Presentations

I have always loved PowerPoint and championed it. I know there are a lot of people with an opposite view and understand the "death by PowerPoint" lobby. However, in the hands of creative individuals, it can be a very powerful tool for teaching children. In the hands of children, a powerful tool for them to show their knowledge and understanding in a fun way. With the advent of the iPod, iPad and Android devices, several presentation apps are available to display .ppt files but none that I've encountered have the complete functionality and therefore lose these dynamic aspects.

I'm working on two presentations at the moment:-
      The Big Question - a Christmas Science lecture
      Teaching & IT - a personal view for trainee teachers.

I had come up with some criteria for my presentations and so was pleased to see a free pdf entitled The Secrets of Compelling Presentation Design from SlideRocket. (They make apps). 

http://www.sliderocket.com/blog/

It is a useful document if you are just starting off. (I'm sure there are others but it was this one that precipitated this blog).
A point made in the document is the need to be organised and the author recommends mind-mapping. For me, this is a brilliant technique and, whilst I think that coloured pencils and paper are best for this, I'm not averse to using commercial software (Openmind or Inspiration) or free apps (SimpleMind+) on my iPad.

I have taught aspects of PowerPoint to many primary age pupils with the intention of getting them to show me their knowledge and understanding of a topic whilst developing their IT and design/presentation skills. Indeed, I hope this will be the thrust of my lecture on Teaching & IT. 

I'll just mention two ideas that I've used with children. The first involved making a one-slide presentation to explain the water cycle (animated gifs, custom animations, timing). The second asked children to produce a virtual museum where exhibits in rooms were hyperlinked to detailed information and additional images.