Saturday, May 7, 2011

CED0530 Week 1 - Intro to Digital Story Telling and Presentation Zen

This week was an introduction to “What makes a great presentation?” and digital story telling.  I like some of the information I learned about presentations, however, I’m tired of PowerPoint getting a bad rap.  It’s like I tell my students – computers (in this case PowerPoint) are only as good as the information put into it.  Humans create computers, so not everything is always going to be correct.  I feel the same is true of presentations.  I personally like PowerPoint, just as I do some of the online presentation programs, but it’s only as good as it’s creator. With that being said, I think that as educators we need so spend time teaching students how to correctly use presentation software effectively.

Often students tell educators they know how to use a software program, but do they really know how to use it?  They may know how to put in information, but perhaps we need to teach them how to use the tool more effectively.  I know, who has the time?  As a teacher of underprivileged students with special needs, I feel I spend just as much time teaching the program as I do making sure they have the correct content. 

As we move to creating better presentations I feel we need to keep in mind the multiple intelligences.  While I hate having someone read a presentation to me, I’d hate to see presentations get so simplistic that we leave our visual learners behind.  For example, I know I personally need to look at charts when people are throwing data at me.

One of my favorite things this week was the digital storytelling.  It took quite a while to find three different digital stories, but once I did I really enjoyed the three I looked at.  I chose to look three very different genres, a historical comic book, a brief look into a person’s life, and an animated Christmas story.  I enjoyed all three and now I’m thinking about creating one myself.  Hey Louis, I’m talking about down the road, I wasn’t hinting for an additional assignment.  :)

I also liked the assignment of writing the futuristic story.  I forgot how much I enjoyed creative writing.  Creative writing was always one of my favorites things to do in school.  Something unfortunately I haven’t ever made time for since I’ve left school. 

4 comments:

  1. Tammy, I couldn't have agreed with you more about PowerPoint. I feel the same way! I think that PowerPoint is a great tool if people use it correctly. I am always stressing this with my students and with adults I work with. You can make awesome PP presentations if you put some thought and don't over do the text that you added to it. How often do use Power Point? I use it fairly often and make sure that I include pictures and video with my presentations.

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  2. Oh this isn't about PowerPoint - it's about abusing the tool. Drat, so much for the extra assignment I was crafting :)

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  3. Tammy, I too loved the assignment where we had to do some creative writing. I really forgot how much I liked it. It's one of those things that if not done often enough, you forget about.

    To go along with what you and Bill touched on, PPT is great when used the correct way. When it's not, it makes you want to jump out the window!!

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  4. The creative writing was always a challenge for me, but I agree that this assignment was fun. It makes you think about what you want in your life and allows you to set some goals in your life. It will be a nice project to revisit down the road and see how accurate it is!

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