Power point

I today used Microsoft power point. I had decided on my tools for my Assessment Task 2 and I knew that the power point task would take a little time so I had put off creating it.

Today I spent a few hours exploring power point. The basic creation of power point was fairly simple. Some of the tasks were a little challenging as I am running Office 2007 and a number of the tools were located in a different place to the tutorial. I made it through and created a life cycle power point with interactive quiz.

Pro's

• Power points can be teacher created and used as a presentation, hook to a topic, discussion stimulus or interactive quiz
• For students to give presentations on researched topics
• can be used as a presentation of a real life situation
• Slides can be used in movie maker
• Can be used as an addition to an oral presentation
• Engages visual learners
• Able to include voice and sound recordings
• Can be embedded with hyperlinks
• Can be organised in point form using word document for planning and sent to power point slides
• Holiday journals
• Can be used to create E-books
• Presentation of experiment or procedure

The list of uses is endless. It is a tool that is visual engaging and a well presented power point requires planning, organisation, understanding, investigation, experimenting and decision making skills.

Con's

• Can be time consuming to create
• students will need to plan a storyboard before commencing to avoid it becoming a cut and paste activity.
• Some prior knowledge of the workings of power point are required to navigate successfully around the software
• Can become text heavy and boring for viewers

This task did take me a few hours to create but over time with familiarity I believe I would become more efficient.

This was a case of the digital native (my son) being a little more savy with this tool than myself. His friend had given him a quick lesson on creating a power point game. Once we located the action command together he was able to complete his maze style game very quickly. Students have the ability to share knowledge and skills of technology very efficiently and effectively, just as it would be with students in a classroom.