PowerPoint slide master

Many students come to my class feeling "comfortable" with PowerPoint so my goal is to teach them some news skills to keep the focus on content or make formatting and animating quicker, easier and consistent.

One of the ways that I do this is to teach my students how to create their own original design template by using the slide master. The preformatted design templates are overused and not very interesting - plus they usually don't match the topic. I teach students how to go to View / Master / Slide Master and design a template from scratch. I encourage students to choose background colors, designs or images that match their topic.

For example, one of my students in presenting a PowerPoint all about surfing so she found a cool wave photograph that we lightened and place as the background of her slides. Then she chose complimentary colors and fonts for the titles and body paragraphs. She included a navigation bar on the left of the slide and a small image near the title. This slide was saved as a design template and then could be applied to the PowerPoint slides (the one that was written in Word).

The student is now more than half done since all the text and slide formatting is completed. The next steps include changing the slide layouts, transitions and adding images/sounds/movies.

Animations for titles and body paragraphs can be added to the slide master as well as "actions" to link the navigation bar to individual slides.

I asked students to give opinions about the use of the slide master:

• It makes it easier to format all the slides at once.
• You can match your design to your topic.
• It makes the show more professional looking - but I still like change some of the background designs for some slides.
• I probably won't go search for design templates online anymore - I'll just make my own.
• I used to spend a lot of time animating all of the text. Completing the animations in the slide master saves TONS of time.
• I like using the slide master and Word outline together - it's so much easier.
• I never knew that you could add action buttons or hyperlinks in PowerPoint to make the projects more interactive.
  

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!
  

Teacher recommedations for on and off-task behaviors

After observing and recording on-task behaviors, here are some of my initial adjustments or recommendations:

• Group projects
  
• Provide written instructions so all know expectations
• Give each student to a role to fulfill
• 1-1 or 1-2 computing is ideal for sharing work - more than that does not give adequate time for students to participate
• Have alternative tasks for those who finish early
• Direct Instruction
• Remove all distractions: headphones, open websites
• Consider purchasing lab management software so all can easily view screen
• Find out prior knowledge and do not demo skills already known
• Keep direct instruction short and provide written instructions
• Individual tasks
• Provide written instructions
• Remove all distractions: headphones, open websites
• Stop class work time and encourage interaction and sharing
• Intervene early with students who are stuck or off task
  

Career Fair Today!!!!

Today my Computer Applications students hosted a mini-career fair in the lobby of our school at lunch. It was fun, hectic and full of energy - basically - organized chaos. The class was split into 6 groups and each group researched how careers can be grouped into personality types.

Today, the groups presented their information to the student body. To entice students to stop by the kiosks we placed bowls of candy at each table. We also offered a raffle prize - so if someone stayed and listened to the presentation they would receive a raffle ticket to win "A future career organizational kit" (complete with jump drive, pencils/pens, scissors, and a cool pencil pouch!). We had a pretty good turn out. Lots of kids took the "personality test" to determine their category and visited the kiosks. Several teachers at my school stopped by to ask the students questions about what they learned. A student reporter from the school paper took pictures and interview students for an upcoming article. My ARP is focused on engaging students with authentic assignments. The students will participate in a survey this week to get their impressions of the activity. Overall I am pleased with their efforts.

View pictures of our event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/colettec/sets/72157594586847731/

Reviewing my Desired Goals

I pulled out my UbD project plan to look over my Desired Goals of my career unit:

• Oregon Department of Education career related learning standards:
• Students will develop skills to assess personal characteristics, interests, abilities, and strengths.
• Students will develop skills in identifying, evaluating, and using a variety of resources for exploring personal, educational, and career choices.
• National Educational Technology standards for students:
• NETS*S #3: Students use productivity tools to collaborate in constructing technology-enhanced models, prepare publications, and produce other creative works.
• NETS*S #4: Students use telecommunication to collaborate, publish and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences
• NETS*S #5: Students use technology tools to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of resources.

I decided to do a quick check of how I am doing on meeting some of these goals:

• This past week my students did a great job of using technology tools to locate and collect information and a little bit of evaluation - but I think I will focus a blog topic on that.
• Students will start to prepare some type of documentation and an interactive component of their Career kiosk this week.
• We are using wikispaces for collaborative planning of the career projects. Maybe I could encourage the students to seek out resources by experts through email or listservs.
• The students took a personality career survey and identified which traits matched particular careers. They also used the Librarians pathfinder to locate information on careers. I think they need to look outside of the Internet for more sources: interviews, primary documents, videos on unitedstreaming, etc.
• I'm still a little unsure of how specific technology skills are developing. I need to find a better way to assess this in an authentic manner.
• The groups are still a little uneasy around each other. I was hoping blogging would help the communication issues - I will encourage more communication on the wiki and Moodle.
• I feel a little uneasy about the progress so far. Its going OK - but I don't yet see the "excitement" of making an authentic project yet. I think it will help when they start assembling the kiosk and making the interactive component. We'll see ...
  

Gathering Evidence: SurveyMonkey.com

The Problem:
I want to survey the students about their opinions and attitudes about the current Computer Applications course, but I don't want to feel that they can't be honest with their answers if I can tell who wrote what. I was thinking of asking another teacher to help administer a survey or interview specific students.

The Solution:
Wendy suggested using an online survey. She recommended a website called SurveyMonkey.com. I created a free account with SurveyMonkey that allowed me to make a 10 question survey and assess to the results. My questions included:

1. What year are you?
2. Do you think the keyboarding practice this term has been helpful?
3. Which WORD assignment was he most beneficial?
4. Describe your overall impressions of the assignments from the Office 2003 TEXTBOOK.
5. Describe your overall impressions of the group projects.
6. Which EXCEL skills did you find the most beneficial?
7. On a scale of 1-5 rate your teacher on the following items: knowledge of curriculum, being prepared for class, available for help, willingness to assist you when asked, feedback given to you about your progress, ability to teach new skills, friendliness, and overall impression.
8. What suggestions do you have for the types of lessons for this class in the future?
9. What recommendations do you have for the teacher of how she could teach this class differently in the future?
10. Would you recommend this class to another student? Why or why not?

The Results:
The students seem to like the online survey and all 17 students who were present that day answered all the questions.

The general feedback that I received was:

• There was mixed reviews about the assignments from the textbook. Some liked the step by step instructions - others thought they were boring.
• Most students like working in the group projects.
• Students recommended skipping some of the easier skills and focus on the harder skills, more projects - but many were happy with the content of the skills.
• The teacher evaluation revealed that students wanted more feedback on their progress but that the teacher knew her material well.
• Students recommended the class for others to take and the overall rating of the class was good.

I like using SurveyMonkey for the evaluation. I felt like the students were honest (it seemed that only 1 student was unhappy with the class!) but at the same time the survey wasn't too long or cumbersome for them to fill out. Almost every student wrote a comment when given the opportunity to do so.