Power Point for Teachers

I have just created a simple Power Point presentation. The primary focus is on educating upper primary students in one simple way of taking care of their voice: Warming up. I really want learners to understand that warming up the voice is important, why its important and that not only singers do it! This slide presentation could be used in a music, choir or HPE context, focussing on good vocal practices. I have included questions in the Power Point, which allows students to contemplate answers in their own time before responding.

Warming Up Our Voices Presentation

I uploaded my Power Point presentation into my Blog with Slideboom.com.  I tried using another program called Slideshare.net but the extra animations, effects and sounds were disabled. There has also been an uploading issue where the slide containing point 4 has a box above it. This text box is supposed to be under the text. Pausing will allow you to read the text. 

Power Point & Teachers
Power Point can be used by Teachers to scaffold the learning of all students especially those with a preference for visual teaching styles. It can be used as a teaching tool, a note providing tool, an assessment tool etc.  Students can also use the program to create their own slideshows. It can be a very rewarding assessment if students feel that they have purpose and creative input into a task. This can be a great way to engage learners!

We know that in order for the presentation to be engaging, the content has to have the three components of Greg Kearsley & Ben Shneiderman's Learning Engagement Theory.  Using the three components 'Relate, Create and Donate' provides a great way of organising the content into experiences that are exciting, relevant and authentic to real life situations. The learning has to have purpose. There is no point making a Power Point presentation that has no relevance to students and nothing worth learning in it!

If the content is meaningful, there are so many ways of making the slides more interesting than just simple words on a page.  Embedding videos, animation, pictures, songs and sounds in colourful and creative slides creates an engaging platform for students to take in and devour desirable information. The possibilities are endless for teachers using this program in the classroom.

The use of slide presentations through Power Point can be adapted to any learning situation. It can be a solo effort by a teacher or student,  can be easily incorporated into a small group situation or even a large group effort. Working alone or together, each with different or similar tasks (such as researching and organising information) to find a solution to an authentic problem with purposeful direction will allow students to create, relate and retain meaningful information.

The Power Point program makes it possible to deliver selected information in an engaging way that suits the context of the learning developing and encouraging meaningful learning, whether by the teacher, student or whole class.