Week 6. Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint

Bye Bye, Week 6!!!

My astonishing capability is already intact! Learning and learning every day! That is what this course is about!  And that is what keeps me alert and enthusiastic about it. This week number 6 concentrated on two main things: Creating Student-centered Classes and Interactive PowerPoint Presentations.

Creating Student-centered Classes was the first topic that I engaged in this week. I started reading the article “Teaching Large Classes II – Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students” (http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/engaging_students_handout.pdf). Through this material, Finnan and Shaw encourage teachers to use an adapt activities for small and large groups of students. The techniques used for teaching small classes are think-pair-square, concept test, quick-thinks (re-order the steps, paraphrase the idea, correct the error, and support a statement), minute paper, scripted cooperative, and concept maps. The authors also state that when enhancing lectures in large classes, teachers should take into account the following aspects: variety, pace, interest, individualization, setting up routines, speaking style, enlarging the circle and collaboration.

On the other hand, Interactive PowerPoint Presentations was the other issue that class members in this course dealt with on week 6. After reading specialized material about it, things started to become more and more interesting. I learned some tips for creating more enjoyable and motivating power point presentations. For instance, the website “Creating an Interactive PowerPoint Lesson for the Classroom” (http://thejournal.com/Articles/2000/08/01/Creating-an-Interactive-PowerPoint-Lesson-for-the-Classroom.aspx?Page=3) proposes action buttons, hidden slides, setting a kiosk show. However, it also suggests adding an assessment slide for immediate feedback and a summative assessment slide for grading the students.

Another excellent website that gave good tips on interactive power point presentation is “Top Ten Slide Tips” (http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html). It provides ten different slides tips among which there are: keep your presentation simple, using high-quality graphics, limit bullet point/text, use suitable charts, choose the right colors and fonts, and so on.

Apart from reading different specialized pages this week, I created a short interactive power point presentation titled “Reading Comprehension”, which is formed by nine (9) animated slides. It also contains hyperlinks to other slides and a “url”, a blank slide, a video and a closing slide with sound.

What impressed me the most was Prezi software, a cloud-based presentation software that brings in an intermediate presentation between whiteboards and slides. Here, I place a helpful video on how to make Prezi presentations. 

However, Prezi webpage provides an excellent tutorial: http://prezi.com/learn/

Finally, I have to mention that I already posted my first technology task called "Teaching Reading Comprehension" for my graduate student course. It is a webquest that I designed last week for the extra credit task. I did not know but this webquest expired and was not visible in its original "url" address: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=171426. So, I had do redo it and re-post it on the course wiki and in my students' Facebook group. Now, they have to solve this webquest for next week since I had my face to face class on reading comprehension yesterday. Then, I will inform you about the first outcomes of my technology-related change next week. What I can tell you now is that the first reaction they have had to the webquest posting is positive since they all gave a "like" response to it. Let see how my students react next week to the complete webquest. 

Best regards!

Mary