Blog Post Five

Morning/afternoon/evening to all reading this instalment of my blog post ! I know I already did my introduction thing before in the video but just in-case you skipped right over it here it is again. Hope you are all having a fantastic week doing whatever it is you do, keeping up with assignments, working, or watching MKR #procrastination.  

Anyways, we are looking at presentation technologies today and so (for those you have come to know me, Khrysti and technology…#disaster) we’ll be looking closely at PowerPoints…

The thing that I like about PowerPoints is that they are easy to use. Uploading images, videos, and audio is a breeze you simply click on what you want. For example, I want to upload a photo, I simply click on the ‘Insert” tab, click “Photos”, then browse and press ok when you’ve found the photo you want. Simples.

It also has a range of different “Design” options you can use to make the presentation your own! Which I think is part of the fun with PowerPoint. As a sweet and innocent high school student, I loved speeches because that meant I could make an awesome PowerPoint to accompany me (I was a bit of a nerd). It highlighted key points of whatever I was talking about, I could include photos or videos to help validate my point, and lastly it meant that I had everyone’s attention because I made the show engaging (can you tell I love the spotlight yet?).

The SAMR model (substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition - for those of you who don’t remember) is used to incorporate “technology/digital devices” for teachers into their student’s learning (I know I just copied and paste this from my previous blog for those of you who are keenly reading these, but this will be the last time I’m reminding you on what SAMR means!).

Therefore, for the reasons suggested previously, PowerPoints would be perfect in a teaching learning context.

S T O R Y T I M E

When I was doing my first prac, many of the students in my class had learning disabilities. So, to make the lesson more fun, I created a Kahoot! (I will explain this in a bit) and a PowerPoint.

The aim of the PowerPoint was to draw focus into what we were learning that day. The task was a creative writing lesson where the learning goal was to write a short story based off a Pixar/Disney movie. To produce enthusiasm for the task I included a Monster’s Inc. short film entitled “Mike’s New Car” (if you would like to have a bit of a laugh please click here,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBkK4rg_w0U). Pictures of movie posters were later also included in the PowerPoint to give suggestion to the students of what movies are out there if they got a bit stuck.   

Besides PowerPoint being easy to use, it is also pretty safe. For example, if your computer decides to crash, when you re-login (this is what usually happens) it auto-saves your work, which means you can recover it! This is genius, extraordinary, fantastic, wonderful, amazing, and probably something you will never (hopefully) have to use because your technology doesn’t hate you. But on the serious side of things, like mentioned in my previous blog, although, PowerPoint doesn’t require internet, ask a parent or teacher if unsure about anything when using this technology.

Oh, and before I forget Kahoot! is a great tool for starting a class or recapping information learnt during the session. On how to play, you can either use a computer or phone, enter the game pin, create a nickname and you are set to verse all the other students in the classroom. On the board a question comes up and whoever is the quickest in responding with the correct answer wins (it’s a multiple-choice decision). It’s really fun and I first played it in my first semester of university (the winner got chocolates or lollies; and so, me having a sweet tooth ensured I learnt the content beforehand…), it engaged the class, encouraged people to learn the content (ME!), and because of it was one of my favourite courses so far.

Well that is all I have to say on the topic for this week! I hope you enjoyed it, as I believe it is my last blog post needed for the assessment. If there was any questions you had on how I made this post or any of my past posts please feel free to comment! Thank you all, goodnight!

YouTube Reference

Diffa, Heikel (2013, Aug 14). Monster inc short film [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBkK4rg_w0U