Week Four: Computer Presentation Programs

This week's topic is concerning computer presentation programs - specifically Microsoft PowerPoint. My first real experience with using PowerPoint came in college. My big project was to create a PowerPoint presentation geared to middle school students. I was so enthusiastic that it degraded to a complete mess. One of the biggest mistakes that users of PowerPoint can make is to overdo animation and sounds. I had animation and sound on every single slide. This was a great distraction from the content and caused many technical problems during the presentation. Yes, I was a PowerPoint freakshow barker - not a presenter. This leads me to my next point.

For this week's assignment, I was asked to create a PowerPoint presentation that I could present to the students that I am currently teaching. Being somewhat of a...ahem...creative enthusiast, it was very difficult for me to downshift to creating a PowerPoint for first-graders. I had to be very careful and controlled with my content, length, and bells and whistles. I was surprised at just how difficult it was for me to create a suitable presentation for six-year-olds.

The presentation itself was about Main Idea, with which a great deal of my students have difficulty. I was afforded an opportunity apart from my scheduled computer lab time and took advantage of an empty room and the equipment. I was very pleased to see that the students seemed to retain the information from the PowerPoint and enjoyed the sound-effects. The aspect of this presentation that I am most satisfied with is its simplicity. It is clean, uncluttered and straight to the point. (It certainly helped that I had to use an old PowerPoint program.) I am also proud that I successfully used sound. After the first presentation faux pas, I had pretty much avoided using any sound in my presentations. The only thing that I would do differently would be to use a newer PowerPoint program which would allow for more clip art choices.

So this week, I leave you with the example of effective simplicity and I continue on in my journey of changing thoughts and ideas.