Saturday 2 April 2011

POWER UP - PowerPoint


Group 3 – Technologies

The three tools grouped together for group 3 were PowerPoint, Glogster and Prezi. I have decided to explore PowerPoint for the following reasons:

Glogster – this not not excite me too much as I am of the opinion that you could produce much better or the same using PowerPoint. Or even beter with Corel Draw combined with a web page. The only added advantage to Glogster is that it is easy publish to the web.
Prezi – I would consider doing a Prezi as an alternative to a PowerPoint presentation but I would not use this all the time as I think that the viewer would become desensitized to the funness of it if used continuously. This would be a great tool for students to create presentations with as you only need an Internet connection to create one.

I will use the PMI tool to analyse PowerPoint as tool for use in education.

Plus
Minus
Interesting
+      Comprehensive tool, the imagination seems to be the only limit to PowerPoint.
+      Easy to build  models  in PowerPoint (all the models on this blog were designed in PowerPoint)
+      There is no end in templates that can be downloaded to use for presentations.
+      Encourages learning of visual design.
+      Students can learn to use PowerPoint as they need the functionality.
+      PowerPoint is used by most corporations any student going into the workforce with the knowledge of how to use PowerPoint is at an advantage
+      Engages students
+      Easy to use.

-      Barrier of entry, most people don’t think to use PowerPoint.
-      Most users design linear presentations with mostly bullet points.
-      Although there is an interface with the Internet is does not feel as seamless as a wiki or a blog.
-      Some users are inclined to use too much writing although this can be useful for students which are not visual learners.
3 D shapes in PowerPoint are awesome.
You can save a PowerPoint as a movie.
You can convert a slide into a picture file such as jpeg.


I would use PowerPoint to present most of my formal learning work to students. In practice, I would have a PowerPoint presentation going just to assist me with the logical flow of a class and embed other objects that I want to use in the PowerPoint such as a movie at the start for an icebreaker.

PowerPoint will be a part of my student’s assessment tools and I would encourage my students to use PowerPoint and Prezi to present material. PowerPoint is a powerful tool that is used often in the corporate world and students should know how to use it.


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