presentations aim to persuade, narrate or to educate. When utilising this tool creativity is key; It's important to use an instrument that works in unison in with the teaching and learning objectives and can be uploaded and shared easily to students web spaces. Some of the most popular tools include:Each of these tools have unique characteristics but for this post we will explore one of the most popular and easy to access application of PowerPoint.
PowerPoints settings, multi-author ability, privacy settings, customisability and more.
PowerPoint is a well known presentation program that makes it easy to create, collaborate and present ideas in a creative and customisable way (Microsoft, 2019). It gives users the option to save the PowerPoint as a PDF document or images (when saving as, change the file format to your desired format).
Another great setting in PowerPoint is that in order to be shared, whether this means uploaded to OneDrive or embedded into blogs or websites, students must be logged in. This allows the teacher to keep track of each students progress and ability to sensibly collaborate with their peers.
Great for classroom collaboration, PowerPoints allow for multiple authors as they can be saved to OneDrive or SharePoint online and students can work on the slideshow at the same time. If someone else has the presentation open, their thumbnail picture appears in the top-right corner of the ribbon and it also allows for easy access to choose which changes want to be permanent. This eliminates the potential for students 'trolling' in the classroom along with the inability to be an anonymous contributor.
Linear by nature, PowerPoint give you the option of many integrated themes for the slideshow to make the design a completely customisable experience as the creator chooses their own adventure story/activity.
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| Themes provided by PowerPoint |
In fact, PowerPoint is so customisable that the creator can completely change the linear nature to become an interactive museum. Simply right click an image or text box on a slide and hyperlink it to another slide to become interactive. A quick video showing how easy it is to hyperlink is below.
It would be recommended that if utilising this in the classroom, to provide a template to your students to save time. Templates can be accessed via this link.
This is a particularly great program to exercise in the classroom as it is such an easy program to use. Almost every student is familiar with Microsoft Word, and PowerPoint is just an extension of this program that imbeds images, video and audio to convey a message. To create a linear presentation, little-to-no experience is needed. When creating an interactive project it's important to spend time with the students exploring how to use the certain aspects needed. There are many tutorials available on YouTube to assist students in this process.
Utilising presentations in the classroom: what legal, safe and ethical protocols need to be considered?
Under a teachers duty of care, it is our responsibility to ensure students are learning in a safe and secure environment. With technology and the world wide web, its particularly important that we as educators realise the risk and have safeguards in place to avoid any legal, safe or ethical breaches.Firstly, set expectations to students about internet use. By making students clear of expectations and dangers such as uploading images of themselves in their uniform or in front of their house onto their presentations, students too are aware of the risks. Whilst PowerPoint itself is classroom safe, if utilising an online tool such as Prezi, I would recommend to send a letter home to parents outlining the course and any risks and having them sign the bottom of the letter to ensure they too are aware of possible risks.
Of course the issue of cyberbullying comes to fore straight away when using technology that can be shared onto the web; however, with PowerPoint is great that students have to log in to share and collaborate. As teachers we must be aware of the account each student is using to not only monitor any inappropriate behaviour, but to stay updated on their presentation progression.
When downloading templates to use, it is important to ensure these are free to use and not under any copyright laws. I have provided a link above of a great website for interactive templates.
How presentations enhance pedagogy: linking presentations with my discipline areas.
PowerPoint is a great option to utilise in many different subject areas as long as the teacher tweaks it to fit their discipline area. Below I have embedded an interactive virtual museum that I created with PowerPoint to outline how you can use presentation tools in conjunction with SAMR and Bloom's Taxonomy in the Business classroom.
References
Bloom's Taxonomy [online image]. (2017). Retrieved from
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vandycft/29428436431
Microsoft. (2019). What is PowerPoint? Retrieved from https://products.office.com/en-us/what-is-powerpoint
The SAMR Model [online image]. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.showbie.com/using-showbie-with-the-samr-model/
This was a great blog post, Sophie! I really enjoyed the abundance of links to other sources that you have included as well as the embedded media, it really makes the blog engaging and allows me to find out more! You have set it up in a way which is easily followed and read. Thanks for a good read (:
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your thoroughly interesting and well-supported post. Your virtual museum is great! I can see this working well in my history classroom. Towards the end of your post you mentioned "tweaking" PowerPoint software to suit your own disciplinary area. I am curious to know how you would specifically tweak the tool for use in your classroom? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. I'm keen to read your other posts!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback Kelli, I really appreciate it! For my Business classroom I would use the virtual museum as a scaffold for students to create a presentation on what makes a business successful. This would give students the opportunity to research and from this, piece together what they feel to be the defining variables to a businesses success. Throughout their museum I would hope to see concepts such as location, price and management throughout. I hope this gives you a better understanding of how PPT and other similar softwares could be used in a Business classroom.
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