Teaching skills with a purpose

This week I spent some time in direct instruction with my students on specific PowerPoint skills (Word outlines, slide master, action buttons, and animations). Teaching these skills without a real purpose for using them would have been a waste of time.

One of the things that I have come to realize during this research project is that there must be a real purposeful reason to learn the skills and then opportunities to use them. There are other skills in PowerPoint that I don't cover - such as how to convert a slideshow to a webpage. We aren't going to be posting them online and that's not really how most people use PowerPoint - so why teach it?

I am looking back at my former scope and sequence of skills and re-evaluating some of the skills I used to teach. Yes it is nice to learn how to do a pivot table in Excel, or hanging indents in Word or automatic slide advance in PowerPoint - but if there is no real reason to learn it and use it - how can I think that the students will ever really "learn" this skill and retain the information?

Wouldn't it be better to teach them how to learn than trying to cram "everything" they should know about using a piece of software - one that will eventually change anyway?

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
  

On task behavior documentation

For my ARP I have been documenting students behaviors during direct instruction time, during group project work and then during individual tasks. Here are some of my observations so far:

• Group
• initially there is a lot of discussion
• some students made the decisions, other members wait for instructions
• students confered with each other about progress during writing of article
  
• when students were formatting their newspaper page, students who were not actually controlling the computer were not as involved.
• groups that only had 1 or 2 members formatting per page were more on task than higher numbers
• Direct Instruction
• teacher can view 3/4 of screens from her vantage point and see if all are following along with instruction
• students are engaged when instruction is unfamiliar - opening word outline in PPT
• If students perceive they already know the material - they seem to "check out"
  
• Where students sit in room seems to have direct impact of how well they pay attention. Students in front right row and back row do not watch demonstrations on overhead screen.
• Off task behaviors include trying to use headphones to listen to music or websites, viewing own screen instead of demo, not looking at teacher, talking to neighbor
• Individual tasks
• some students work well on their own
• some students need interaction or clarification to understand the task
• if students have clear understanding of task, or written directions to refer to, they usually are more productive than those who have to stop and ask for clarifications
• the more confident the student is in their ability to complete the task at hand, the more on task behavior I observed
• personality & overall school achievement has a lot to do with on-task behaviors
  

chart of behaviors will be posted soon.

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.

Cycle Three Plans

During the next cycle I will continue to provide lessons where the students create authentic projects for authentic audiences – but students will have more choice during this cycle.

After reviewing the National Technology standards for students and my scope and sequence of skills, I determine that students still exposure to more desktop publishing skills (columns, section breaks, drop cap, customized borders) but also review some general paragraph formatting skills (indents, before/after spacing, styles, and outlines). My plan is to list these technology skills for the students and give them some options on how we can use them in a project and let them decide as a class how to demonstrate their understanding. Some of the options will be: a class newspaper, a basic website, Word tutorials, etc. By allowing students to choose the format of their project I am hoping to increase ownership and engagement in learning.

We have not covered any PowerPoint skills this semester so the final capstone project of the term will be an integrated PowerPoint and Excel project. Students will be given the opportunity to choose any educational topic that is of interest to them and one that they could teach their classmates about. First they will determine prior knowledge by designing an Excel survey about their topic. Once they have collected that information, students will design an interactive PowerPoint presentation on their chosen topic. Direct instruction of the following PowerPoint skills will be covered: opening a Word outline in PowerPoint, creating a slide master, custom animation, action buttons, and adding sound or video to PowerPoint. Each PowerPoint project from the class will be linked together on a main project so all students can view each other’s projects.

The final days of class instruction will incorporate a “Choose your own Techventure” time – where students can pick any type of technology that we have at school and work individually or in groups to explore the software tools.