Image courtesy of Learning Tools ZoneI have definitely had my ups and downs with powerpoint and slideshare over the past couple of weeks. The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies(C4LPT, 2010) define slideshare as ".. a site where you can host your presentations and share them with others. Presentations can be linked to at the site itself or else embedded in a web page. You can also synchronise an MP3 audio file (podcast) with the slideset to create a slidecast - a more powerful way of distributing presentations/tutorials. Slideshare is also a tremendous resource site of presentations. "
I actually started my powerpoint presentation before Easter. This is the first powerpoint I have ever made, so it took me forever. I kept battling along, and thought I had it just right, ready to upload to my blog, and I realised that I hadn't acknowledged any of the images. I was shattered, I hadn't saved any of the images anywhere, so I had to go back and either find them again, or find new ones. This was my first hiccup.
Next, I was ready to go again, and decided to have a look at one of my colleague's presentation and saw that the lecturer had commented there was too much information on it, needed to use point form if she was going to use it to teach a lesson in the classroom (which is what I intended to do). So back to my powerpoint I went again for more changes.
I finished my presentation (for the third time) and made all the adjustments I wanted. I recorded a narration for it which took me ages as well. When I was finished, I created a slideshare account and uploaded my powerpoint. I discovered all the hours of special effects and narration were lost. At this stage I was pretty disappointed because I had already spent far too much time on this project.
I then decided I would try to upload it to my blog .... without success again!!! I was fed up by this stage and called it quits on the powerpoint for a while so I could continue on with the other tasks I had to do.
In the meantime I looked at other peoples powerpoints and noticed that some of them used slideboom which is basically the same as slideshare, giving you the same options to share your powerpoint.
I had success ... well sort of. The presentation uploaded and the effects worked, but the narration didn't. I have decided that I have spent all the time I can on this because I have too much other work to do!
Even though I have not had a very favourable experience with powerpoint to date, I think that powerpoints have their place in the classroom. I had a look at the Powerful Points website, and realise that amazing things can be done with powerpoints. I believe they can offer the following for the learning manager:
- are a good way to engage students
- they allow group sharing in which collaboration can occur,
- they provide a different style of presentation to cater for different types of learning styles - (multimodal delivery of information),
- they can be used for different purposes such as lecture style, multiple choice testing, embedding you tube videos and many more I would think
It has been suggested that students who actively engage with the material are more likely to recall information (Bruner 1961). I think the beauty of powerpoints is they promote creativity in the user, which is what we are strongly encouraging in the 21st century classroom. They allow student-centred learning, if used effectively they will promote active learning. In group project situations, powerpoints can be the tool of choice to provide valuable information with an outside focus, for real world feedback. Relate-Create-Donate (Kearsley and Shneiderman, 1997)
Students creating powerpoints encourages active learning. It fits into the most effective means of learning on Dale's Cone , because they provide direct, purposeful learning experiences which are hands-on (The Abilene Christian University Adams Center for Teaching Excellence, (2000). Like any of the pedagogical tools we have been introduced to, they loose their effect rapidly if overused.
My comments on slideshare are probably not as favourable as my comments for powerpoint. I have had limited use of the product, with limited success. Due to my success with slideboom, I will base my comments around it. This is a great tool to have because it allows web access for powerpoints, which is great. It allows your message in your powerpoints to go global if you need it to, and you have unlimited access to them as long as you have a computer with internet connection.
Below is my long awaited powerpoint presentation, that I will hopefully use in my EPL at some stage. It would be to fit in with a unit of work "Commotion in the Ocean" - hence the title! It would be used in a group discussion to highlight the negative impact that humans are having on our oceans, and how we can all individually help in the fight to save our oceans. Students will then use this information to go on and work on group assessments.
COMMOTION IN THE OCEAN powerpoint final version
View more presentations or Upload your own.
I hope it achieves my desired learning outcomes, because I'm not sure if I am ready to do another powerpoint any time soon with the other 8 assignments I have due in before the end of the semester creeping up on me very fast!
Feel free to leave comments, and constructive criticism, so when I have my next attempt at a presentation, I make it more effective.
Cheers
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