My trials and Tribulations in PPT

Well, my powerpoint is now complete, but it was a crazy adventure to get there. When you have a vision in your head, you have to stick to it and find a way to overcome the learning curve. I really wanted a Jeopardy game that linked back to the question page after each question. So, I had to first create my "choose a question" page and link the 12 question slides to that one. That was work, but it wasn't a problem. At first I just had ugly boxes representing the question links and I later replaced them with cute thematic clipart.

Here's where the trouble came. I then wanted the game to be able to return to the "choose question" slide after the completion of each question. No easy task. I had such a hard time with this because I may have messed up the creation of my slide set at the beginning. As an amendment, I moved my intro slide to the second, and figured I would manually start the slide show there.

Inserting the music was interesting. I downloaded the Jeopardy song in iTunes which made it a m4P (protected) file. I worked around it by burning this song to a CD and ripping it into windows media player. It felt like cheating, but it worked. I had to clip the annoying intro off, and I had no trouble inserting it into PPT.

Animation was a huge learning curve for me. I know how to animate good old text to show up one line at a time, but I didn't at all know how to animate a picture or ORDER the animations. I really, really struggled with this part. I found tutorial instructions really wishy-washy on this particular instruction. I figured it out just by trial and error, which is sometimes the best way for me to learn computers.

Inserting the sound wasn't a problem, but after I did it all, I realized I should have ensured that the volume on the recording was higher. Oh well, I won't make that mistake next time.

Honestly, I've always wanted to learn how to better use PPT and presentation software. I told myself that I would teach myself one day. This course really pushed me to play with all of the interesting functions in PPT. The funny thing is....I still have more to learn. . .The functions are endless. . .Now, I see myself changing my existing powerpoints with just some text and pictures and animating them a little. They need some spunk. . .

Using presentation software RIGHT!

Powerpoint is a tool that can be used well or poorly. It can be great if it's used as a tool to present pictures, to begin discussion, to see an animation, etc. But words, meaningless sounds, and silly animations really take away from what PPT is meant to do. . .PPT was meant to enhance the visual component of presentations.

Bad powerpoints

Powerpoint was originally developed as a tool to use for marketing development. I found this website http://members.shaw.ca/pappel/bad_powerpoint.pdf very interesting because it blames Microsoft's built in templates on the boring bulleted nature of PPT presentations. It truly highlights how bad powerpoints lead presenters to READ their slides, leading to a lazy and ineffective presentation.

So, a great presentation should be based on the presenter's knowledge; not what is written in the PPT. Here are four great suggestions to avoid the booooring ppts.

1) Make Cue Cards as prompters
2) Make slides that reinforce your words; not REPEAT them
3) Use footnotes if you want the presentation to be later transferable
4) No cheesy images
etc, etc....

Teachers of course try to cater to the various types of learners out there: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. But visual learners are not going to learn by viewing bullets on a slide; rather, they'll learn by viewing pictures, diagrams, and visually stimulating items that are explained well by the speasker. Auditory learners don't learn by hearing a bunch of funky and irrelevant sounds, they learn from a powerful voice and engaging speaker. And kinesthetic learners learn from moving, touching, and exploring--not from moving words on a slide.
http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/bad_powerpoint.htm

Uses of Presentation Software in the Classroom

Well, I have been finding examples of lessons where it is much neater to use presentation software than the chalkboard. The diagrams, pictures, and graphs are extremely clear, the points are organized and succint, there is flair with bullets and animated effects, and the text is easy to read. It also frees the teacher from any writing/drawing duties and allows him/her to completely focus on TEACHING/LECTURING/catering to students' needs rather than focusing on getting the appropriate text up.

Fancy Ideas. . .

A very cool website that Greg recommende today.



http://www.awesomebackgrounds.com/powerpointtutorials.htm

This website goes through how to add a menu to a presentation, and automatically link to other slides ahead. I had no idea how to do this, and really I still don't, but if I really put my mind to it, I can figure it out. . .

There are also tutorials on converting a presentation to dvd or video. . . Really cool....Hope I can become this techy at some point.

Learning how to use PPT properly

Well, this is not my first time using presentation software--I have used it in my classroom for some lectures. I've chosen to use it on occasions where I feel that I cannot draw something as well as an online/digital photo can--so I've really only used it for pictures and text. Slowly, I learned how to fade in my words one by one--so I could speak to my class in between points. I found that to be a very important feature when teaching. But, I never did anything interesting. Quite frankly, I never had the time to sit there and fool around with my presentations. It took me long enough to write my notes and find appropriate explanatory photos.

I started tonight with this:
http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/nextstepsinpowerpoint/ss/sound.htm

An online tutorial on how to add sound:
http://www.impatica.com/movies/impatica/333/Adding-Sound-XP-v333/Adding-Sound-Introduction-XP-Version.html

I really liked this tutorial that a classmate suggested:
http://www.internet4classrooms.com/pp_animate_chart.htm

And, I used this one for a while playing with little fun animations. As I mentioned on the Sakai discussion board, many of these little animations are useless, but they can certainly make a presentation more fun. Many websites seem to warn though, that users of ppt shouldn't have too much fun. . .A ppt presentation is meant to relay facts, and too many "fun" aspects can be distracting. It's true, animations, sound, etc. cannot be overdone in a lesson or the students will lose focus on the importance of the text and pictures. It will be fun to implement more interesting title pages with these new little skills.
http://www.sresd.k12.mi.us/tis/training/powerpointsound.pdf

That's all for tonight....what is wrong with me? Up until 1:30 am??? Geez. . .

Why digital images are so important, and a couple subject-specific sites.

I just want to remember this list of why digital images are so important. It may become a small part of my argument to get money for digital resources.
• Unlimited Copies - digital image files may be duplicated and/or printed many times
• Unlimited use of the same image - students may use the same digital image in different documents
• Scaled to print in different sizes - high resolution digital images may be printed in large or small sizes
• Shared via e-mail - digital images may be sent to anyone with an e-mail account
• Shared via World Wide Web - web sites can display digital images
• Presentations - images can be used in PowerPoint or other computer presentations
• Digital video - images can be imported into digital video projects and transferred to videotape or DVDs
• Create database - images can be imported into a database, for example, a database on types of plants
• Editing for emphasis- copies of digital images can be drawn on or edited without ruining the original image
• Image storage - digital images may be stored on a computer, CD, disk or web site
• Slide shows - computers can run slide shows of digital images
http://www.picturesmatter.com/SubPage4.aspx?PageID=23&LID=1


Also, here are a few articles on how to apply digital technology across the various subjects:
Math:
www.kent.k12.wa.us/KSD/KR/DIGITAL/math1.doc
Science:
www.kent.k12.wa.us/KSD/KR/DIGITAL/science1.doc