powerpointlessness

As stated on the FNO.Org website in Vol 10No 1September2000, found at http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html powerpointlessness is “When presentations are glib and disappointing.” It is also when there are “Too many bullets. Too much crummy clip art. Simple thoughts. One liners. Mind bytes. Mind candy. Death by powerpointing!”

After a few hours, powerpointlessness is mind numbing. I work in an engineering environment and powerpointlessness is common. Often times there are too many words on slides and the text is too small to read. Charts are used which cannot be read from more than a few feet away. Presenters read their entire presentation to their audience.

As Jamie McKenzie has suggested, I like this solution to help avoid powerpointless. I think we should teach students to use the chart they offer on originality. Jamie also states that “The best defense against technology for technology's sake is a rigorous learning-focused program firmly grounded in the best traditions of schooling.” I also find value in this point made in the FNO.Org Vol 10 article. “The goal is to inform, enlighten and possibly even change someone's mind. The chances of reaching an audience are greatly increased if the presenter tries to understand the group and its characteristics . . .” While teaching students to learn to use Powerpoint it is also important that “We would also expect that they honor copyright when employing images scanned from the press or downloaded from Web sites, teaching them that "fair use" may allow such use by students within classrooms for reports but would not be permitted if they were adults in the workplace and is not permitted on school Web sites.” http://fnopress.com/bigsnake/index.htm

Since I am a student and do not have formal classroom experience, I turned to teachers who do. I received useful feedback from those who have witnessed children using technology in education. Here is what one teacher said. "I always like to use Powerpoint. We started with About Me at the start of the year. The students love it and some soared while others were less creative. Nevertheless, every student was proud to share his/her creation at parent conferences. I feel it reinforced summarizing skills." I am looking forward to seeing children working with Powerpoint in the classroom. I am currently reading two books, one is What if and Why? Literacy invitations for Multilingual Classrooms by Katie Van Sluys and the other is Choice Words, How our language affects children's learning by Peter H. Johnston. Dr. Van Sluy's literacy invitations discussed in the book included using the Internet as one source of resource for research. For example during one investigation entitled Mother's Day Ad's, "The girl's work with the Mother's Day ads in closely tied to stories of what is means to be American with regard to race, class, and gender. Their collaborative research on the computer initiates questions about the power of advertisers to ignore and/or erase nondominant images." Using the Internet allows children to ask specific questions to narrow down their research as well as ask individual questions along the way with search engines such as "Ask". I like this quote by Dyson 1999, "A child must have some version of , "yes, I imagine I can do this." And a teacher must view the present child as competent and on that basis imagine new possibilities." Dr. Johnston included this quote in the beginning of chapter four of his book entitles, Agency and Becoming Strategic. I find the significance of this quote to be equally important in technological education because there are many options for students. Lastly I will mention, what I know about Webquest. I know Dr. Kennett of Trinity University has heard a lot about them which is a terrific sign and source of encouragement for me, a new explorer into the WebQuest world. WebQuests present students with a challenging task, scenario or problem to solve. This is done to encourage a higher level of thinking. To encourage students to see a more challenging aspects of the topic. One of the strengths of WebQuest's is the students ability to learn common background knowledge. This information taken from www.filamentality.com/wired/fil//formats.html. Forums are next on my list to research. Thanks for reading and please share with me your favorite educational technology.

Nichole, Trinity College Elementary Education MAT program student.
I would like an opportunity to encourage young minds to love learning as well as to think independently. We typically use email daily at work. Powerpoint, Snagit, and various other software use is a bit more random. We also use digital camers, scanners and burn CD's as needed. I use the internet for a number of reasons including Google news, research, and my school email account. For this class, I would like to learn to use Smartboard.