http://www.teacherweb.com/ca/kaiserhighschool/hughes/photo1.stm
http://www.online.tusc.k12.al.us/tutorials/pptclass/pptclass.htm
http://www.vnunet.com/features/1146696
http://www.powerpointanswers.com
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| Technology Skill 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Click on the link to view the "Elements of Plot" presentation. http://www.teacherweb.com/ca/kaiserhighschool/hughes/photo1.stm |
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| What I want to learn in this activity: I want to learn how to use the power point tools to develop visually interesting presentations that will keep students' attention. Power point presentations can be visually boring much like a text book can be boring. I want students to access presentations I create to help them gain understanding of the content and to enhance their knowledge. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| How will I learn the skills to produce visually interesting presentations? The first thing I will do is to make an outline of the text I want to include in the presentation. Since this unit would be an introduction to the elements of "plot" I will develop slides that pertain to those elements. The next thing I will do is create the slides. This will not be a very long presentation because I will use it just prior to assigning a short story in the textbook. Once the slides are done, I will begin to experiment with the tools in an effort to set up "fade-in/fade-out" for each slide as well as animation for the slides. Both the way a slide comes on the screen and the animation must compliment what is on the slide. These elements should produce visually interesting slides. I will include some clip art photos to demonstrate a couple of elements of plot which will aid ELD students who are only at a level 1 or 2 in their language development. The final task will be to go through the presentation from beginning to end to edit for continuity and visual affects. Once these have been met, I will post the presentation online so that students can have access to it. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Evidences |
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| Investigation: My investigation included an internet search for help using power point tools. I accessed three sites that offered some useful tips for using the power point tools. There are numerous sites that have tips and suggestions, as well as sample presentations that can be viewed. Since my purpose is to present language arts content that will help students, simple presentations that are visually interesting seems to be what will work best. The sites I visited are: http://www.online.tusc.k12.al.us/tutorials/pptclass/pptclass.htm http://www.vnunet.com/features/1146696 http://www.powerpointanswers.com |
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| Engagement: Experimenting with the power point tools proved to be as exciting as learning something new in my favorite hobby. I found some things simply don't work while others didn't add visual interest to the presentation. For example, some of the clip art photos I found to be an example of "character" or "setting" (time and location) looked terrible when they were put in the presentation. After I finally found photos suitable for the subject, I discovered that resizing for a presentation was more difficult than I originally thought. Distortion (similar to keystoning) was the biggest problem but I finally worked through that and got what I wanted.. The tools I had the most fun with were the animation tools. After all of this experimentation, the only thing left was the timing and that was easy to figure out. In the end, I felt I created a simple and useful presentation that explains the elements of plot in such a way that even ELD students in my classes can understand the material. (Please click on the links here to view resources I will have my students use after they finish viewing the "elements of plot" presentation. |
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| Reflection: I will continue to use power point in the classroom as a resource to help students understand difficult areas of the language arts curriculum. However, this is not the only reason I will use power point presentations. For visual learners, presentations can enhance their understanding of more difficult concepts in the language arts curriculum. For actile learners, creating their own presentations will provide extended learning as well as a greater understanding of the subject.. Auditory learners can gain from a presentation if it is narrated in some way, either by sound added to the presentation itself or narration by a student or the teacher. Developing a power point presentation can be an effective tool for struggling writers as well. Creating a presentation requires research, "mapping" or outlining, and organization of material in a clear and concise way. These skills will translate into writing an essay quite nicely as students usually break down at the "brainstorming" stage and fail to understand how to organize their thoughts and put them into writing. Thus, power point presentations offer a host of ways in which to enhance student learning and will be an invaluable tool in the classroom. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| How should this assignment be graded? The grade for this assignment should be based on the work that went into it, i.e., research, as well as the criteria laid out in the class syllabus: the evidence page is present and contains a link to the pp presentation and links to various resources used for this activity. The evidence page also contains "what I want to learn" as well as "how I will learn it" aspects of the assignment. Finally, the presentation itself demonstrates the experimentation with the various pptools to create a visually interesting presentation. If all the criteria is met, the grade should be a 10. If most of the criteria is met, the grade should be a 9. If a minimum amount of the criteria has been met, the grade should be an 8. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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