Interactivity in Powerpoint

This week's readings about interactive powerpoint were really interesting. Powerpoint is not a replacement of Blackboard work or paper work. It helps to highlight the essential points and to integrate multimedia - pictures, audio and movie. While making a powerpoint presentation, a teacher should not try to boast his/her skill of creating a powerpoint. One should not use too much animation and should not put too much text on a single slide. Using appropriate background, fonts, colours, images and animation will make the learning better.

I use powerpoint for my classes. Some of them are large classes. I have around 60 students there. So I should make my presentations interactive. Otherwise they will go waste. What I do usually is, I make several groups of three - four students. I would give an incomplete handout to each group. They have to find details from the slides or from my explanations to fill the missing information in the handouts. At the end of the presentation, I will make them exchange their handouts. Each group will make a peer assessment of others' answers.

I make my presentation interactive also by adding the following elements.
1) Immediately after the title slide, i will have some questions for the students to answer. the questions will be from either the previous lesson or the present lesson. This will make them attentive and will also make the presentation interesting.
2) Whenever I show some images, I will ask them to explain the image in the context of the present lesson. So they can make a connection between teh lesson and the images.
3) If I have a video, I will give them some questions before playing the video. So they can watch the video with a specific purpose.

I also learnt a lot of techniques from this week's readings. "Using a blank slide to make students focus on the speaker" was a technique which I did not know. That was quiet interesting. I hope I can make my future powerpoint presentations more interactive.


M. S. Xavier Pradheep Singh

WebQuest and Rubrics

This week I happened to learn things which I have not known: PBL, Webquest and Rubrics. In the beginning of the week, I could not understand what webquests meant. Later, I visited some of the webquest activities created by my classmates and understood the concept. Rubrics were also very interesting. I have learnt to create rubrics for the activities in my classes. I think that PBL, Webquests and Rubrics are similar in their function. They are different from the regular teaching method. I like them very much. Hope to learn new things.

M. S. Xavier Pradheep Singh

Writing with Technology!

Reading and Writing skills are more interesting ones to be taught in the classroom. Because they are so concrete. Students can see what they learn / have learnt and teachers can see discover their teaching has made an impact. Writing is a process of addition. The more we add, the more it becomes sharper. I am very much interested in learning as well as teaching writing skills.

This week's tasks also proved to be effective. Preparing a technology enhanced lesson plan is not an easy task. The lesson must combine computing skills and language skills. I hope to implement technology successfully in my classes.

Delicious

The task & Readings of the week 3 were really helpful. I learnt something new with bookmarking. Earlier I used to save the bookmarks in my browser itself. But I may lose them often, if I format my computer. Now I have found a way out to solve this problem by saving all my bookmarks in Delicious. Isn't it something really delicious???

I also got more ideas about teaching listening skill. I liked the distinction made by Miller between authentic materials and specially tailored text books. I totally agree with Miller in her point that authentic materials prepare learners for real life situations. Hope to learn more from the course!

Describing Versus Complaining

As I was preparing the assignments for Nicenet discussion on 'ABCD Objective' and Project Task - step I, I was contemplating on the classes I teach. Most of the classes I teach are big ones, containing not less than 60 students. I used to complain that "They do not work properly", "They are not interested in learning" etc. But when I ventured on describing the classes for the assignments, I got some insights on the background of the classes: their problems in life and learning, their rural background, their improper primary education, etc. Now I have different ideas about my students. I will no more complain. Rather, I will always try to make them learn what they need.

In Search of Search Engines

When I started using internet in 2002, I did not use any search engine. I typed web addresses and accessed only a limited number of sites. Later in 2003 (if I am right), I started using www.ask.com and then in 2004 www.google.com. Then onwards, Google was my favourite search engine. I have heard of other search engines but never tried them. I thought they too would do the same kind of work which Google did. But the Webskills course, especially the Noodletools, introduced me the uniqueness of each search engine. I was amazed when I used "ISeekEducation". It brought me what Google could not yield. Yet it was not as good as Google. Google will be my all time favourite. But I have learnt that I should different search engines to search the web. I hope my search for search engines will continue till I find something better that Google.