I have been using Microsoft Powerpoint to create presentations for quite a few years. It is a useful program to organise your ideas, highlight main points and show graphs and other images to support your arguments. It also assists with presenting information in small amounts, which allows for reinforcement (see behaviourism theory).This week I learnt how to add animation and sound in Powerpoint and this has added another dimension. Instead of simply making a presentation about a topic, the use of sound and animation provides the potential to fully dramatise the performance for maximum audience engagement.
I never took drama subjects at school and generally shied away from making oral presentations whenever possible. However, using powerpoint as a prop has helped me to face an audience and speak confidently in a range of challenging situations. Perhaps the enhancement of my presentations with animation and sound will help me face tougher audiences in even more challenging situations in the future!
The benefit for student learning is that Powerpoint supports the ability of the student to communicate and defend their point of view to others, that is, for students to create persuasive arguments. According to Daniel Goleman (2007), the number one competence that distinguishes the 'stars' from the average, is the singular drive to achieve. People who have it have very high internal standards of success. They are also able to create persuasive arguments and set challenging goals.
Hi Sam
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. During my observations last week I witnessed a lot of writing on the board to get concepts and points across and the problem I see with this is that it's taking the teachers time away from teaching and focusing on the class. Students genuinely seem more interested when they have something engaging to look at and a powerpoint with colour, animations and sound will definitely help capture their attention. As an added bonus, having the points that we want to talk about up on the screen clearly laid out will definitely help in our initial teaching when we might be nervous and forget what it was we wanted to talk about next. I had a sheet of bullet points written out on the desk, but they quite quickly got lost amongst the worksheets I had to hand out and all the other stuff on the desk.
I haven't seen any student use of powerpoint in the classroom yet but I am sure that they'll find it a lot more engaging than writing in their workbooks. Especially when some of them are not even interested enough to take them out of their school bags.
Good luck on your prac...
Kind regards
Tina