23 replies to this topic

[ignoramous]

I am fairly new to the magical world of ICT. I am coming to the end of my PGCE year at Canterbury Christ Church and have foolishly agreed to develop a powerpoint presentation which will demonstrate to next years intake of History PGCE students, how to use powerpoint. Weird, I know.

I would argue that the majority of these new students will be much more advanced than I am with Powerpoint. I can use it reasonably well but are there any elements that you would recommend for inclusion within such a presentation.

I mean, what can Powerpoint do? You may know of uses that I have not yet thought of.

Any ideas, however simple, basic, etc you feel them to be would be greatfully received.

Thanks for your help

Ian

[Win Bradley]

I have a powerpoint presentation I gave to the staff in my school recently. It is totally reliant on the work of other people on this site - Nichol Boughey, Roy Hugg ins and Stephen Drew. I have it on CD and there is an accompanying paper. if it is of interest I can try to e-mail it (if you have broadband) - if not send the address and I will send a CD

Win

[Carole Faithorn]

You might find the Case Studies about using Powerpoint on Andrew's site helpful.

[ignoramous]

Thanks for the advice,

The case studies have proven to be most useful. I now know how to capture the screen in powerpoint and turn it into a slide via word.

I know, I'm a bit slow.

What successes have you had with powerpoint? Any you wish to share?

IAn

[Nichola Boughey]

If PPT is used successfully it can inspire and capture the imagination of the students being shown the slideshow. Here are two examples - one from inside the classroom and one from outside of the classroom.

On Friday I had a Yr. 9 SEN class last lesson. They were shown a PPT on the Home Front, including sound effects etc. They had to watch the show and make notes on the different areas of the Home Front, i.e. evacuation, rationing and air raid shelters etc. I combined this with a use of WWII artefacts to support my lesson. This is a class with a low attention span so last lesson on a Friday is always a challenge. They listened carefully, loved the sound effects, asked questions about the pictures on the board and actually complained when the lesson ended. I have had other lessons with them using text books and worksheets where a 70 minute lesson has felt like 3 hours - so it does effectively catch and keep their attentions.

Outside of lessons I run a Criminal History Master Class for Yr. 10. About half of the students attending take History and the other half don't. Each week I choose a different historical crime, i.e. Sawney Bean, Jack the Ripper, WACO, Vlad the Impaler, Sweeney Todd and the next one will be the Jonestown Massacre. The emphasis of these lectures is to get the girls to listen and discuss History using different stimulus material. I recently used Neil McDonald's Lindbergh PPT which kept taking the girls down so many different false starts and wrong avenues that there were three heated debates going on at once about the reliability of historical evidence, the presentation of information as an influencing factor and the bias of the teacher influencing decisions. These were fantastic discussions brought about by showing them evidence on the board, bullet pointing the key facts etc. This was an extra-curricular activity that would have failed on paper!

Don't know if these two examples help but PPT is a God send!

[ignoramous]

Outside of lessons I run a Criminal History Master Class for Yr. 10.  About half of the students attending take History and the other half don't.  Each week I choose a different historical crime, i.e. Sawney Bean, Jack the Ripper, WACO, Vlad the Impaler, Sweeney Todd and the next one will be the Jonestown Massacre.  The emphasis of these lectures is to get the girls to listen and discuss History using different stimulus material.

What a fantastic idea .

Have you thought about giving the pupils a skeleton framework comprising of about 6 slides. These would have minimal content, just enough to set them on the right track. You could then get the pupils to finish off the PPT and as an end task they could present it back to the class, justifying the slides and content they have added. This task would be easy to differentiate as all pupils would approach it differently or because of the scope of potential esources, select different content?

As an extra curricular actvity this idea sounds great. I will have to look into developing something similar when I start my new post in Sptember.

Ian

[Stephen Drew]

PowerPoint needs to simply be seen as another weapon your armoury as a teacher. It is an extrememly powerful weapon, but at the end of the day it is a weapon (or tool!)

You can start from the most basic of ideas and use it as simply an enhanced form of ordinary OHP. I see no problem with this. So often in lesson you are thinking to yourself that you want to be able to put up the images from the books in full colour and big size, or that you want to be able to put your questions on the board, or that you want to be able to have the writing / speaking frame in large size on the board. Of course you cannot have all at once, and constant rubbing out is a pain. This is where PowerPoint can make life easy and more effective. Of course £2000 for this kind of facility is a lot of money compared to £150 for an OHP, but PowerPoint and a projector / interactive whiteboard makes it easier and more effective.

From this you can move on to image manipulation and indeed moving bits. Portraits or photographs work excellently on a PowerPoint slideshow. You may want to be able to focus students' on to one area of an image. For instance in the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I there are so many messages and images to discuss and analyse. It is easy to use an imaging package such as MGI Photosuite etc. to crop out sections of the picture. You can then use a PowerPoint slide show to allow you to put the whole picture on one slide and then the "zoomed" in bits on other slides. You can talk about the images with the class, and only show the bits you want at any given time.

(You can look at my PowerPoint on the Rainbow Portrait by clicking here.)

Another way in which I used PowerPoint this year was during a Year 9 Geography lesson. The topic was climate in Japan and the way in which the direction of the prevailing weather influenced the building of cities and ports in Japan. I used a map of Japan and put in moving objects such as arrows to show the wind direction. I had the arrows coming in from the north west (top left) of the slide and crossing the country. This showed the students that the wind and therefore the weather mainly came from continental Asia. Coupled with this I put on the same slide the mountain range down the middle of Honshu and so we discussed why the cities tend to be on the Pacific side of Japan rather than the Sea of Japan.

Nothing amazing in either of these two examples, but they let you do so much more than an OHP could and illustrate the learning for students to a great extent.

On another level you can insert sound or video files into your PowerPoint. I do not use a television and video in my classroom anymore. I put all the videos I wish to show on to my PC as digital files via a WinTV card, video player and the use of Windows Movie Maker. I then insert the videos into PowerPoint presentations. This allows you to put text on the screen as well as the video, and also to put the video seemlessly into the middle of a Presentation. Nichola has already referred to the use of sound files in presentations, and I wholeheartedly concur with this. You can either use sound effects to spice up the presentation in the appropriate places to incrsae interest or understanding, or you can put in speeches from the major players in an historical situation. I have done things like having slides on a PowerPoint on the Treaty of Versailles for each of the three main Allied victors (UK, USA, F). I put in a moving flag on a pole, the national anthems of each country and some text for the students to read about each one. Gimmicky as it may seem, they sit and read with great interest.

To carry on (I love this subject ) you can also make reading a textbook more enjoyable. Turn the contents of the textbook into a PowerPoint presenation. The kids still have their own copy of the book in front of them, but you take all the text and images in the book, add some of your own stuff and then talk through the book's pages with the students. Lots of overlaying of images and text, moving between sections and interaction between the class and the teacher possible here. My students are never too keen on talking through a textbook section, but they are perfectly happy to do this when it is on the big screen on a PowerPoint. I have done this mainly with my GCSE students this year as we do not really use textbooks in Key Stage 3.

The possibilities are endless for PowerPoint and a projector or interactive whiteboard. An internet connection takes you to another level. The chance to use the Fling the Teacher or the Walk the Plank games in a lesson on the big screen really engages students. I (and many others) have done this regularly and it works. In fact my Year 11s worked for the whole hour of our last lesson on the last day of Year 11 a few weeks ago by simply using about eight of these quizzes on Medicine and Nazi Germany. Now that has got to be a result!

Back in September when I first got my digital projector, Andrew Field asked me to do a case study for SchoolHistory on its impact in my classroom. This is one of the case studies referred to by Carole Faithorn in her previous post. It can be found here I stand by all that I wrote, and in fact if I wrote another one now after alamost a school year with the projector (and now interactive attachment) I would probably be even more excited and positive in my tones.

(Do you think I am quite taken by the use of PowerPoint and a projector?)

[Nichola Boughey]

As an extra curricular actvity this idea sounds great. I will have to look into developing something similar when I start my new post in Sptember.

Ian

Due to restrictions on ICT suites etc I can not give the students frameworks etc. Let's just say this method of extra-curricular history has been so popular that I originally started off with the idea of 5 sessions in November - we are now in May and I have given one almost every week. Those weeks were I needed the lunchtime for c/wk marking or display work have resulted in complaints from the students.

My only rule with the group is no modern serial killers - that's a bit gory and not very realistic.

This is a type of club that a few other teachers, particularly Neil McDonald, have started very well and have found popular with their students.

I am happy to send you a CD-Rom of my completed PPTs - too huge to send via e-mail - if you would like them?

Nicky

Edited by Nichola Boughey, 25 May 2003 - 07:13 PM.

[ignoramous]

(Do you think I am quite taken by the use of PowerPoint and a projector?)

In a word - Yes

This discussion has been a breath of fresh air for me. The school's I have ben training at thus far have had little recourse or little in the way of resources in the way of projectors and interractive whiteboards. I am still somewhat of a novice when it comes to maximising the effectiveness of these two resources and cannot wait to start.

I have managed to insert sounds into PPT but how easy is it to insert movies via Windows Movie Maker. I only ask because I have never used this before and have just purchased a new lap top which has this on it. I would like to include this in my PPT tutorial. I have downloaded a few short movies from the excellent post in one of the other forums (movies in ICT? - you know the one I mean). Haven't tried to insert them onto a slide yet but will do.

I hadn't thought of making a powerpoint of a textbook. This would have solved a massive problem that I have been encountering trying to get Y10 to do essential reading. However, as I said resources at my curent school are pretty thin on the ground.

I'm nor surprised that you are quite taken with this topic. It is quite infectious isn't it?

Ian

[Richard Drew]

From this you can move on to image manipulation and indeed moving bits. Portraits or photographs work excellently on a PowerPoint slideshow. You may want to be able to focus students' on to one area of an image. For instance in the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth I there are so many messages and images to discuss and analyse. It is easy to use an imaging package such as MGI Photosuite etc. to crop out sections of the picture. You can then use a PowerPoint slide show to allow you to put the whole picture on one slide and then the "zoomed" in bits on other slides. You can talk about the images with the class, and only show the bits you want at any given time.

stephen sold this idea to me very convincingly a while ago, and since then i have used it to develop image analysis tasks for:

Gin Lane & A Court for King Cholera, amongst others

- it is a very very effective tool

[Chris Higgins]

Like 'Ignoramus' I too am intending to use PPT for a demo at College soon. I am having problems with 'Memory'. Not my own ... well not just yet ... but my disks'. I am trying to produce a virtual tour of Dover Castle similar to Roy Huggins' model, but can't fit more than a dozen images onto one disk before it registers as 'full'. Is there any way of shrinking the data? Should I invest in a CD-RW? Are these expensive and worth the consequent investment?

[ignoramous]

Chris - not you as well.

I have just bought a new computer with the obligatory cd re-writer and its has made all the difference. I have managed to save more than one power point on the same cd. I don't know if there is any other way of shrinking the file size in order to cram all of your power point onto a disc? If you find out let me know.

Just out of curiosity. As you were talking about the pros and cons of tablet pcs. Have you read the article in the TES dated May 2, 2003 entitled 'The return of the slate?' If not let me know and I will send you a copy. It backs up the points that you were making

Ian

[Carole Faithorn]

I have a powerpoint presentation I gave to the staff in my school recently.  It is totally reliant on the work of other people on this site - Nichol Boughey, Roy Hugg ins and Stephen Drew.  I have it on CD and there is an accompanying paper.  if it is of interest I can try to e-mail it (if you have broadband) - if not send the address and I will send a CD

Win

Win Bradley has had her own computer problems whilst the site/forums were down. She asked me to say that if Ignoramus and Lindsay Merrony still wanted the PPT she mentions in the message quoted they should send me their postal address(by email or PM). I will let her have this by phone and she will post to you.

[Stephen Drew]

Like 'Ignoramus' I too am intending to use PPT for a demo at College soon. I am having problems with 'Memory'. Not my own ... well not just yet ... but my disks'. I am trying to produce a virtual tour of Dover Castle similar to Roy Huggins' model, but can't fit more than a dozen images onto one disk before it registers as 'full'. Is there any way of shrinking the data? Should I invest in a CD-RW? Are these expensive and worth the consequent investment?

As a half-way house you might consider investing in a "Pen Drive".

This is a memory stick device that is inserted into the USB port of your PC and can store up to 32Mb/64Mb/128Mb (depending on which you buy) of data. It is constantly reusable and is effectively a portable mini hard-drive. I bought one last week because I was tired of using CD-Roms to transport large files between home and school. The Pen Drive is equivilant to around 22 floppy disks of data, and I should think that it would fit even the largest and most image laden PowerPoint you can create on it! The Pen Drive is about the size of a credit card cut in half long ways, and weighs next to nothing.

edited to say:

I have removed the next section of my post because the cost associated with the version I had found is way above that mentioned by others later in this thread. Therefore I see no point in giving information on a clearly overly expensive version.

[Andrew Field]

Following another of Stephen's big promotions, I would just add that if you talk to your ICT people at school they should be able to get this USB-storage devices for around half the cost. They are now very affordable and not worth paying the larger prices that places like PC World charge.