PowerPoint Wrap-up

The presentations today as a whole were great. There were some things however, that were of notable success. I really liked the fact that Andy used a “recap” or “rewind” slide to sum up all that was previously covered. Several of the presentations included this and I believe it worked well. I also liked how Mikey, Andrew, and Alison used audience participation to make their presentations a classroom discussion tool. That seemed to work very well and functionally, it had appeal because the answers were not listed right from the beginning. I also really enjoyed Paul’s use of animations and sound to make the slides seem to pop! His theme for the presentation also worked extremely well. He also started with a video, which made his presentation engaging and started off moving quickly.

There weren’t many things to complain about during these presentations. Aside from a few technical difficulties they all went well. Some slides had poor color contrast and were difficult to read, color and especially compliment become extremely important when the slide gets into small text. Overall though, people really had some great layouts that maybe have just needed a small amount of polishing to make perfect. I think the only large critique I can give is the importance of simple slides. When paragraphs or large bodies of text were displayed it tended to make the slide confusing and illegible. If a presenter had a large amount of text to present it might be best to read it, while displaying only the salient points.

After looking at other presentation I have only a few things I might change. I liked having my notes to read from, yet I could have added a few words to each to maybe clarify rules or dimensions to each shape. I also really liked the use of review slides and felt that my presentation would have done better with a few less slides and a recap at the end. I liked this as a function to sum up presentation and make sure all the material was covered twice.

I like using PowerPoint. It seems to function well and has the ability to display a lot of material quickly and simply. I can see the advantage of addressing crucial topics throughout a lesson or lecture while still having students fill in the blanks. It also seemed to work well when framing games or exercises that included rules. I can see this being a very functional tool when trying to get through direct methods of teaching. I worry that setting the stage to a dark room will put kids to sleep. It may also have the affect of causing some students to wander or drift because the material is so easy to access; they may not pay attention as closely. These aren’t considerations that would make me rethink using PowerPoint. I see its value and plan to use it as an integral teaching tool.