Supporting Teaching by
Creating Presentations
One of the popular technologies that teachers tend to use most in classroom is creating presentation through the famous program PowerPoint. But what are the characteristics of an effective presentation? As we have taken in our technology class, that the presentation should be in a big size so that all the students can see it especially those who sit at the back. So it can be seen from 2 meters at least. It also should be simple; we shouldn't write too much detail that may distract students. We can just write the keywords. Another point is that it should be clear and use sanserif fonts i.e. we should use normal or bold fonts but not Italic. In addition, I have learned that it should be consistent which means that we use different color, for example to draw students 'attention but not to distract them. The last characteristic is that it should be progressive. However, before the teacher creates the presentation, he\she has to plan what to include first.
Actually, we have used this program a lot from school
days until now in university. Here is an example of a PowerPoint that I have created.
Nowadays a new program has appeared to compete and say
goodbye to Power Point. It is called Prezi. But what is special about this
program? Can teachers use it? Does it have any disadvantages?
Prezi "employs a common tool palette, allowing users
to pan and zoom, and to size, rotate, or edit an object."(Wikipedia) So
what's special about this program is zooming in and out. As if it drags you
inside the slide which is different from the Power Point. It is attractive to
students as well as me. Also, you can design all your work in one slide only,
unlike Power Point. Because in Prezi you can make things very small, you may
put a picture or a video inside a letter of a word. So when you present, you
just click inside the letter and the picture will appear. Overall, Prezi makes
you more creative.
However, the big problem with this program is that there
should be an internet connection. I say "big" because I'm thinking
about the future if I want to use it and there is no internet at school. Even
if there is internet connection at school, it will not be available in each
class, so I can only use it where is internet. If we compare it to Power Point,
the Power Point doesn't need an internet connection. So we can present in any
place, even in class, if we take the proxima with us. Another disadvantage that
I have read about Prezi is that it can cause motion sickness. However, I don't
agree with this because it's the designers who control motions movement. They can
the movement of slide simple!
Actually I like this program a lot and it will attract
students more for they see a different way of presenting information rather
than the Power Point. I was ecstatic when I've known that we are going to learn
about such a wonderful program in this course because I have seen some of the
students using it before but I didn't know how to use it. So a lot of thanks
are due to the doctor because he told us about it. It's easy to design it, but
I faced a problem in editing the path. I think this is the only problem.
Overall, it's an interesting program.
Overall, the teacher should take in mind whenever he\she
uses any kind of technology, he\she has to make plan B because sometimes for
one reason (e.g. there is no electricity, something broken) or another it might
not work. Instead of trying many times to fix it, he\she better starts to teach
using the normal method.
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