TechTrekers, Power Point Ideas

(I used black on pale yellow to provide for the least amount of eye strain. I kept in purposefully nondescript so it would run in the background, only giving subtle visual and auditory clues at certain intervals. It was my intention that this be something for students to glance at periodically to see how much time is left in class, an activity, or til the bell rings, however it fits for a teacher to use it.)

Susan Haninger http://www.techtrekers.com/PP/sh.htm

Pat Makseyn http://www.techtrekers.com/PP/pm.htm

Carolyn Stanley http://www.techtrekers.com/PP/cs.htm

Other PP on the Web

No Bones About It - The Human Skeleton Interactive Lesson http://www.duq.edu/~tomei/skeleton

(Thanks Carolyn Stanley for finding it)

Tutorial on the Heimlich Manuever http://www.oswego.org/staff/kauyer/Heimlich.htm

Tutorial on Fractions http://www.oswego.org/staff/rpartrid/fractionsbythenumbers.htm

Sample Class Presentation on Mammals http://www.electricteacher.com/mammals.htm

Christmas Around the World (small group PP) http://www.oswego.org/staff/kauyer/Heimlich.htm

Open House PP http://www.oswego.org/staff/kshafer/OpenHouse.htm

PowerPoint ideas

By Diane McCoy

It can be used to present new material to your class. If there are sounds, it would be a great way to hit the auditory learner.
I would use PowerPoint as a learning tool for the students. They could do a book report using a PowerPoint presentation.
PP could be used to present information during an Open House. It can also be used to present information in a clear and concise manner.
A teacher could use PP to "HOOK" their students. It does catch your attention if put together properly. Students these days have visual "pushers" around them all the time in the form of Gameboys, N64's, TV, movies, etc. This is another way to hit the many ways that children learn.

By Maryann Castaneda

I liked the idea of facing the class when presenting new information. It seems as if a scanner would be important to have accessible in order to integrate student photos or artwork into presentations.
I am really intrigued by the "timer" concept. I want to explore how this thought might help during first aid class & practices.

By Betty Kistler

To present a lesson... This helps students focus on main points and adds "zing" via graphics, sound, and animation. It also lets you keep lessons for future presentations but allows easy revision.
For a presentation to parents... can use at Open House to show your goals and expectations for their children. At our 8th grade graduation we have always had a slide show - this year the advisors were late getting the pictures to the photographer to have slides made up (that is also pretty expensive) so I saved the day by making a PowerPoint slide show from the pictures. It was not only a big hit, but showcased our use of technology.
For students to use... This is not only a great program for them to be proficient with, but also encourages organization of material for presentation.

By Marge S. Auburn

PowerPoint is a great multi-media program that offers visual and auditory emphasis to almost any lesson. It is a great visual addition to hand out material, using color, sound, action, and design to focus the attention of the learner.
The creation of a PowerPoint presentation to enhance a class requires a teacher to set up a clear set of objectives for a lesson. If you have to put your "major points", etc., up there for everyone to see, it is very clear to the students exactly what about the lesson is important. It is also a good way to prepare handouts for classroom use, allowing the students to link the visual image to the knowledge that is being presented.
I find that students like to use PowerPoint a lot to emphasize their own presentations, either by a real classroom presentation, or by creating things to be included in a written report. It makes excellent chapter heading pages, cover sheets, etc.

By Catherine Finnerty

In the past 15 years, I have spent a great deal of money purchasing slides and art prints for instruction. There is not a lot of space to hang the prints. It's kind of a pain to get the slide projector and screen ready. Using a PP presentation, makes studying about artists, art periods/techniques so much easier.
Using a PP presentation also helps the teacher with the tardy/absent child. I have only 50 minutes a week with my students, sometimes less depending on the timely delivery of classes, and using the PP presentation would be good for the child who needs to catch-up with work. 3. I recently made a web page for my school, it would be fun for the parents to see a PP presentation on the site, if you could do that. If you want to add music to your presentation, you can. You have sound and visuals all in one place. Your resources are stored easily on a cd. You can send/share with colleagues in other schools.
You could do portfolio assessment presentations this way. There are so many ways to appeal to the varied learning styles using PP, I think teachers would like it.

By Michelle Eastman

I find PowerPoint to be very useful. It helps keep the students attention by using sounds and different movements of the text and pictures. You can use pictures to show students what you are talking about. It helps those students who have difficulting listening. It can help students present materials that they have learned in the classroom. Students find it a lot more exciting to be able to present their project using PP rather than writing a report or making the project.
Here at my school the Counselors use PP to introduce the 5th and 6th graders to the Middle School. It is a wonderful presentation with pictures of students doing activities, teachers, and great music. Each year it gets better!!
In the classroom I use it to present material as well as use it for Open House. The parents really like it and are very interested to learn their students will be learning how to do this.
I do believe PP helps us as teacher capture our students attention because they play computer games and all the video games. PP appeals to them

By Maryann Powell

Students love to use PP for their presentations. I have found that it makes convincing students to do an oral report almost effortless. They don't need those awful index cards that they never put notes, on; they always just had the entire presentation verbatim on the cards and read them. With PP, it's like they have a legal "cheat sheet" and they'll get up and talk on their feet using the main ideas on the slides to organize their thoughts and guide their words!

By Marge Shasberge

I have had a couple of classes regarding multiple intelligences and different learning styles, and PP was one of the "easiest" ways to expand the lesson activity into different methods - visual, auditory, artistic, kinesthetic, etc. It is a great all around tool!

By Janice Kane

One way to use it would be for morning organization. It is so difficult to get the children settled and going in the morning. If they were accustomed to looking at the screen, and having a certain amount of time to complete their morning tasks, it could be a great way to organize and challenge themselves.
By putting course information and lectures into a power point presentation, it could be run over and over again at various times for those children needing to see things more than once and those who are absent the day the material is presented.
PowerPoint would be a great way to have more than one thing going on at a time in a classroom. It could be used to enhance the lessons of children that are ready for higher level learning, so that they are not bored with the general class work.
Power Point could be used as a change or to add variety to the classroom, to enhance or expand on the basic lessons, and to have the material more accessible to the children. This could be a way to help the children that have difficulty grasping a lesson first time through by allowing them to review it as many times as necessary. The computer has a way of calming and settling some children. Some that may really fidget during a lecture seem to be able to sit still if they are using a computer.

By Susan H

To say farewell to the eighth grade class at the end of the year I put together a retrospective program about their years at Trinity. This gift is shown at the 8th grade graduation breakfast. It usually contains several collage type presentations of old photos through the years. We secretly collect these photos from teachers and parents and scan them into the program. I have used a poem each time as the basis of my program, the first year it was What is Success by Emerson. Both times the poem was something that was either in the public domain or anonymous and I credited the book I found the writing in. I usually put music that I find on the Internet that is put up for free use. This past year I was able to find some nice free midis of contemporary music to put behind our show.
I have also used Power Point to create a display for our schools presentation at a parish ministry fair. In this situation I used photos, MS clip art, graphs of test scores. music and some sound effects.
Our students have presented programs about saints, famous heroes of the 20th century, and virtual tours of Ancient civilizations.
I also did a Power Point presentation for the final project of the only CU course I have ever finished. Every time was a wonderful learning experience and you become like a driven fiend as you continually tweak your presentation to perfection! What is really fun and satisfying is to then see students doing the same thing staying after school and working every recess and study hall to get their presentation just right!

By Mary McClory

Organizing lecture notes into a PowerPoint presentation has several benefits: teacher has saved instructional materials which can be easily updated, presentation can be repeated for review purposes and absences and visuals, music etc. are attractive to various learning styles.
PP can be used for informational purposes: Back to School night, sports team info, Open House etc. This way you are sure of message uniformity.

By Carolyn Stanley

In my school the social studies teachers have the students create PowerPoint presentations as a backdrop for the student presentations of their reports. In PowerPoint the main ideas the students were presenting were flashed on the screen, but the students were responsible for filling in the gaps with their oral presentations. In addition, the teachers required a written report. Hence,the students were not losing out on the skills it takes to put together a well-organized and supported written research paper.
PowerPoint is a wonderful tool, but we have to be on the alert that students don't produce reports that have pizzazz but which are shallow in detail.
Think back to the days when students wrote papers, and the only one who saw them was the teacher. Now, with the integration of technology into the curriculum, sharing is almost a given. It takes time, but I do believe the students are so much more enriched by seeing and hearing the results of fellow students labors.

By Kathy Roberts

I'd like to use PowerPoint as our first project. The first day I would like to take photos of the students. My scanner isn't working but I'd like to borrow the one digital camera we have at school. Maybe that could be used as the first frame. To get the students familiar with researching on the Internet they could research the origin of their last names and write about it. They can write a biopoem about themselves.
I'd like to create a PowerPoint presentation about a variety of careers. That way, students can select the career they are interested in and get some ideas of the abilities, education and training necessary and the job responsibilities of each career.
Three ways I will use PowerPoint in my classroom: - to have the students get to know me and then each other by creating their own PowerPoint presentations - to enable the students to share their creative writing. - to give the students the feeling a successfully creating something they would be proud to show others.
I want to use PowerPoint because it is a great motivator. In addition, I believe that the students need to feel pleased with their work to want to try harder to be successful. In addition, my handwriting is not very easy to read, so using PowerPoint would make it easier for my students to read what I've written. It is neat and very organized.

By K Sauers

At the beginning of this school year I did my classroom introduction as a PP presentation. The students really seemed to be "locked in" to the presentation, and seemed to enjoy the graphics and simple animation.
My hope for the future is to develop at least one PP presentation each month for either History or Science.
Also we have Back-to-School night coming up and I would like to be able to put something together for that if I have time.

By Maryann Powell

I taught 2nd graders to use PowerPoint. The idea was a collaborative brainstorm between myself and their teacher. She usually created a "Big Book" at the end of the year and let each child create one page of the book. It was then displayed at the end of the year Open House for parents to see the most important thing each child had learned that year. Instead of creating one Big Book, they had an impressive, very professional looking 28 slide presentation. The teacher printed these up in color and presented each child with a copy of the year end book!
I have also seen PowerPoint used as a means of presentation for haiku poetry. Graphics, animations and sound effects are added to help convey the meaning of either original or found poems.
And the most common way that I use PP is in preparing step-by-step instructions for my staff development. My teachers like to have clear, concise instructions to follow when attempting a new task. I present the steps, adding one step at a time by mouse click to the slides to pace the training. I also give them a printed copy of the handouts using the 3 slides to a page print choice which provides lined spaces for additional notes. Some folks don't think they're learning anything unless they have to physically write something down.
With PP's ability to hyperlink so it's not the linear creature it used to be, portfolios are the obvious next step. Portfolios with PP will be the next thing I work on with my academic coaching students!

By Dianne Tarmann

For our Open House I would like my students to create a PP presentation about themselves and their career interests. We read a novel that I can tie this to.
I would like to create PP presentation to review the chapters that we study in Science and Social Studies. The students could view them whenever they wished, and they could take them home also. It would be great for students who are absent too!
Last year, I created a Daily Detective series (daily questions to research in Science, Social Studies, Math, and English). We grade these in class orally. I could use PP to help the kids see the answers, and hopefully it would stick better. PP is a very powerful tool. It would be very new for my students, and I feel like I would have their complete attention. (I have problems of the day in Science, Math,Geography, and English (DOL). My Daily detective is mainly Social Studies. The students are given five days of clues. The topics are: States, Presidents, Famous Americans, and Person, Place or Thing. At the end of the 5 days they try to decide the answer for each topic. Of course there are prizes according to how many of the 4 areas they have correct. The students trade papers and grade each others. We go over the answers orally so that I can explain them further and give ideas about how to use reference materials to find the answers. I could use PP to show the class the answers.

By Kat Kompewter

I have and will use PP as a slide show for parents' programs. I am able to take some really nice photos of my students working on their goals, parents love these.
Some of my students need help to use their vision, so a PP show that uses current research in vision to direct their visual experiences will be helpful. There are some great infant stimulation videos available but they aren't personalized, a PP presentation could include personal photos and favorite items.
As I developed a timer show I realized that this is a perfect opportunity to build an inseat presentation, we have to work on teaching our students to stay in their seats some can't even stay for 1 minute! But to develop a presentation with photos of themselves could prove to be motivation to watch the screen. Definitely need to have transitions shorter than a minute, I couldn't even wait that long! This could also build an interest in watching tv or computer programs.
I also need to get other staff members motivated to use their computers and software, so PP could help to get them started. Kat

By: Lynne Newton

PowerPoint can be used in the classroom when presenting a lesson to keep the students (and the teacher) on track. The ease of turning presentation into web pages also allows the teacher to post the notes on the web for students who were absent or those who just want to review the lesson from class.
For younger students, step by step directions are just a mouse click away. The teacher could set up a PowerPoint presentation that would walk students through "how to" at a learning station. As the students work through the directions, they click to see the next step.
PowerPoint can be used by students when presenting book talks, or information on any type of report. Adding original pictures will add to the presentation. (Also a great way to save a portfolio of student work without the bulk of paperwork.)
Another good use of the program is when preparing displays for learning fairs or science fair projects. By creating a timer presentation, the project can be explained even when the creator is not available.
Teachers want to use PowerPoint because it is a great way to organize their thoughts for teaching a lesson, and kids love it!

Debra Dailidonis

Our principal thought it would be a good idea for the teachers in our school, which is growing larger by the second, to get to know one another better. Recently, our clubs and academic programs were asked to give a presentation about our role in the school (5 min. time limit) so that other teachers could meet us and see all the "good things " we were doing. There were three groups of 6 presenters. I used a power point presentation which outlined the role of my club, Student Goverment, and it worked perfectly. I received many compliments on the use of the powerpoint as opposed to other methods other teachers were using. I was able to cover all (and there are many!) activities we participate in throughout the school year in a short amount of time.

Three ways a teacher can use powerpoint in the classroom:

Introduction/outline of what is going to be studied
Going over rules/expectations of a class
Having students create powerpoint projects to highlight a particular subject in class

Don't worry if any of the following sites have pdf documents you can convert them to microsoft word or excel very easily. All you need is a PDF converter.

Last Updated October 23, 2008

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