The "cool" factor of PowerPoint

Students always seem to get excited when a teacher explains that they are going to use PowerPoint for a project. There is something about PowerPoint that is creative, entertaining and appealing to kids.

My concern has always been that all of the focus on the "fluff" of PowerPoint will lead to PowerPointlessness. PowerPoint is a presentation tool so why is the content and message seem to be lost in the production?

I have come up with a solution that counteracts the focus on formatting and not on content. I teach students how to write out all of the content for their PowerPoint slides in a Word outline and focus on the information before I allow them to open up the PowerPoint program.

Today I taught the students how to change to outline view and place all slide titles on Level 1 of the outline and all body content on Level 2 of an outline. Students spent several days researching their topic and writing out the information on the outline. Resources were cited right on the outline and the focus was clearly what information was to be conveyed in the presentation.

When the students completed the outline, they opened PowerPoint and then opened the Word outline IN PowerPoint - and presto - all the text was placed on the appropriate slides. The students reaction is the best part - they loved it. They were amazed that these two software pieces work together seamlessly.

In class we discussed the value of what we just accomplished. Students commented:

• You can focus on the writing and not get distracted by playing with animations.
• Its easier to keep your train of thought when working in outline view.
• You can write the outline at home and then come to school to work on PowerPoint
• You must set up the outline correctly otherwise this process doesn't work.
• It was cool to see all the text on the correct slides.
• I never knew this could be done before.
• I love learning new shortcuts!
  

New Student Newspaper

My main focus this year is teaching technology skills with authentic projects that have real audiences. At the beginning of Cycle 3 I still had several skills to cover before the term was over, so I sat down with the students and asked them, "How can we learn these skills but at the same time find a real purpose and audience for our work".

I wanted to cover some desktop publishing features in Word, like: columns, section breaks, shading/borders, etc.. In the past the students have created a newsletter - but for no real audience. The students like the idea of creating a REAL newspaper that would be read by REAL students. The students chose to make a newspaper about our school to give to incoming students. I ran the idea past our admissions counselor and she loved the idea.

The students decided on an 8 page layout: Welcome, Academics (2), Activities (2), Sports (2) and General Information. They broke into groups, wrote articles, edited the documents with "track changes", decided on a layout template, added the stories/images, proofread again and printed the final version for the admission counselor to review.

The best part of the whole project is that I was really a “guide on the side” during the process. The students decided what they thought new students needed to know. I observed quite a few students showing other students how to format the newspaper a particular way. The whole project was very successful and I think the students showed a lot of enthusiasm for the assignment because I gave them choice in demonstrating their technical skills.

Mail Merge

Today students finished their mail merge letters. Students had the choice to write a letter in support or against Oregon House Bill 2650 - the removal of junk food in public schools -or- a letter about reducing lunch waste and incorporating a lunch recycling program at schools.

After conducting our own analysis of our school lunches and researching these two topics, students wrote their 1st drafts. Working in partners, the drafts were edited using "track changes" and finalized. Students looked up addresses for Oregon Senate leaders and editors of local newspapers. These addresses were inputed on a Google shared spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was exported for anyone to use.

I demonstrated the format of a full-block business letter. Students began the steps of the mail merge and added the appropriate "fields" in the letter. Using the mail merge helper allowed students to preview their letters before merging. The final letters were printed, signed, envelopes were addressed and mailed.

My goal in doing the letter campaign was to give students an authentic reason for learning how to write a formal business letter and to learn the steps of a mail merge letter. One student summed up his feelings, "I don't know if my letter will make any difference but at least they know how us teenagers feel".

MidPoint Evaluation

1. What year are you?
1. Freshmen – 9
2. Sophomore – 3
3. Junior – 2
4. Senior – 2
2. Do you think the keyboarding practice this term has been helpful?
1. Yes – 9
2. Somewhat – 6
3. No – 1
3. Which skill in Microsoft Word was the most beneficial to learn this term? (multiple answers are allowed)
1. Font formatting – 0
2. Tables – 12
3. Borders – 7
4. Styles – 4
5. Indents – 7
6. Numbering – 4
7. Format Painter – 9
8. Paragraph spacing – 1
9. Other: Track Changes – 2
4. Which statement(s) best describe your opinion about conducting research for the career project (multiple answers allowed).
1. I learned a lot about career choices through my research – 11
2. I did not enjoy the career research – 1
3. The career research was easy – 5
4. Researching the career information was too difficult and the information was hard to understand – 0
5. I like using the pathfinders provided by the Librarian – 10
6. I would prefer to do my own research on careers and not use the pathfinders. – 2
7. I shared the information I researched during the Career Fair – 13
8. I did not share the information I researched during the Career Fair.
9. Other – 4:Learned some what about our careers, Didn’t help my decision in finding a job, It made me think about what I want to do with my careers in my future, The career research wasn’t too hard, or too easy

5. Evaluation how well your group worked together on the career project

This statement is …	False	Partly true	True
Everyone contributed to the research	0	2	14
Everyone contributed to the poster board or interactive project	2	0	14
Everyone contributed during the presentation at the Career Fair	2	5	9

6. Please rate your understanding of the following Excel Skills

	I still have difficulty with this skill	I need some help with this skill	I am comfortable with this skill	I could teach another student this skill
Formatting the spreadsheet	0	2	10	4
Writing a formula	0	1	10	5
Creating a graph	0	2	7	7

7. On a scale of 1-5 rate your teach on the following items:

	1 Poor	2 Just Ok	3 Good	4 Very Good	5 Excellent
Knowledge of technical skills	0	0	2	4	10
Availability for help	0	0	3	6	7
Feedback give to you about your progress	0	2	1	10	3
Ability to teach new skills	0	1	1	4	10
Friendliness	0	0	2	4	10
Motivates me to learn	0	0	5	6	5

8. What suggestions do you have for how this entire career project could be improved in the future?

1. Nothing
2. More time to do research and maybe more to the point topics... The topics assigned for this recent project were broad
3. The presentation seemed chaotic during lunch
4. I think that more sites should be available on the library thing
5. I think that it was done really well, but it could be better if we could choose somewhat what careers we wanted to research.
6. This could be improved by giving time for more research. if you have more information, then there would be more to put on the project and the presentation.
7. Maybe more interactive. Find other things for different groups to do.
8. No presentation to school. Most people didn't really care. Instead, present to classmates.
9. Research more careers than two. Get different information about each career. That’s about it. It was good.
10. Maybe have the groups have a little bit more time to actually put together the poster board. like you could have a "poster board day"
11. I think that we could have the same thing happen, basically, but spend more time on the report, the speech/ presenting part.
12. I thought it all worked out fairly well. Its not gonna be perfect as thats impossible for any ideas in school but you basically did it the best way we could and we all worked together and learned plenty of things and then were able to share those with the school (while giving out candy as well).
13. I think that maybe next year or whenever it is done again, that more research should be done on the different jobs. The that my group provided was not very exhaustive
14. It was pretty good.
15. It could be improved if the students gave more creative ideas. Everybody else are almost same; doing PowerPoint, poster board. But, there were some creative ones, like playing guitar, bring cookie, and tickets.

9. What recommendation do you have the teacher of how she could tech this unit differently in the future?

1. No, none what so ever
2. For me i did not need the Microsoft office help but maybe for some people, we could have touched on word, excel, and power point a little bit more.
3. Focus more on teaching the skills rather than so much emphasis on the project.
4. more progress reports
5. I don't really have any recommendations. The teacher did well.
6. This would be better if we had time to practice the presentation before and make a script or something so that we know what we should say to people who come to look at our project
7. You’re doing great, lots of vocal energy. Maybe a few field trips (educational) to learn about computers.
8. No detailed research on a couple specific topics, but instead, several more general topics, so we can discover more jobs without having to research a job we find out we don't like.
9. I think it was very well taught.
10. i don't have really any recommendations for you.
11. I think she taught it well, but could explain the project more accurately in the beginning.
12. About the same answer as #8. It wasn't "perfect" but I can't really think of another way it could have been done so good job!
13. Stress that more research should be done on the specific careers that a group chooses to cover.
14. I would like to learn the skills in a more linear format.
15. I think project was a good one. Maybe doing other project in the future will be good.

10. If students had the CHOICE to help the teacher choose a topic for future projects in Computer Applications, which of the following topics interests you the most? (multiple answers and suggestions encouraged)

1. Teen Issues (drinking, smoking, dating, etc.) - 12
2. Athletic topics (team stats, steroid use, sports promotions) - 7
3. Discovering new technologies (podcasting, video, blogs, Web 2.0 tools, IM, Free software, Lego Programming) - 4
4. Famous People (historical, political, music, etc..) - 4
5. Pop Culture of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s - 4
6. The History of … (music topic: Rock-n-Roll, historical event: famous war, Invention: TV, etc) - 8
7. Everyone gets to choose their own topics - 11

Resume

Learning Activity

In order to give a personal touch to the Career Unit, I had the students make resumes this week. Initially the students looked at resume samples on the Internet and in our textbook to determine their purpose. Student then designed their own resume for homework. We spent one class period editing the content in small groups. Each student looked over their classmate's resume and make suggestions about word choice, content clarification, etc.. The next day the students used the “track changes” in Word to make suggestions for each other and then at the end either accepted or rejected the changes. Learning how to use the track changes feature in Word was a new skill for ALL of the students. I plan on using it throughout the semester.

Some other Word formatting skills I taught the students to use on their resumes: Adding space before/after paragraph, customized borders around text and paragraphs, font effects such as shadow and small cap, paragraph shading and changing margins.

The final resumes were printed on parchment-type paper to take home. They looked great!

Data Collection
I had the students evaluate their first draft of their resume. The results were:

March 13th Pre-Assessment Question: What do you think of your resume at this point?
1. I didn't make a resume - 0 responses
2. It's OK - but still needs a lot of work - 4 responses
3. It's pretty good - maybe one or two adjustments - 11 responses
4. It's awesome - I don't need any revisions - 1 response
17 responses / one student absent

March 16th Post-Assessment Question: What do you think of your resume at this point?
1. I didn't make a resume - 0 responses
2. It's OK - but still needs a lot of work - 0 responses
3. It's pretty good - maybe one or two adjustments - 5 responses
4. It's awesome - I don't need any revisions - 5 response
10 responses /data will be updated on Monday when students return from school activity

Observation

• All of the students made adjustments to their original resume (even the student who thought his was awesome!). The changes were in content, word choice, and formatting.
• The students reaction when they saw the final resume printed on parchment-type paper was positive. One student remarked, "Wow, this looks professional" - and it did!!
• Every student assessed their resume higher after the revisions.
• All students used new formatting skills on their resumes.
  

Skills Assessment

I attempted to use Moodle's quiz module for a short Word vocabulary test today. First of all I found out that the module is good for some questions but not for others. Its great for multiple choice and true/false - those are easy and it will even randomly place answers for each student - which is nice in a computer lab where everyone can see each other's screens. I tried using the short answer feature - that one didn't work as well. I had to go back and re-score about 8 tests that wrote something correct - but not my choice of word. I wanted to use matching for vocabulary - but the module makes you list the name number of words and definitions and I wanted extra definitions.

So, as an assessment tool, its OK but not great. I think in the future I might use it for a quick pop quiz just to check understanding. I do like the Journal module in Moodle. The students write a private message to me and I can respond back to them and I can give them a grade or not.

I am struggling with assessment a little in my implementation. I keep going back to my goals and asking myself "What does this look like and how do I know the students are meeting these goals?". Right now I am not sure if my assessments up to this point are accurately anwering that question.

Teaching skills and embracing a constructivist view

Today I was feeling a little uneasy about giving up my formal sequence of lessons of "how to do <insert skill here>. I am trying to embrace more of a constructivist approach in my lessons and allow the students to discover the information as needed. My tendancy to teach them everything they need to know about, for example, indents - unfortunately, this showed up in my lesson today.

I have created a wiki to list the Word skills as we use them in projects, and give students references to pages of my former textbook to access for additional help but today I found myself going back to my old ways and conducting a lesson on "the 5 different types of indents". Why was I doing this? Was there a need to learn indents or did one of the activities require the students to learn what the indent markers on the Word screen??? NO! It was me and my controlling behavior that showed up instead. Its great to point out a few things to help students to make their lists, or citations easier to read - but I taught the skill just for the sake of teaching the skill - the exact thing I didn't want to do in this Unit.

So, part of this ARP is for me - to help me change my behavior and trust that when the students have a need to learn indents, I can take that time and turn it into a "teachable moment" and the students will be more engaged because they have a need to learn that skill.

Tables for organizing research

Today's lesson had two goals:

• Research John Holland's 6 personality traits for careers.
• Introduce how to use TABLES to organize information.

Before I started the lesson, I asked students to log into Moodle and answer a one question survey about their previous knowledge of how to use tables. The results were:

• I have never used tables before - 2 students
• I've used tables before but don't know how to create or modify them - 4 students
• I could figure out how to use tables with help - 3 students
• I know how to create and modify tables - 8 students
• Tables are awesome - I use them all the time - 0 students

This information was very helpful to me when I later started the demonstration because I focused my extra help on the students who were unfamiliar with tables.

The Lesson:

I asked students look google "john holland" + career and see what information is listed. The students quickly found out that John Holland was a researcher who organized careers by personality traits: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional. Students bookmarked several sites for further investigation.

I introduced the idea of using a table in Word to organize information. Students created a 8x3 table as I demonstrated how to merge & split cells, make cells larger or smaller, and add columns or rows.

The students then used the information from the various sources to write a description of each personality trait and list some careers in that category.

Observation:

• All students were actively engaged in the research of personality traits.
• Most students access 2-3 websites for their information.
• Those students who were not familiar with tables asked for some specific assistance but most of the students did not have any difficulty creating the tables.
• I only observed two students copying and pasting information from the websites to their document - even though I asked them to put the information into their own words.

Direct Instruction - Word skills

Today's lesson had two goals:

1. Students wrote a survey to ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career.
2. Skills focus: Word formatting, numbering, indents, and styles.

Using the career questionaire as the topic, I asked students to brainstorm and write questions they could ask a parent, teacher, or adult friend about their career. I used this lesson to teach some specific skills in Word:

• How to write their name of the paper: View / header and footer / type name and assignment name
• Quickly review keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+S=save, Ctrl+Z=Undo, Ctrl+B=Bold
• Using the "gutter" to select one line or a paragraph
• Identifying the indent markers when you choose number formatting
• Purpose of styles, how to apply and modify them.
• Using line spacing for questionaire.

I ran out of time. On Monday I will follow up with customizing numbering styles and how to use the indent markers.

Since this format of teaching Word skills is new to me I feel that I need to make sure the students have reference information to refer to when I introduce a new concept. I have decided to add a page to our Career wiki for specific skills (ie: definitions, how to's) and add additional resources for more assistance. I will direct student to the wiki when I introduce a skill and I will base future vocabulary quizzes on this material @ http://p6compapps.wikispaces.com/Word

Cycle One begins - new students

The new semester has begun and I will be conducting my Action Research Project with the Computer Application students at my school.

The class consists of 19 students: 2 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 2 Sophomores, and 13 freshmen. This is a unique cross-section of students for this class - I have never had so many freshmen in the class before and the class is smaller than usual. Overall, there are 12 boys and 7 girls.

I will be conducting a survey next week of their computer skills but by the results of the assignment given when I was absent, these students already have good formatting skills in Word.

The assignment was a way to introduce themselves.

• The Word document title was: I Am The One Who ...
• Then then created a bulleted list of attributes about themselves, such as: has blond hair, who plays soccer, who loves to read Harry Potter, etc..
• The end states: I am ... "name".

The students formatted the document with different fonts, colors, sizes. The end results were very creative and revealing about their personalities. It was a great way to introduce each other.

Since the make up of this group is pretty unique, I feel that I need to spend some extra time developing camaraderie among the students. They are going to be doing group projects so I will spend some time working on class environment and communication among the students. I have introduced Moodle to the students and have posted some fun discussion boards to encourage postings and discussions.