Class Blog #4

Going over the assignment for this lesson I realized that I am actually on top of using power points in the classroom. During the last year I did not do as many power point presentations as I wish I had, but I am glad that I did do some. However, I feel that I could still learn many more things to help me in the classroom on using power point presentations. Looking back over what I did in class last year with my math students one particular power point presentation really jumps out in my mind. During the second semester of the school year, I had to do a final lesson plan to finish my KTIP portfolio. I decided to do the final lesson plan as the cumulative project of a fraction unit that I had been teaching. The main objective of the lesson was for the students to make something called "goop" using what they learned during the unit. The students were placed in groups and each group had a different recipe to "fix" using different fraction techniques. To start the lesson off I created a power point presentation that broke down the whole lesson. In each subset of what I broke down I showed the students a video from YouTube showing how to make the goop correctly. At the end of the power point presentation I included an open response for the students to do individually after their group had correctly made the goop. There was many things that I wish I could correct about the power point presentation. I wish that I had included actual pictures of what the goop would look like after each step was performed correctly. Also, I wish that I had included a slide or slides of what the students had to do to fix the recipes that they were given. However, the part that I was the proudest of myself in doing was including the YouTube presentation. I had to work hard to figure out how to insert the video into the presentation, but I was tickled when I finally accomplished it. Lastly, I found that the students seemed to be excited by not only the whole lesson, but the video more than anything. The students liked the fact that I had thought ahead enough to place the YouTube video in the power point. Overall, I feel that power point presentations can be very helpful in the classroom. However, with the major improvements that schools are making in the technology department there is hardly a need to make the presentations any more. If a teacher is using Smart Boards in their classroom they just have to make a few clicks and a presentation is already there for their using.