Lesson 4

This week we learned about presentation programs.  I have always enjoyed creating presentations, so I was eager to learn about their use in education.  I liked the idea of using PowerPoint in the classroom for situations other than basic instructional presentations.  Quizzes, review games, vocabulary reviews, and displaying students' work are a few new ideas I read about in our lesson.  A teacher could also utilize a PowerPoint presentation to provide instruction to diverse learners.  For a language diverse learner, a PowerPoint could be adapted to incorporate key terminology and concepts in their dominant language through premade audios.  This idea would fulfill NETS-T 4B by addressing the diverse needs of learners through digital learning.  I also learned not to put too much text on each slide.  This is something I am guilty of, so I must be aware of this in future PowerPoint creations.

I am not currently teaching, but will teach elementary students so I made a PowerPoint presentation for my Sunday school class of first, second, and third graders.  We are going to sponsor a child through Compassion International, so I created a presentation that would allow the kids to become familiar with children that we could potentially sponsor from around the world.  After the presentation, the students voted on which child the class would sponsor, we chose a girl from Ghana.  Even though this presentation was not for the classroom, it still fulfilled a 21st Century Skill, because the students increased their global awareness by addressing the global issue of poverty and they increased their understanding of different nations and cultures. 

 One item in my presentation that I was particularly fond of was my title page.  It showed a world map with the countries we were going to look at highlighted in different colors.  It also had the country names written out for the older students who could read.  The map served as a topic page whenever we discussed a new country.  The country on the map would enlarge when we switched locations and I think the students really enjoyed this animation.  One item that I wish I would have included was audio.  I think it would have been beneficial to have music from each country to tap into another learning intelligence.  I have a special needs learner in my class and I know she would have benefited from the music, since she may not understand everything I am saying about the different locations.  The students were very receptive to the presentation and were very excited to choose a child to sponsor.  They were eager to learn more about her culture and suggested we take a trip to Ghana to learn more.  Since I can’t take the students to Ghana I plan to bring more of Ghana to them through our child's story and PowerPoint presentations.