Monday, February 13, 2012

Reflection on PPT

Oh boy what a time.   The power point assignment was very helpful in showing me how to make a power point more appealing, and useful.  The hardest part by far was relinquishing the power of presenting material to the students.  This was the objective of the assignment, and i would also say my greatest risk.  I like to be in control of what is being presented, but i must say it is very nice not having to do it all the time.  This assignment takes a lot of work, but when it is done you can be even more effective to students by answering their questions.  I had my doubts about this assignment, but i do see its use. I thought the Narrative was a waste of time though.  I do realize we need to write down what we do, but it should not be that complicated.  In all thank you Mr. Smith for helping me see the value of the hands off "interactive learning".

I started by deciding on a topic I could make interactive.  I decided to do a battle, that way you could look at both sides of sides of the fighting.  I decided Gettysburg because of the importance and size of the battle.  I greatly utilized the potential with hiding slides and creating hyperlinks in them.  I accidently made my hyperlinks to the web go to the slide I was on.  I fixed that fairly quickly, and ran into the problem of finding videos that suited my purpose to describe what the battle and American Civil War battles were like.  I used videos form the movie Gettysburg to help illustrate my point.  My point being this was a big, bloody, awful battle that lasted three days and turned the tide of the American Civil War.

I still feel this concept should be used in limited exercises like an introduction exercise.  That way the student can find the information and determine for themselves what information is important or not.  Then the next day I would come in and give an accurate description to reinforce the material they looked at and make connections for them. 

My plan for the class would have been to take a week to cover the battle.  Day 1&2 to look at PowerPoint to choose one side on day 1 and on day 2 choose other side.  Day 3 I would go over the battle with notes.  Day 4&5 the class would watch the movie Gettysburg.  This would ensure that the class would retain the information. 

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