PowerPoint
is a great presentation program for teaching Mathematics and any other content
area. With PowerPoint, teachers could outline their lesson plan with text and
media. Standing in front of a classroom and teaching is difficult because there
are many things to cover and it is easy to forget something, but having a
PowerPoint presentation makes it easy to follow a clear organized format. Additionally,
having an outline of the lesson could be helpful to send students who were
absent that day, or to post up. Taking notes is important to refer back to when
solving problems for homework or studying for a test, but it is also time
consuming in class from focusing on what has to be learned and practice. To
make time more efficient students could use the class time to review the PowerPoint,
take notes on what is not on the PowerPoint that they feel is important, then
spend the rest of the class learning, practicing, and asking questions.
There
are also many great tools for learning that could be used to teach and engage
students in learning. PowerPoint allows teachers to add slides with text,
pictures, videos, sound, and animations. Having the option to make the power
point not only educational, but also interactive engages students to want to
learn more. PowerPoint is much more of an attention grabber than just writing
on the board. This would be similar to creating a canvas, like for the unit
plan, but more detailed and focused on a particular topic. Another great
feature for the PowerPoint is creating shapes, this would be perfect for a
lesson on geometry. There is also an option that the students may print out the
PowerPoint slides as handouts, which the students could use to study, because
they would be like index cards. The students could also print out the slides
with lines on the sides to have the PowerPoint slides in their notes and take
additional notes to each slide that they feel needs further explaining or is
unclear.
I love the idea of using PowerPoint! It is extremely easy to use and it really does help teachers when presenting. There are so many different options that could help the keep students engaged. For example, you can add pictures, music, and even time your slides to change after a certain amount of time has lapsed. Of course, I do not believe that a PowerPoint presentation should be used every class period because it will become redundant, but if used correctly, it can be used for several different lessons. PowerPoints are not only great for teachers, but for students to use as well. For example, you can assign them a project where they have to use PowerPoint when presenting. Presenting will help students with public speaking and future presentations.
ReplyDeleteI am not a huge fan of power points in math classes because of the way many teachers use them. Many teachers just read off the slide and then go to the next one. With math this would not be effective because students need to see worked out examples, and power point does not allow this. You are right that it is an organized format and I think power point can be effective if used correctly in other content areas but I do not think it is the best choice for a math class on a daily basis. I am not totally against power point, but I would want to see how you would use it to make me agree with using power point in a math class.
ReplyDeletePowerPoint is a great technology resource to use in class. I always enjoy having PowerPoint slides to refer to when studying for an exam. I agree with you that students can use these print out slides as a study tool for tests. Using PowerPoint in class gives teachers more time to focus on the big ideas of the lesson, instead of reviewing every detail. The notes are for students to read in detail and review on their own. If I were to use PowerPoint in my class I would make sure I am not reading everything off each slide, and instead using it as a guide for my classroom discussion.
ReplyDeletePowerPoint slides are always a controversial teaching style. The largest argument, I found, in PowerPoint slides are the way it is used. Its delivery or instructional purpose often times leads a presenter from reading directly from each slide, which does not induce an affective learning environment. However, You have clearly eliminated this. I like your constant affirmation on using PowerPoint strictly as an outline of the class lesson. This will prevent the teacher from reading each slide verbatim. I too agree that is it a great way to track your progress in the class and assures that everything is discussed.
ReplyDeleteThis is the same as having bullet points on a sheet of paper by your desk. However, the advantage is that students can follow along. Your solution for an absent student is something I would like to do as well. Post the slides for their reference at home. This will prevent a student from falling too far behind if there is more than one day of being absent.
Good points. I agree that in different content area, it uses powerpoint to start off the class and grab students attention. I think the use of the powerpoint usually lies into the lesson plan and also show an example of solution that in a math class will find. But most importantly, I think writing out on the board and explaining how the solution was found may help engage the students understand better. I know that math test is usually for solving the problem to the question, but if there is a word that they needed to memorize then having a powerpoint slides that have all the information can help the students to study as a review guide.
ReplyDeletePowerPoint is a great tool for teaching for many of the reasons you stated. A PowerPoint presentation is always going to be there as an outline or reference material. I think it has great that you are thinking about how you want to integrate this technology into your lessons. This tool can help you do so many different things. You can show videos, notes, or mathematical charts. I like how you said it can help students who miss class because this is one of our biggest fears as an educator. We need to figure out how to make time to help students catch up. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteI also wrote a post on using PowerPoint in the math classroom. I agree with you that this tool is great because it clearly can display text, images, graphs, videos, and more. In math, it is important to show graphs and shapes that are to scale. When drawing on the board, students sometimes can get caught up because they are not proportional, neat, etc. PowerPoints allow for these things to be displayed accurately. As long as PowerPoints aren't used to speed through a bunch of notes, I think it is a great tool to use in the classroom.
ReplyDelete