In today’s school, many students are having difficulty sitting through class listening to a teacher discuss a particular topic; and have to take notes on this lesson. All I picture is the teacher in the Charlie Brown TV shows, going waa whan waah. What exactly are the the teachers teaching? And more importantly what are the students learning? Is that what our students are hearing? And if so, we need to incorporate different teaching strategies for our curriculum and our classrooms. One way that I have seen to improve this situation is through PowerPoint, both used by the teacher and made by the students. I think that many of today’s students are visual learners and remember more if they see something and can view pictures as opposed to note taking and lecturing. It gives more opportunity for the class and the topic to come alive. With more student excitement, interaction will increase and class boredom will hopefully decrease. Through the last two classes, I didn’t realize all of the different things that PowerPoint had to offer. I didn’t know that you could add sound or music to it, or change individual cells in it. I have used Jeopardy to help with class review, but didn’t realize that you could put it on PowerPoint, what a great idea! For our project, Peter and I, are going to build a PowerPoint for 1st Grade Math review that will also allow us to interchange different subject and topics into at a later date, depending on what we are going to teach. Here is a suggestion to whoever reads this from class, we should set something up to get each groups PowerPoint so we may be able to draw different ideas for later use. Just a suggestion. We live in a visual world and we, as teachers, must adapt our classrooms to help students learn visually. PowerPoint is just one facet that helps us make this possible.
BLOGGING 206
April 11, 2008 · 2 Comments
Categories: Change · Learning · Math · Meaning · Powerpoint · Powerpoints · Reading · Technology · Writing
2 responses so far ↓
greg kinslow // April 14, 2008 at 9:54 am
You make some great points. After reading your post I can’t get out of my head why a classroom has to be lecture, in a room, in seats, and just listen/lecture. The definition/or view of classroom really needs to evolve to more than that. Like you say, most students are visual learners, and more interaction can break the BLAH BLAH BLAH of learning. Why cant a Math classroom be outside, on a nature trail, at a museum, in an auditorium, a commputer lab. Power point is a great way to learn. Especialy when the studetns are creating on it. The only way to ignite this classroom evolution is to start doing it. Showing the nay sayers that the classroom doesn’t have to be in a box, in chairs, listening/lecturing.
Stephen Ransom // April 15, 2008 at 10:54 am
Steve, student groups will drag their project files into the shared space on the Dept. Files server. From there, you and anyone else from class are welcome to copy the project folders as your own resources.