Week Six

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time” Chinese Proverb

I chose to add the Chinese Proverb and the You Tube video right at the beginning of my reflection for this week because they clearly show how engaged students are in technology nowadays. The most memorable moments from school were those where my teachers involved me in the learning process using games, activities, songs and so on. After reading through the material for this week’s session, I realized that the purpose is to engage students, but in contrast to the past, today student centered classes are infused with technology tools such as interactive PowerPoint presentations. I can honestly say that I have always used presentations, but when reading through the reading assignments for this week, I felt a small hole in my technology enhanced lessons especially with extremely important advice given by The University of Oregon on “Presenting With PowerPoint” such as using a blank slide, allowing mind processing time and minimizing the number of slides among many other useful advice .

Following the instructions for this week’s session and the articles “How To Create An Interactive Quiz Using PowerPoint Masters." By Simon Slangen, “How to Create and Use an Interactive PowerPoint Quiz Game” by Barbara O’neill, and “Creating Interactive PowerPoint Presentations for Teachers and Students” by Drs. Terry & Cathy Cavanaugh, I began to create my own PowerPoint presentation which includes an interactive quiz consisting of multiple choice questions, a poll and a YouTube video followed by a Think-Pair-Share activity as described by Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw in in “Teaching Large Classes II- Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students”. I have never created an interactive quiz one before, so this was an opportunity to learn and make mistakes. It took some time at the start, but once I got used to it, the slides were finished faster. I am very happy with the end product and will certainly be using it as it brings a whole new dimension into the lesson, one where students are mostly involved in the learning process.

 

Upon reading Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw’s advice on enhancing lecture classes in “Teaching Large Classes II- Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students”, I realized that they can be used to enhance any class. Some of the examples I intend to use include giving examples from current events, distributing voting cards, pair work, group work and keeping eye contact.  I once attended an interesting workshop at Google which works on enhancing lecturing skills and one of the most memorable experiences in this workshop was explained the form of an activity which goes as follows: the lecturer (volunteer in this case) throws a ball to a person in the audience who asks any question. The lecturer/speaker is supposed to answer the question while focusing and having direct eye contact with that person for 15 seconds. He/she cannot look at another person. The person with the ball then throws it to another in the crows and the speaker is supposed to speak to him/her for an additional 15 seconds and so on. The idea behind this activity is to practice looking the audience in the eyes and making a connection with them. This way, they will have to automatically listen and focus on what you are saying as a speaker.

I was particularly interested in the idea of Classroom Communication Systems where students purchase remotes with their texts books and can be used for live true/false and multiple choice questions. It does have a few negatives about it, such as having to purchase the remote and the data being saved on the computer class rather on the teachers’ personal laptop, but it is something that is certainly worth thinking about as it is very useful for large classes.

Another task for this week was to begin implementing a technology in our classes, but since I’m not teaching now, I will start working on my plan. In the previous week, I created a WebQuest where teachers work in groups to create a unit of literature while incorporating web tools into that process so I do feel like I have covered the domain of Appreciation of Literature, Culture and Language from the English Curriculum. For this week, I am working on a  Wiki which includes tutorials for all the different tools that the teachers will be using in the WebQuest. I will be adding a tutorial for each tool and then adding an editable page where teachers will be able to post their links.

In addition and after the feedback that I received from my colleagues where they expressed the idea that many web tools might scare some teachers off. I decided to add a discussion board to allow teachers having difficulties to ask questions.

I enjoyed this week very much as it was very informative and practical. I can’t wait for the next. 

Nahla

Sources:

·         Cavanaugh, Terry , and Kathy Cavanaugh. "Creating Interactive PowerPoint Presentations for Teachers and Students." Creating Interactive PowerPoint Presentations for Teachers and Students. Florida Center for Instructional Technology, USF, n.d. Web. <http://www.unf.edu/~tcavanau/publications/necc/Interactive_PowerPoint.htm>.

·         Finnan Rick & Shaw Donna "Teaching Large Classes II – Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students." University of Oregon,  <http://umbc.uoregon.edu/eteacher/webskills/material/engaging_students_handout.pdf>.

·         O’neill, Barbara. "“How to Create and Use an Interactive PowerPoint Quiz Game.". <http://www.joe.org/joe/2003april/tt2.php>.

·         "Presenting With PowerPoint." Teaching with Technology -. University of Oregon,  <http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/powerpoint/docs/presenting.pdf>.

·         Slangen, Simon. "How To Create An Interactive Quiz Using PowerPoint Masters.", 30 Nov. 2010.. <http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-interactive-quiz-powerpoint-masters/>.